THE WALLABY TRACK WITH LIONEL MUSSELL

Following on from last month when I said Yemmy was at the RACQ repairers in Mareeba and they couldn ' t look at him for a week, well, quite a lot has happened since then, including the repairer fitting a wrong-ratio differential that affected the electronics so that he would only run in‘ limp home’ mode.

I ' d paid them $ 7430.30 only to get back a vehicle I couldn ' t drive normally. They denied any liability for the transmission as they said they had only worked on the diff.

When I said it had been driving normally before it broke down, he replied,“ That ' s what you say!”

This led me to suspect they had fitted the wrongratio diff and a check of the identification plate on the new diff confirmed this! A further physical check backed this up and I sent an email with a picture of the plate to the repairers. They then admitted they had fitted the wrong diff!

By this time I was fed up with their incompetence and asked the RACV to take Yemmy back to my trusted repairer in Gippsland.

I ' ve raised a dispute through my bank as the repairer refused to refund the money I ' d paid before getting Yemmy back.

The RACV has been fantastic throughout the drawnout process and paid to get Yemmy returned to Gippsland and got me home by a mixed transport bag: a taxi from Walkamin to Cairns Airport, Jetstar from Cairns to Tullamarine, SkyBus to Southern Cross Station, and coach to Stawell Station … and then a friend picked me up and took me the final 10km to my home in Illawarra.

Yes, I was bushed by the time I reached home after more than 14 hours of travelling and didn ' t appreciate the drastic change of climate from balmy Far North Queensland to wintry western Victoria in one day!

60 gorv. com. au