I cannot express enough how disgusted I am with the experience I had with Halfords McConechys Autocentre in Lockerbie. I took my car in to fix a flat tyre. The guy told me that he couldn't find a puncture and would need a new tyre. I was too naive to question this and had my autistic son in the car but have since read this is a common scam. Charged me over £70 for this new tyre and stated "your car is falling apart". He proceeded to offer to look over the car and give me a price for everything that needed fixed, as they offer a pay-it-up service. He came back with an almost £900 set of repairs and a full service. I want to point out that the guy said absolutely nothing about any issues with the cooling system. I accepted this, scared that if I took the car elsewhere, it would still need £900 worth of repairs but other small garages would not have a pay-it-up option. I have since read that this has happened to other people who then took their cars to other garages who fixed all repairs for significantly less. I booked my car in for these repairs, they carried them out and handed me a break-down of the work in an invoice. I drove my car from the Halfords in Lockerbie to the Tesco, 0.3 miles away. I went food shopping, which took about 1.5 hours. When I returned to the car, there was a substantial puddle underneath. I drove it the 0.3 miles back to Halfords and pointed this out. They confirmed that I had a leak in my cooling system and he would take a look at it. About 2 hours later I got a phone call stating that my cooling system was "cracked" and that I would need a replacement costing almost £300. Oh but don't worry, they would just add this on top of the other almost £900 bill in the payment plan that I already had set up. They said that they highly advise against driving as it was dangerous and I had my children with me, so my only option was to have them fix this issue and foot the extra almost £300 bill. Not only was this coolant system never an issue with my car, but he also charged me almost £200 for a "complete service" which showed absolutely nothing wrong with the cooling system, or surely he would have flagged this up sooner. Now, within this "complete service" - according to Halford's OWN WEBSITE - they check the cooling system. HOWEVER when I exclaimed that I should not have to pay for damage that was CLEARLY done within the garage, the assistant manager then said they were "nowhere near the cooling system". So not only are they suggesting that this damage was done within a 0.3 mile drive to Tesco, by their own admission, this would then mean that the "full service" they charged me for was not actually carried out correctly. On top of all of this dodgy experience, I was due to go on holiday with my kids the next day so I asked for a time to collect the car and was told 11am. I was due to leave at 9am, so had no choice but to push my leaving time by 2 hours. I expressed this to the mechanic/liar and he then confirmed that yes, the car would be ready for 11am. I phoned at 10.30am the next day as I had not heard from the garage. An uninterested response was "aw aye the parts have JUST ARRIVED". I again expressed that I had places to be and he gave no sh*ts, just said he would phone when it was ready. I had 2 very excited little kids waiting, so I went into Lockerbie to wait. I sat in the Tesco car park as I was legitimately wracked with anxiety due to the whole ordeal. I phoned again to be told that the part was in, but not only do they "huv tae bleed it" but they didn't even have the coolant needed to fill it. Interesting, seeing as they knew the day before that they needed this coolant. I admittedly lost it at this point, stating that not only were they incompetently handling this, but also having the cheek to charge me for it as clearly they had damaged it in the first place. He was offended, because OBVIOUSLY the very very common stereotype of a dodgy, scamming, lying mechanic is just fabricated from nowhere, right? He got the regional manager to phone me. She was polite, but was clearly angry that I had the gall to question the integrity of her staff and in turn was questioning my own integrity. I kept pointing out that this car went into the garage with no cooling system damage and left the garage with cooling system damage - doesn't take a genius. Her staff were saying they were nowhere near the coolant system yet had charged nearly £300 for a full service in which they are SUPPOSED TO CHECK THE COOLANT SYSTEM. She agreed to take the expense off my file but made sure to say that she thinks that it could have been damaged in the 2 mins it takes to drive 0.3 miles on a completely undamaged, straight road. I then had to go home, as we had no car to take to the holiday. They even had the cheek to phone at 2.30pm and say it was ready, knowing full well it was 3.5 hours late. Arrogant, scamming, lying, incompetent clowns. AVOID AT ALL COSTS