A retired police officer had a £600 car repair bill refunded after taking a dealership to court.

Brynley Smith was unhappy after picking up his Volkswagen GTi from the Caffyns dealership in Goring.

The 65-year-old, of Chiltington Close, West Chiltington, paid £606.66 for a replacement throttle body and to other parts of the engines but the problem was still not fixed.

The retired police officer said: "I thought it might be a sensor of some sort and so took it to Caffyns for them to identify it. They attached a diagnostic unit to the car which identified the problem area as the throttle body.

"Instead of taking the common sense approach and following the electrical circuit to find the fault they instantly quoted me on a replacement body throttle."

He drove the car after Christmas and immediately realised the problem was still there.

A visit back to the dealership failed to resolve the issue.

He said: "Before I took the car back I looked at 28 pages on the internet from VW owners all with the same problem I was having and they had a faulty speed sensor.

"I would like to think the dealership would have taken notice of me."

Unhappy, he contacted Volkswagen UK and its head office in Germany but with no resolution, he decided on court action.

He said: "I was getting nowhere with Caffyns nor Volkswagen and so I thought I'm not going to mess about anymore."

Mr Smith put a claim in for the money minus the small repairs not in dispute. Two weeks passed by and Caffyns offered an out-of-court settlement in a letter for that amount as "a gesture of goodwill".

In the meantime he bought the sensor himself for £60 and had it fitted by another garage with very little labour costs.

Even though he is pleased with getting his money back, Mr Smith is still angry at the way he was treated by Caffyns and Volkswagen and is urging people to be careful when taking their cars for repair to any garage by getting a second opinion.

He said: "People need to question everything and find out from elsewhere exactly what they think the problem might be. I was treated very shabbily indeed and I will never buy a Volkswagen ever again."

Caffyns declined to comment.