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Operator fuming over £1,351 tyre bill A BILL OF £1,351
Page 8
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for three tyres has left a Worcestershire operator fuming at breakdown firm ATS Euromaster.
Neil James. MD of Hunts of Redditch, says driver Dave Shearsby was driving in Italy when his truck became stuck on a gravel driveway. He stripped the tread from four tyres trying to free the vehicle and called out ATS Euromaster to fit three new tyres and the spare.
Three weeks later James received an invoice for £1,351.19 (ex-VAT). asked my local ATS garage over here how much it would cost and they told me £272 per tyre (ex-VAT) plus a £78 weekend call-out charge, says James. "I couldn't believe that it was so much more in Italy but I had no choice because I needed to get the truck back on the road."
ATS says that account customers who travel abroad usually have an agreed standard rate if they need to use the company's international breakdown service.
The company advises all opera tors planning to travel to the Continent to contact it and set up such an agreement in advance.
"In this case, however, no such agreement was in place," a spokesman explains."Therefore he would have been charged the retail price of the tyre, plus a breakdown fee and a mileage charge -In this particular breakdown the litter had to make a round trip of 240km from France to the location in Italy because ATS currently has no presence in Italy,he explains.