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After working on cars professionally for 18 years in UK/Ireland and coming here in January I've noticed something. I haven't met anyone here yet who does their own repairs. Everyone seems to go to a garage for the smallest problems. In my country, there is a big culture of DIY and fixing your own cars, in fact, that's how I actually got started out in my job, I repaired my own cars when I was younger and it went from there. So does anyone on this forum work on/repair their own cars? I realise with Dubai being a city, some people don't have the space to do their own work. Are there community garages where you can hire a vehicle lift and tools for a few hours and have an expert for advice on hand so you can work on your own car?

These days you don't even need a scan tool, you just need a laptop and a lead which you can probably pick up for 50 Dirhams, maybe less, from one of the internet sites. There are loads of software available to buy cheap or rip from the torrent sites for free depending on what car you have, i.e. Consult 3 for Nissan, VCDS for VW/Audi vehicles, Planet for Peugeot vehicles, Google will tell you what the specific software for your vehicle is. Or, you can just get a piece of software like Delphi Diagnostics which is pretty comprehensive and will cover most vehicles. Then it's just a matter of installing the software and connecting your laptop to your car viz the OBD port and playing around with the software until you learn how it works. Don't worry, you can't break your car by reading/erasing fault codes but if your software has any programming options, I would recommend staying away from them until you learn properly how engine management systems work and how your software relates to them.

The difference in the quote and actual price to repair LOL! It would surprise you how many mechanics break things when they're working on your car. The part is usually replaced/repaired and the customer never finds out. I see it all the time. The way some of them treat your car on a test drive. I spent a while in a garage here in Dubai but I wasn't happy with a lot of things so I left. The way the workshop foreman and business owner drove customers cars was shocking. Just because it's a fast car doesn't mean you're supposed to rag it to the edge. Drive it, check the fault, look out for any other possible faults, that's it. There was at least one accident with a customers car when I was there. I don't know how many times it happened before. Mechanics will rarely tell you that they can't fix your car. Some of them will keep it for weeks and weeks trying different things and hoping they can diagnose the problem. I know of one garage here that has had a customers 4x4 for over 6 months. I figured out what the problem was pretty quickly as I'd seen it before but hey, I don't work there and they didn't pay me or ask for my opinion. They won't tell you that they used cheap, Chinese pattern parts on your car and charged you the same price as the genuine article. Before you go into a garage, tell them to keep the box/bag the parts came in and give it to you when you collect your car. Especially things like brake parts and bushings which tend to wear out faster if they're cheap and nasty. Also ask them to keep for you the old parts which came off your car. I've seen mechanics saying they changed parts which they didn't, doing things like wiping the outside of an oil filter clean and telling the customer they changed it. I actually saw one garage in the UK getting caught out, the customer marked the old oil filter with a sharpie before he left the car in for a service. The garage billed him for an oil and filter change. When the customer came to collect the car, he pointed out to the foreman where he had marked the old oil filter. The oil had been changed but the filter hadn't. There were some very red faces in the garage that morning! But in me saying things like this, please don't think all mechanics are crooks or they don't know what they're doing, this isn't true. There are plenty of decent, honest, hard-working people out there who just want to fix your car without ripping you off. For me, nothing gives me greater satisfaction than getting the job done, getting it done well and seeing the customer happy. A smile is worth a thousand Dirhams.

Unfortunately, once a fine is established, you would need to go to a court to reverse it with proof. If you are able to manage the proof and also win the case you will be lucky. However do expect to have to go to court for at least 2 or 3 visits in a couple of months. That would mean at least 2 or 3 half day sessions. If you are working then it means lost time and money. Finally if you do win the case, you fine will probably be reversed...but you would have to pay a courtesy fees of about AED 300.... Summing all this up, I would generally think paying the fine is cheaper.......but at the end of the day, isn't it more about principles... All the best.