About Andy

Andy Howard, mobile mechanic

The name is Andrew Howard, though nearly everyone ends up calling him Andy, and the business is exactly what it says: a mobile mechanic who comes to you. There is no forecourt and no reception desk. There is a van with the tools in it, a phone number that he answers himself, and a working day that runs from eight until five, Monday to Friday, spent on other people's driveways and in other people's work car parks in and around Tunbridge Wells. Southborough, Pembury, Tonbridge, Rusthall, Langton Green, High Brooms, Groombridge, Frant, Speldhurst, Bidborough: if you live or work in one of those you are inside the ring, and if you are a mile or two outside it he will usually still come. The jobs are the everyday ones a car needs to stay on the road, servicing and brakes and batteries and the fault behind a warning light, plus MOTs booked and handled with collection and delivery if you want it, and recovery when something has stopped you where you stand. What his customers write about afterwards is not the list of jobs. It is that he turned up when he said he would, that he photographed the work and sent the pictures, that he offered the lowest-cost option that would do the job, and that when a car had a problem he could not fix on the day he said so plainly and did not start something he could not finish.

In his words

From a job video he posted: a car in for a look that had passed its MOT not long before. His comment, word for word: "If it was me I would of failed it". That is the standard: what the paperwork says and what the car is like underneath are not always the same thing, and he will tell you which it is.

The way he does a job

He photographs the workOld parts and new, the state of things before and after. You get the pictures. One customer used them in a dispute with the dealer who had sold them the car.
He tells you straightIf a job is not worth doing on a car of that age and value, he says so. If it needs a ramp and a garage, he says that too, before he starts.
The cheap fix firstWhere there is a cheaper way to get you back on the road safely, that is the one he offers first. The expensive option is still there if you want it.
He answers his own phone07399 584225 rings a mechanic, not a booking line. Between 8 and 5 on a weekday you get Andy, or a call straight back when his hands are clean.