Hi
I'm not nearly as experienced as the other guys here, but my two pennorth........
As a newbie, I wouldn't expect you to come here offering advice to others - after all, you're a newbie! That's what it means, so don't feel guilty. If you continue to use the forum, there WILL be times in the future when you can offer advice - e.g. find a good local garage that treats you well, and maintain a good relationship with them. Oh yeah, you've contributed that already ...... which brings me to my 2nd point, which is that in my humble opinion (IMHO) I would try to be very diplomatic about querying your garage's charges. You don't want to ruin a relationship and end up having to rely on your Vaux dealer for evermore over the sake of £70. Your garage may well rely on a bit of mark-up to keep their labour charges down - no-one likes being ripped off, but we've all got to make a living.
If you're not convinced that the ign coil does need doing, you may be able to say to them - pl. just do the sensor first, and we'll see if that cures it. If not, can I come back later in the week do get the coil sorted out. Also, if the garage ISN'T making money from marking up parts, they might be quite happy for you to provide the part yourself.
Last point - assuming you are in a position to afford the repairs, consider the cost of those repairs a) against what you paid for the car when you bought it and b) divide it by the number of months that you've owned the car trouble free up to now - it won't feel so bad if you do that. Hope you'll soon be back to enjoying the comfort and security that you're used to.
will do both.
) which had a milky deposit on the filler cap. I wiped it while ou ton the test drive, and checked again a mile later, back at the garage - slight milky dep. again. Car had done 16k miles (and that looked genuine by both the serv. hist. and the condition of the steering wheel/interior etc).