Car Repairs

Lionheart

The air conditioning in my car stopped functioning recently and I took it to a main dealer for repair. It transpired that a high pressure pipe ,which had developed a leak, had to be replaced and the refrigerant replaced..


The Breakdown of the repair bill was.

Cost to diagnose leak €56 - (labour mainly)
Cost of the pipe €145.
Cost to check pipe after fitting €56
Cost of refrigerant €75

All plus 21% VAT.

Total €401.

The cost seems exhorbitant to me.

Has anyone any experience of the cost of getting air conditioning repaired or know what this should really cost?

Interceptor

Call any of the companies in the Golden pages under Car Air Conditioning and describe the fault to them. You will know very quickly what it should have cost. The same job in my Honda Prelude cost €120 in total including the hose for €25 - a guy in a van came to my work and did it in the car park. It does however sound typical for a main dealer - who else would be so blatant as to charge an hours labour for 'Cost to check pipe after fitting '. Main dealers are great if you are maintaining a service record, your car is within its guarantee period or you can't get anyone else to work on your car, but they often sub-contract jobs they don't specialise in and charge a handling fee. Are you glad to have it back now that it is fixed?

'ceptr.

Lionheart

Tnx Interceptor. I've done a bit of checking around and it seems I'm being ripped off bigtime. I was quoted €145 incl vat plus the cost of the pipe. I don't know what the true cost of the pipe should be but judging by the rest of the bill I have no doubt it is far less than the amount charged.

It drives me mad. Oh btw I'm glad to have the aircon fixed but the price has soured it bigtime.

Borzoi

Stupid question: but how can they know the price of the relevant replacement part if they don't know where the leak is?

BTW refrigerant, R134a for most cars is about €4-5 per kg, the charge for a car system is about 2kg

Trust me I'm a member of the Institute of Refrigeration:D

Lionheart

Thansk Borzoi, I was told that the pipe was a high pressure flexible hose with an aluminium piece at one end. Total length about 3.5 feet.

The car took 1kg of refrigerant and that cost €75 plus vat.

What you sat, Borzoi is very interesting. Should I get the name of the refrigerant used?

jayok

Sorry to hear about what seems to be a rip off.

Out of curiosity, does anyone kno if the refrigerant needs to be replaced at intervals (e.g. every three years) or just if it leaks?

Ta!