Main dealer labour charges

SeaFields

Hi all,

Question for ye - did ye ever here something as ludicrous as this.

Girlfriend had problem with a car. She was driving home from work when the car (02 VW polo) died and rolled to a halt. Anyway towed to the local mechanic who couldn't find the problem, so sent on to an auto electrician who couldn't find the problem either. The dreaded main dealer was the next step who had the car fix in a few hours. There was a wire into the ECU worn or loose which needed to be replaced apparently. Nothing to get worried about you would think and has been on the road now for a few weeks.

Heres the thing... yesterday she got the bill!!!

Parts - 2 x €2.50 wires = €5
Labour - €470 ex vat,

yes... you read right

Four hundred and seventy euro

As ye can imagine she is like a demon. :mad:

Drummerboy08

Say that garages labour rate is 75 quid an hour. Do you mean to tell me it took 6.25 hours to replace two wires? I'd be disputing that, although i dont think there is much you can do at this point - the garage have carried out the work with your (or your girlfriends consent).

This is a good example of why you should always agree a price beforehand.

No slight meant to you OP, you have my sympathies.

Just as an afterthought - and i dont mean to go off topic here, but rather to confirm that certain main dealers do chance their arms - I priced up a window regulator today for my Focus in a Ford dealer in Dublin. He quoted me 330 euro for the part. I got a quote from a supplier in the UK of 140 euro, delivered to my desk in work. Mental eh?

SeaFields

It was out of her hands as the car had been sent there by the auto electrician and as i said he got the car form the local mechanic. He has been doing services for her and her parents for years. He rang them too and gave them an ear full. She had forgotten about it too for awhile which made the shock of the bill twice as bad.

She actually has been thinking of changing the car recently - before the breakdown actually and had looked at several at this dealer.

Guess where she won't be going now...:)

BostonB

And they wonder why the car business is in tatters.

colm_mcm

with respect, if an auto electrician of mechanic couldn't find the fault, it can't have been straight forward. I presume there were a lot of dead ends and wrong turns before the fault was found.

Drummerboy08

colm_mcm wrote: »

with respect, if an auto electrician of mechanic couldn't find the fault, it can't have been straight forward. I presume there were a lot of dead ends and wrong turns before the fault was found.

Thats true, but i would have liked to have seen more transparancy with this incident.
Chances are the OP wouldnt mind paying the money to get the work done - if he/she knew exactly what they were paying for, and how much.
The garage should have kept them up to speed - "we dont know what the problem is yet, we have spent x amount of time looking for it".
Lack of communication here caused a big problem.

BostonB

A lot of mechanics don't touch electrics/electronics. Auto electrians vary a lot. Some would struggle to change a light bulb. Some are excellent.

BostonB

For €470 I think they could have taken the financial hit of a phone call to get approval. That they didn't says it all tbh.

colm_mcm

Definately lack of communication,

Even so, the alternative:

2.pm "Hello, we still haven't found the fault, will we go for another hour?"
3.pm "Hello, we still haven't found the fault, will we go for another hour?"
4.pm"Hello, we still haven't found the fault, will we go for another hour?"

Kristopherus

Refuse to pay.And tell them that. When next statement arrives, ask for a full itemised invoice, which you/she should have got anyway. Dispute the labour charges, and if they dont budge, tell them you/she is getting on to Joe Duffy, and will name them on that. That should bring them to their senses. Rotten robbing money-grabbers :mad:

Drummerboy08

colm_mcm wrote: »

Definately lack of communication,

Even so, the alternative:

2.pm "Hello, we still haven't found the fault, will we go for another hour?"
3.pm "Hello, we still haven't found the fault, will we go for another hour?"
4.pm"Hello, we still haven't found the fault, will we go for another hour?"

Exactly. Thats the right way to do it. It causes no problems, arguments, and the customer knows exactly what is going on.

Drummerboy08

Kristopherus wrote: »

Refuse to pay.And tell them that. When next statement arrives, ask for a full itemised invoice, which you/she should have got anyway. Dispute the labour charges, and if they dont budge, tell them you/she is getting on to Joe Duffy, and will name them on that. That should bring them to their senses. Rotten robbing money-grabbers :mad:

Most main dealers already have a bad name, or bad reputation. Look at any thread on here, and that will confirm it.
Joe Duffy wont be good for anything except getting a whole heap of oul ones on complaining about the time they got their Micra's serviced.

I wouldnt recommend refusing to pay it, that can cause unpleasant things to happen. Debt collectors, solicitors letters, etc. Instead i would try to come to an agreement between you, your mechanic, the auto electrician, and the main dealer.

Tails142

In fairness the likes of advanced pitstop charge 70 an hour, dealers are more like 100 to 120 an hour, prestige brands you can expect 140-150 an hour.

Given that, I dont think approx 4 hours labour is inappropriate, I mean two people saw it previously and couldnt find the fault, so having someone trying to diagnose the fault for a couple of hours isnt unimaginable, plus another hour or two to fix it. You can also presume that they possibly tried swapping parts in and out to try and find if one was acting faulty, arent you lucky they didnt leave the new parts in and charge you for them?

Some of those looms are in unbelievably hard places to get at which involve stripping out parts to get access too.

Either way complain if you like, you'll probably get a good will discount.

reverandkenjami

Drummerboy08 wrote: »

Do you mean to tell me it took 6.25 hours to replace two wires?

I reckon most of the time was spent trying to find the fault rather than replacing the wires!!

Fishtits

Anyone involved in the technical side of things will understand this. It is quite possible to spend at least a full day tracking down a wiring fault, resolution of the fault itself may involve replacing a cheap part.

Electrical diagnosis is a logical, step by step process and is VERY time consuming, hence the reason why most guys refuse these jobs.

I tell my customers to leave the vehicle with me over a week or so, I'll do it during 30 mins slack time here and there to keep the cost down, if they want it done pronto and are not prepared to pay the hourly rate - I pass on it.

BostonB

do you surprise them with a 500 bill?

L-M

Friend of mine got a bill of 180 odd euro to change a sump and nut and washer.

The bill read something like:
Sump nut : €1.29
Washer: €0.24
Labour: €180

Well, part of that labour was putting it on the diagnostics, which IIRC has a set price just to be plugged in, and the rest diagnosing the fault.

You never told us how much she wastedspent on the two lads who couldn't find the fault in the first place? Or did they do it as a favour?

I feel for you though, the last thing you want in these times is a bill of that size. Not fun I can imagine.

Fishtits

BostonB wrote: »

do you surprise them with a 500 bill?

No, and I take your point.

I tend to look at how much solving the problem is worth, ie do they perceive it as being a small problem thus cheap to solve? If its a "simple" problem like X doesn't work then I will definitely not shunt other jobs to sort it, so the customer waits. If its a major (time issue) problem then it gets full attention at the relevant rate. This is discussed openly with the customer and agreed in advance. In my experience, most are happy to wait. Suits me too.

In general, anyone that ends up with me has been sent by a local mechanic, so they tend to be patient.

Topper Harley

I'm a member with the AA and you might think that it's a rip off but in a situation like this it's perfect. They come out to you spend as long as is needed finding the problem, fix it if they can, or tell what needs to be done, tow it to a garage for you. I've had to call them out four times in the last year and know from this experience that they'll spend hours looking for the problem if they have to.

I have a new car now so hopefully that trend will stop. But at the end of the day, your garage can't charge you for spending hours looking for something if someone can point it out to them.

colm_mcm

The AA wouldn't have been any good in this case. apart from towing it to the garage.

Hellrazer

Heres an example of a problem we had here not so long ago.

Car drives in with an electrical fault after being in an auto electricians for a week and he couldnt find the fault.

Our mechanic spends 3 full days @ 95 per hour trying to find the fault with half the car stripped out on the workshop floor.Diagnostic just showed up a short in the main loom.

Turns out the fault was something similar to the OPs.2 wires going into the ecu were corroded.

Now going into the ecu theres a block connector with 80+ wires all smaller than a phone wire so it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Volvo supply the tiny terminals for repairing these wires @ 36 cent each but the labour for this job was 3 days @ 750 or so euros per day.

The customer and the service manager came to an agreement at something like 400 euros labour.

Try ring the dealer and see if you can come to some sort of agreement with the labour price.Theyre not all rip off merchants and most will do something fo you.

Owen

Hellrazer wrote: »

Try ring the dealer and see if you can come to some sort of agreement with the labour price.Theyre not all rip off merchants and most will do something fo you.

+1. The person on the service desk probably doesn't have the authority, or knowledge that it's possible to reduce the price. The print the bill, and that's that.

Generally, if you have a pleasant, but firm conversation with the service manager, you will be able to come to some sort of amicable arrangement.

SeaFields

Thanks for all the replies lads. What she is going to do is ring the dealer and, as somebody said, have a friendly but firm chat with them. She can explain how her parents always change their car with the particular dealer and how her own car came from them too. Its a rather rural area so a bad name going around may not be exactly what they want.


I suppose she doesn't really have a right to demand the price be reduced although it is still worth trying to get the dealer to use their heads as regards customer service.

We live in hope!:D

-Chris-

That'd be my tactic too - if you're polite, people sympathise with you. If you lay down the law, they stonewall you.

Let us know how she gets on!

beam99

I will totally argee with HELLRAZER on that on, electric problem's are the hardest to solve when the Diagnostic does not trigger a fault code.
Then you have to go through each wire going from the ecu to all the electric compounts, checking for breaks in wires, loose connections in block connectors, bad connections etc, all that takes time, I've came across loads of different faults over the years. Cups of coffee being spilt on the dash and running down into electric compounts. ( Maybe not by you, but the previous owner.) Lads fitting shelves into the back of vans and drilling tru wiring looms, causing a short circuit, Windscreens not fitted properly and water getting into ECU. Lads not refitting wiring looms back into place when gearboxs or clutchs are done and then through time there is a strain on the wires and they break. Problems like theses take time to fix and you need the information to back you up when trying to find them.