dealer charging £82 to confirm fault and find bulletin that explains it

tir21

hi, my dashboard has been creacking and creaking for ages. phoned dealer and said i wanted it fixing and was told to bring it in last friday.

when i collected it at 5 i was told they could confirm cracking was coming from dashboard and there was a bulletin that explained how to fix it. that cost 82 pound. the cost to fix it would be another 100.

i had asumed when i took it in that they would fix it, not charge me that much just to diagnose it. at no point did they give me any idea how much it would cost. they charge 69 plus vat per by hour but did not tell me that.

they booked an hour to drive the car a mile or so and find the fault on a bulletin.

is there any point in challenging this cost

thanks

forgotmyname

If its not under a warranty from them then of course its going to cost.

How much is something you have to query 1st not after.

Is it a warranty issue though?

tir21

forgot

thanks. knew it would cost but not really querying the cost, rather the amount of time for the work carried out. i could understand if they had actually carried out some work on the dash

also i indicated i was bringing it in to be fixed. wasnt it incumbent on then to say they would only be investigating

Joe_Horner

How old is the car, what is the actual fault, and by "dealer" do you mean a franchised dealer for that make?

If there's a manufacturer's bulletin regarding the problem then that suggests it's likely to be a manufacturing fault. It certainly shows that it's a common fault! That doesn't help much if it's an older car, but it gives a bit of leverage if it's fairly new.

From the point of view of paying to diagnose, there's nothing inherently wrong with that - you're paying for their time, which they tend to bill in units of either 1/2 or 1 hour. That's pretty accepted practice, and makes sense for everyone because if they had to account for time to the nearest minute the admin involved woyld end up costing everyone more anyway.

That said, main dealers are supposed to familiarise themselves with the content of manufacturer's bulletins so, if your fault has been covered by one, it would be reasonable for the dealer to have known that as soon as you turned up. That might be worth raising with them and, if they don't give a little, approaching the manufacturer as a complaint about service standards.

Again, you're more likely to get a good result if the car's fairly new, especially if you bought from the dealer network.

tir21

Joe_Horner wrote: »

How old is the car, what is the actual fault, and by "dealer" do you mean a franchised dealer for that make?

If there's a manufacturer's bulletin regarding the problem then that suggests it's likely to be a manufacturing fault. It certainly shows that it's a common fault! That doesn't help much if it's an older car, but it gives a bit of leverage if it's fairly new.

From the point of view of paying to diagnose, there's nothing inherently wrong with that - you're paying for their time, which they tend to bill in units of either 1/2 or 1 hour. That's pretty accepted practice, and makes sense for everyone because if they had to account for time to the nearest minute the admin involved woyld end up costing everyone more anyway.

That said, main dealers are supposed to familiarise themselves with the content of manufacturer's bulletins so, if your fault has been covered by one, it would be reasonable for the dealer to have known that as soon as you turned up. That might be worth raising with them and, if they don't give a little, approaching the manufacturer as a complaint about service standards.

Again, you're more likely to get a good result if the car's fairly new, especially if you bought from the dealer network.

thanks joe. yes it is. its a frannchised dealer and i bought the car from that network of dealer 5 years ago. it was 3 years old when i bought it

id be happy with 1/2 hour but not one hour, if it were not for the fact i had been led to believe i was taking it in to be diagnosed rather that fixed

kerby_crawler

Assuming that you have already paid for the diagnosis, there is probably not much point in challenging the bill.

But you are probably entitled to some kind of printed version of the diagnosis so that you can take it to another garage.

Joe_Horner

tir21 wrote: »

thanks joe. yes it is. its a frannchised dealer and i bought the car from that network of dealer 5 years ago. it was 3 years old when i bought it

Definitely worth querying with the manufacturer why their franchised dealer needed an hour to diagnose something that there was a service bulletin about, on a car they've presumably been dealing with from new.

Doesn't paint a very good picture of the dealer's competence to take that long to identify a known fault!

smala01

A little off topic - Skurry`s in Swindon wanted to charge me £85 to confirm that my HORN did not work in order for a warranty claim to be processed.

I have never returned.

tir21

great news. i complained and they said as a gesture of good will they will fix it and only charge for the parts but not the 1/2 hour labour it should take

i will be able to buy a xmas present now for the gf

forgotmyname

Unless the part is £5000. But they can fit it whilst you wait.

Or its a big tube of goop. They inject into all the gaps which seals it all up.

There are some very crafty bodges with these service bulletins.

colino

Plenty of cars have issues like this from the humble to the grand, but I've never heard of any garage wanting the customer to subsidise their education like this. If they don't keep up to date with their marque, take it someone who cares.