Kwik Fit Warning -- wanted £405 for £30 repair

londonTiger

oh right, i was assuming it would be a more conventional brand like vw, ford, pug etc.

BMW, audi, merc expect a bit of a brand premium. The funny thing is a lot of parts between vw and audi are common. Take your vw to an audi dealership for cambelt and they'll charge you £440. Take the same car to vw dealership and it will cost £350.

Same is probably true for parts.

KwikStitch

From gov.uk site: In 2010, the average mileage for a privately owned car was 7,910 miles.

So the average person with a privately owned car (as opposed to a company car) would get a minimum of 15 months with the existing pads.

My annual mileage is under 10,000 and so the pads will last another year at the very minimum (estimated 10,000 to 18.000 miles left in them). Plus the discs are fine and do not need replacing.

Whichever way you try to dice it up, Kwik Fit don't look good. They attempted to charge for parts and labour that were not needed.

ilikewatch

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

no one should be able to take more than 20 minutes a side for discs and pads in a fully equipped workshop. I can do a set in the works car park in under an hour including properly cleaning mating faces, sliders, etc.

Yes, but think of all the other things that a Kwik Fit fitter has to do that you don't have to:

• Sucking your teeth when looking at any component on the car
• Spraying WD40 on the shocks to simulate leaks
• Inventing spurious reasons to rebalance the wheels that were only done a few weeks before
• Texting your mates to try and flog a set of tyres with 4mm of tread left that you've just advised a customer to change
• Extolling the virtues of tracking/laser alignment...

chrisw

The BMW 3 series tells you how many miles are left on the pads depending on how you drive. How many miles does that say is left?

londonTiger

chrisw wrote: »

The BMW 3 series tells you how many miles are left on the pads depending on how you drive. How many miles does that say is left?

it would be a rough estimate at best and would estimate in favour of it wearing out to cover their backs.

The best guide in the squealing mechanism where the pads start making a high pitched noise when it's just 4-5mm left but not all pads have them - often not put on by garages and thrown away.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

londonTiger wrote: »

it would be a rough estimate at best and would estimate in favour of it wearing out to cover their backs.

The best guide in the squealing mechanism where the pads start making a high pitched noise when it's just 4-5mm left but not all pads have them - often not put on by garages and thrown away.

anti squeal pad on the back of the pads cant be thrown away its part of the pad and most common in all brand pads, some brand cars have a shim that sits inbetween pad and piston caliper to prevent movement and squeal these are not part of buying the pads as a pack and is infact a part of a pad fitting kit that includes sliders and pins rubbers etc.

goonarmy

Kwikfit are tyre fitters. Why expect anything more?

BeenThroughItAll

atrixblue.-MFR-. wrote: »

anti squeal pad on the back of the pads cant be thrown away its part of the pad and most common in all brand pads, some brand cars have a shim that sits inbetween pad and piston caliper to prevent movement and squeal these are not part of buying the pads as a pack and is infact a part of a pad fitting kit that includes sliders and pins rubbers etc.

I believe LT was referring to the fact that some pads have an ingredient added/built in strip which reaches the applied surface at a certain wear level and causes a deliberate squeal upon braking.


Normally ignored by drivers anyway and BMW long since began fitting electronic pad wear indicators.


Some confusion in the post though - it's the wear indicators which are often not fitted - they're a one-shot device which once tripped can't be reset on most BMWs. A small wire loop is broken by wear and the sensor head must then be replaced. Most smaller garages don't bother and just short the wires to the wear sensor.


Squeal-makers (on BMWs at least) are not a removable 'part', they're built into the pad material.

BeenThroughItAll

goonarmy wrote: »

Kwikfit are tyre fitters. Why expect anything more?

I'd hesitate to call them even that. Mostly they're just con-artists.

Steve059

goonarmy wrote: »

Kwikfit are tyre fitters. Why expect anything more?

I wouldn't trust them to do that right.