Dealership diagnostic charges

Car_Complaints

michboo wrote: »

Firstly, it seems very expensive to me to be paying this just for diagnostics, without even fixing the flipping thing. Does this seem right to everyone?

What if you had a slight water leak in the house, would a plumber charge you for pulling up all the floorboards to find a small hole in a pipe, would an electrician charge you for trying to find a fault with your house wiring, or would they do it FOC, you have took your car to get repaired, these people do not work for free.

People think that cars are something you can just plug a fault reader in and it tells you the fault fix it and hey presto all working again.

Electrical systems in cars are complex things.

michboo wrote: »

If not, what can I do about it? as we can't afford to have it towed elsewhere

Not much you can do, either leave it with them or take it to an independent, who may also end up scratching his head

spacey2012 wrote: »

A mechanic would have been better.

Do you mean "KerbSide Motors Mechanic" if so be very careful with newer cars taking it to an old school mechanic.

Technicians at main dealers are targeted to go on training courses each year to stay in touch with the advances in technology.

They also have to follow a procedure set out by the manufacturer to check and eliminate faults, the manufacturer also has the ability to connect to your car from the factory, believe me I have seen it many times where even the top gurus get stuck.

WHY!!!, like mentioned cars are complex and without going into and explaining CAN and duty cycles etc etc then its hard for the consumer to understand a fault, the CAN lines can throw up head scratching faults that do not relate to the trouble codes the car is showing, then to find its a short in two wires that is tucked away can take sometime to find.

Taking it to an old school mechanic who a: doesnt understand CANBus or b:how to test it could cause more costs and problems, I am not tarring them all with the same brush, there are some good mechanics out their, its finding the cheap one who can diagnose a fault in 10 minutes that you run into a problem.

spacey2012 wrote: »

main dealers are often plug and go technicians and they just keep fitting new parts until it will start.
Anything outside this and they are often stumped.

Not true Im afraid, The Master Techs in dealer networks are probably some of the best in the country, I have met such boffins who blow you away with their knowledge of vehicle faults and fault finding

spacey2012 wrote: »

If it is a diesel, it will may need fuel filter input disconnecting, a hand primer pump put in line and pumped whilst someone cranks the engine, then taken out of line and put after the filter and repeat and it should start.

Its a 2007 Corsa not a 1969 Land Rover

Also OP if and when they do find the fault and give you a price for the parts required then ask them to take the hit on some of their diagnosis.

Dare I say it but this is where sometimes a service plan with a Franchised Dealer comes into its own, you get free diagnosis on a lot of these plans so you could of just left the car with them and not worry if it takes 1 or 100 hours to find the fault.

nash1977

To keep costs down, join the vauxhall masterfit service club (free) online and you will get a 25% discount and a £25 voucher. You just need to quote your number they send in the email and print the voucher, you do not need to wait for the card to arrive in the post. Make sure you let them know your service club number as soon as possible.

captainawsome

Car_Complaints wrote: »

What if you had a slight water leak in the house, would a plumber charge you for pulling up all the floorboards to find a small hole in a pipe, would an electrician charge you for trying to find a fault with your house wiring, or would they do it FOC, you have took your car to get repaired, these people do not work for free.

People think that cars are something you can just plug a fault reader in and it tells you the fault fix it and hey presto all working again.

Electrical systems in cars are complex things.




Not much you can do, either leave it with them or take it to an independent, who may also end up scratching his head




Do you mean "KerbSide Motors Mechanic" if so be very careful with newer cars taking it to an old school mechanic.

Technicians at main dealers are targeted to go on training courses each year to stay in touch with the advances in technology.

They also have to follow a procedure set out by the manufacturer to check and eliminate faults, the manufacturer also has the ability to connect to your car from the factory, believe me I have seen it many times where even the top gurus get stuck.

WHY!!!, like mentioned cars are complex and without going into and explaining CAN and duty cycles etc etc then its hard for the consumer to understand a fault, the CAN lines can throw up head scratching faults that do not relate to the trouble codes the car is showing, then to find its a short in two wires that is tucked away can take sometime to find.

Taking it to an old school mechanic who a: doesnt understand CANBus or b:how to test it could cause more costs and problems, I am not tarring them all with the same brush, there are some good mechanics out their, its finding the cheap one who can diagnose a fault in 10 minutes that you run into a problem.



Not true Im afraid, The Master Techs in dealer networks are probably some of the best in the country, I have met such boffins who blow you away with their knowledge of vehicle faults and fault finding



Its a 2007 Corsa not a 1969 Land Rover

Also OP if and when they do find the fault and give you a price for the parts required then ask them to take the hit on some of their diagnosis.

Dare I say it but this is where sometimes a service plan with a Franchised Dealer comes into its own, you get free diagnosis on a lot of these plans so you could of just left the car with them and not worry if it takes 1 or 100 hours to find the fault.

Couldn't have put it better myself. Only trouble is explaining that to some people is like pushing rope. Let them carry on taking cars to back street service centres for in depth diagnosis jobs, they all end up at the dealer anyway just with another bill on top of the whole job. After all the dealer has a 'magic' computer that instantly knows every fault that's ever occurred with the car and how to fix it. And that fails they can just fit parts until the faults gone ......

AdrianC

michboo wrote: »

We had the car towed to the vauxhall dealership on Friday. Well today (Tuesday) they have finally looked at the car and run some diagnostic tests, however they haven't found the problem, but this already cost us £87 and they are going to complete some more tests tomorrow for another £87 per hour...

So they've stored your non-running car over the weekend, manhandled it into the workshop, connected it to the diagnostic equipment, run through the various procedures - and found nothing obviously amiss. They've then gone through various other checks, quite possibly involving some dismantling, and still found nothing amiss. They've then manhandled the still non-running car back out of the workshop into their yard again.

And you begrudge them their published price of one hour's labour for that?

If we need to get the car computer fixed or replaced, does anyone know how much this might cost?

Not even the people who've been working on the car know what the cause of the problem is, so you're basically asking us for psychic abilities... and I charge a LOT more than £87/hour for those...

Retrogamer

On the older Corsa models if the crankshaft sensor became faulty (or the wiring going to it) it wouldn't start, but it wouldn't throw up any codes for the ECU to store either. Not sure if the more modern ones have the same issue.

fred7777

Car_Complaints wrote: »

What if you had a slight water leak in the house, would a plumber charge you for pulling up all the floorboards to find a small hole in a pipe

OK look at it another way what if you had a slight leak a plumber came, spent the day pulling up floor boards and failed to fix the leak.
After getting them in to fix the leak would you be happy paying them for not fixing the leak?

The problem with the OPs situation is that the final bill hasn't been presented yet and the garage hasn't finished.

If they fix it and it required two sets of diagnostics then Ok, that was work which was required and should be paid for. But if like some posts on here in the past they ran two sets of diagnostics and couldn't fix the car I'd argue that as the deal was the OP would pay the garage to fix the car then the OP shouldn't have to pay.

Car_Complaints

Without any disrepsect to any plumber, lifting up a few floorboards to find a leak is not rocket science, they only have a select number of pipes to target it certainly is not as complex as some of the electrical systems on a vehicle. Like mentioned just because a P code by OBD has been pulled up and it points for arguments sake to a sensor, this does not mean the particular sensor is at fault,

In other words its a little like a plumber seeing their is a hot water coming from the leak but the cold water pipe is split...How does that happen then...I know this is impossible but this is the kind of trick the electrics in cars can play on you,

Its another debate if the Garage are carrying out endless diagnosis and "Replacing to Repair" on a grand scale, which I feel is unjustified and wrong, even though a hell of alot of garages do it

If you think this is the case, and to be honest in all cases you should tell the garage to save all old parts and have them independently checked, if their is no fault then you may have something to claim against, but its weighing up the extra costs this would bring, and the heartache of trying to get £100 back from "Replace to Repair" sensor that was not faulty but the wiring to it was.