Paying for diagnostic fee twice

harveybobbles

OP are you going to answer the Q? what car is it and what were the symptoms?

justjohn

I always think its amazing you can take a car to a garage or even an authorized dealer, they can then charge you for not fixing it or for guess work. only to be returned again for the same fault...and repaired again and charged.....and again in some cases lol


Great industry for trainee's. lol

kaya

I think its hilarious that nobody has the ability to diagnose a simple fault without plugging the car into a diagnostic machine now. My mums golf has a split turbo boost hose, I know 100% this is the fault but I'm disabled and unable to repair it myself for her so far four different people have failed to diagnose the fault from the symptoms and all have told her it needs plugging Into a diagnostic machine despite being told I have already plugged the ecu in and there are no fault codes logged on it. I know for a fact that plugging it in will show no faults codes logged or pending and will be no use for diagnosing the fault whatsoever but they all want their £50 from her for doing nothing claiming that their diagnostic machine is better than mine and will show the fault (I used to build ecu's for race cars so I know what I'm talking about) . All the repairers have been told that if the jack the car up they will find a split hose but nobody is interested ! We even phoned city gate VW and they said they may have to remove the engine !!!

Nodding_Donkey

Could you not get a relative or friend that's into cars to fix it with you supervising?

Avoriaz

£50 is outrageous for something that doesn't take very long, even taking into account the cost of the machine and software.

I use a small local independent garage in Chichester to service my now 8 year old Golf.

They don't charge for a diagnostic check if it comes up blank as I discovered when I had an intermittent hesitancy problem. Nothing came up on the diagnostic machine and they wouldn't charge me for their 15 minutes work.

They also charge far less than the local VW garage for a service and appear to do at least as good a job.

I was in Halfords last year taking advantage of their cheap MOT when I overheard a woman being advised that she needed a diagnostic check at a cost of £55. I followed her out to her car and told her about that local garage just down the road so she went there instead.

As it happened my car failed the MOT on slits in two tyres so I went to the garage myself to get them to fit new tyres.

The woman was just leaving, very happy with the inexpensive service she had just received from them. They had diagnosed and fixed the problem for about £30.

keith1950

Most dealers charge £45-£50 per 30 mins of diagnosis.

If the initial 30 mins investigation doesn't show up anything then the customer is asked whether or not they want to pay for a further 30 mins.

Even if nothing shows up the time taken has to be accounted for and therefore charged for.

If the subsequent repair is carried out at the same garage the fee is usually factored into the total cost.

Time is money !!

kaya

It's takes less than 5 mins to plug my code reader into a car and check for faults , not 30mins or an Hour!! My code reader cost me about £50 to buy and does exactly the same job as and manufacturers "special" one, all it's does is download and decode any faults showing on the ecu . The ecu faults are just data from sensors on the vehicle which are not getting the reading they should . Plugging a diagnostic machine in for more than 5 mins is pure profiteering as the fault codes stored or pending will say exactly the same after an hour or 5 mins and garages/dealers play on people's lack of knowledge .if I plug my mums golf in today it will register no faults just like it did 3 days ago but the fault will still be there and unfortunately I'm off to Scotland tomorrow so can't supervise anyone else to do the job besides which mention a jack, axle stands and crawling about under a car to most folk and they run a mile nowadays

colino

I think a few readers are wrongly assuming the cars diagnosis was by a code reader. It wasn't, the OP has already said the diagnostic was a tech test driving the car. I realise that a lot of bigger dealers charge a minimum one hours labour for diagnostics (either electronic or by skill) but charging you £90 for it is just a way of subsidising your "warranty" repair.
Your choice, but I wouldn't be darkening their service bay doors again.

Westmead_Fan

kaya wrote: »

It's takes less than 5 mins to plug my code reader into a car and check for faults , not 30mins or an Hour!! My code reader cost me about £50 to buy and does exactly the same job as and manufacturers "special" one, all it's does is download and decode any faults showing on the ecu . The ecu faults are just data from sensors on the vehicle which are not getting the reading they should . Plugging a diagnostic machine in for more than 5 mins is pure profiteering as the fault codes stored or pending will say exactly the same after an hour or 5 mins and garages/dealers play on people's lack of knowledge .if I plug my mums golf in today it will register no faults just like it did 3 days ago but the fault will still be there and unfortunately I'm off to Scotland tomorrow so can't supervise anyone else to do the job besides which mention a jack, axle stands and crawling about under a car to most folk and they run a mile nowadays

that is the typical rubbish i hear from customers. when you plug it in & check for codes it may be quick when the codes come up. but that is not a proper diagnostic scan because how do make sure it is that fault which a proper tech will check & test the items that maybe faulty.

here is one example on a vectra we had in fault was air mass meter faulty as the customer wanted & had it quickly scanned we charged £35 took 5 mins but we could not clear the fault it kept coming back, we did not warrant it to be changed because we did not carry out further checks on the engine as customer did not want to spend money on vehicle. we told the customer this but they went away & got it replaced and it did not fix the fault. The customer came back started to slag us off saying we conned him which we never & told him we would need to carry out diagnostic tests like component testing which they said yes too. we carried out these tests took about 1 / 1 1/2 hrs not only did they put a cheap aftermarket product on we found the fault & it was the smallest splits in a pipe tuck at the back of the engine which we fixed we charged the customer £70 + vat for the time of testing & fixing for this fault to clear, no problems since.

moral of this their is 2 types of diagnostic scans the quick one which your cheap machine will do or the proper way like our snap on verus pro which cost us about 6 grand which allows us to test parts & record readings. take it to a proper garage.

just think in other professions like vets & see what they charge

Jvic28

By no means are all faults diagnosed by plugging a car into a machine for 5 minutes. Particularly gearbox issues. If the fault is int. then and not easily apparent to the garage why should they spend hours and hours stripping and investigating for just the 1 hours labour. You could turn around and say at the end of it that you don't want the repairs done (as it could be mega bucks) and they've done all that work for nothing.

I'm still unclear what the actual gearbox symptoms were??

I certainly wouldn't charge someone £90 for a 10 minute test drive, if that's true you certainly went to the wrong place.