Unnecessary car repair costs

fred246

A computer has inputs, a CPU and outputs. A car has got the display missing on purpose. Most modern cars have got quite a lot of electronics in the dashboards. It would be easy to display fault codes to the driver. The car industry likes the customer to be kept in the dark so when a fault develops they think they have to take it to a garage and pay a fortune for a 'diagnostic' and then pay a big bill for an often very simple repair.

welfayre

arcon5 wrote: »

A diagnostic being an expert opinion as to what's faulty or causing a fault.
If it was me I'd expect to leave knowing what to replace.

If you've gone in telling them there's a locking error then they've given you a report saying there's a locking fault I'd want a darn refund.

Diagnostics is more than code reading!!

Really??

You expect a garage to spend x amount of hours finding out exactly what the fault is then give you that information for the cost of a plug in?

fred246

But £49 is a lot of money just to plug a cheap device in and tell you what it says.

fred246

For example the parking sensor system on my car was faulty. I plugged in VAG-COM. It said rear left sensor faulty. I got a new sensor for £20 off ebay. Fitted in 5 mins. problem sorted. How much would a dealer charge for similar repair? If dashboard said 'rear left sensor faulty' how many more people would fix it themselves?

forgotmyname

stevie_smit wrote: »

Forgotmyname i disagree. My point is that they must have known it wouldn't tell me anymore than its a locking fault they are supposed to be "experts" are they not? So why would they have advised to run diagnostics?

How would they know it wouldnt tell them more than you already knew unless they plugged it in?

There was a chance it could have told them more. Voltage issues so it wasnt getting a strong enough signal. Intermittent fault with alarm or locking module. Code not read correctly etc.

Lots of potential codes some are useless. Misfire detected. Well yes a driver will probably already know, But which cylinder and why?

It might not give more info than that. Or it may point to the coil or cylinder.

colino

Unfortunately you were under the impression that you were dealing with the Service Manager or a real Tech. You would have spoken to a Service Assistant/Adviser/Salesperson who is there to be the person to give you a nice clean invoice and extract cash from you without you ever meeting any oily hands.
They are great at booking your car in for a service, but anything that smacks of repair, they are instructed to request that you have them diagnose the fault. This believe it or not sometimes saves motorists money because your gut instinct is often wrong and you haven't had a part changed that you thought was at fault. There is however no deviation from this. You said you had a problem, they offered a diagnostic, this was performed and no additional, useful information came up.
You definitely have to find a friendly, local, independent garage to start looking after your car. They use common sense as well as diagnostic tools and are keener to hang on, long term, to cash customers.

AdrianC

arcon5 wrote: »

A diagnostic being an expert opinion as to what's faulty or causing a fault.
If it was me I'd expect to leave knowing what to replace.

If you've gone in telling them there's a locking error then they've given you a report saying there's a locking fault I'd want a darn refund.

Diagnostics is more than code reading!!

Retrogamer wrote: »

I'd want a refund on that as well.

If you paid for them to diagnose the fault, i'd expect the outcome of the diagnostics to tell you what is causing the fault, regardless if they are using a code reader or not.

For £49 from a main dealer, you want them to start stripping the car and replacing components? Because that's what a precise diagnostic of something like this may require. Yes, there's fault codes (the reading of which is what was obviously meant by "diagnostics"). As has been said, that might have flagged up a stored fault, but it didn't. After that, there's a certain amount of trial-and-error and skill and experience required, especially on security-related issues where making the bypassing and replacement of components too easy and obvious would be a security risk. And that takes TIME. £49 at the main dealer buys you half an hour of that, at best.

Going back to the OP, though... Do you have a second key...?

Retrogamer

welfayre wrote: »

Really??

You expect a garage to spend x amount of hours finding out exactly what the fault is then give you that information for the cost of a plug in?

AdrianC wrote: »

For £49 from a main dealer, you want them to start stripping the car and replacing components? Because that's what a precise diagnostic of something like this may require. Yes, there's fault codes (the reading of which is what was obviously meant by "diagnostics"). As has been said, that might have flagged up a stored fault, but it didn't. After that, there's a certain amount of trial-and-error and skill and experience required, especially on security-related issues where making the bypassing and replacement of components too easy and obvious would be a security risk. And that takes TIME. £49 at the main dealer buys you half an hour of that, at best.

Going back to the OP, though... Do you have a second key...?

If i went to a car dealer and said i want a diagnostics and they advised they would read the codes for me for a price and i agreed, that would be fair enough.

But if i went to the dealer and said i wanted them to diagnose the fault, they agreed then advised me later they read the codes, gave me a very vague outcome and wanted to charge me £49 for this that wouldn't be reasonable because although they had ran a diagnostics check, they had failed to diagnose the fault.

If's similar if you paid a mechanic to diagnose a fault with the engine not starting and they wanted to charge you £49 for telling you it was failing to start.

welfayre

fred246 wrote: »

But £49 is a lot of money just to plug a cheap device in and tell you what it says.

I think your confusing a proper diagnostic machine with the cheap tat you get from ebay and the like.


Our machine cost £3500 plus £500 a year for software updates and that's not a particularly expensive model. The garage across from us who specialises in diagnostics has spent over £20000 on his equipment.

londonpi

I would say thats not very helpful from the dealership.

We had a not dissimilar issue which took a couple of attempts to fix. In the end the dealership agreed not to charge us labour on any of the 'failed' repair attempts but only for the parts. I was happy with that.

If this dealership are doing more to repair the issue then perhaps they would agree to deduct this charge from the final bill, as it did nothing to help.

If not and they stand by this then personally I'd not use that dealership again and I guess, if you wanted to, you could pursue it further contacting Vaxhaul UK