Vauxhall servicing

Marktheshark

It is about to enter the cash haemorrhage stage of its life, 3-4 years and it will be losing £2-3k a year in deprecation.
paying through the nose for a dealer service which are never just what they say when looking at the deprecation leaves anyone thinking the extra cash is far better in your pocket.

bigadaj

Marktheshark wrote: »

It is about to enter the cash haemorrhage stage of its life, 3-4 years and it will be losing £2-3k a year in deprecation.
paying through the nose for a dealer service which are never just what they say when looking at the deprecation leaves anyone thinking the extra cash is far better in your pocket.

Cash haemorrhage is that first year, £10k lost from anyone who paid near list price, then on your valuation the car is free or of no worth at five years old.

I had company cars for many years, ran a ten year old focus for a year before this one which went fine but saving on depreciation means that you spend more on maintenance, it's generally a nil sum game to a greater or lesser extent. The only reason I got rid of the focus was that a change of job meant that to get a£6.5k car allowance my car had to be less than six years old, so getting a year old one meant I could not worry about changing it for a few years and each trade in will often cost you money.

Take what everyone has said about scope of servicing and will make sure it is speced like for like, having dealt with the procurement department in my new job then that is soemthing that has been driven home to me!

Interesting range of opinions offered on the thread, with people having very fixed views, I prefer to look at the pros and cons and make an objective decision than be dogmatic. Still one persons situation varies from another and a differ et course of action may be valid for each individual.

Crabman

In terms of maintaining the warranty, if you can find a VAT registered garage that will source the parts from the Vauxhall dealership (slightly higher cost than motor factor parts) and do exactly what the service book says is needed, you can decide whether the saving is worth it. That way there can be no dispute about a warranty issue.

xHannahx

The difference in price is normally labour.
Main dealer £80-100 hour, local garage £20-40 an hour.
Typically 2 hours labour for a full service.
The price of the parts is pretty much the same, hubby did our Seat himself (much older out of warranty, probably won't change till it's ready for scrap) and the components roughly cost around £80 - oil, filters etc.

bigadaj

Right quick update for general info.

Dealer website was quoting £269, Vauxhall state £249 with £20 voucher discount for joining service club. AA comparison showed range of prices with lowest at £172.

Rang them up and asked for their price, over the phone was £227, asked if they price matched and gave the lowest price, said they couldn't touch it, so what was the best they could do and they came back with £204.

Accepted that and booked in next week, might have pushed for a few quid more but happy that dealer is doing and they need to do some minor warranty work at the same time apparently.

If you don't ask you don't get but just shows that everything you pay for is now variable, no such thing as a fixed price I suppose.