Car battery prices, up 46%

seatbeltnoob

DoaM wrote: »

And if you rely on your car for business, a 16 year old car (2003 VW Golf) is probably a maintenance nightmare waiting to happen.

It's naturally aspirated, non turbo, petrol so non-DPF. Clutch & timing belt taken care of, services every year, sometimes twice a year (oil changes).



I doubt it will suddenly break down. I see more modern cars <4 years old on the hard shoulder on the motorways than old bangers.


My wife always gives me a hard time about my car. I make a point of pointing out these newer cars on the hard shoulder and probably can count on one hand in the last 2 years the amount of broken down mk4 golfs on the road.

seatbeltnoob

I'm thinking of cancelling the battery order with carparts4less and driving with the current battery. I drove the car with the condemended battery today and it had no issues starting.


The BBC watchdog documentry is here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/517yjLSb1kShHrr7pV2f8mr/rac


Many of the cases where the battery dropped to 12.09v 12.1v etc. BBC watchdog say this is just a low battery and needs to be charged up. My battery was tested to be on 12.3v and RAC condemended it.



RAC man didn;t even do a reserve capacity test, on the BBC watchdog video the man at the call out would say it's a bad battery, but their reports emailed to the driver would say it had a good reserve on. The guy skipped the reserve test completely.


What I am thinking of doing is cancelling the car battery, and use the money to buy a good battery booster. If I have any complications I can boost myself out of trouble. It will have double utility of being able to rescue other people's cars and use it for charging devices if needed.

DUTR

seatbeltnoob wrote: »

It's naturally aspirated, non turbo, petrol so non-DPF. Clutch & timing belt taken care of, services every year, sometimes twice a year (oil changes).



I doubt it will suddenly break down. I see more modern cars <4 years old on the hard shoulder on the motorways than old bangers.


My wife always gives me a hard time about my car. I make a point of pointing out these newer cars on the hard shoulder and probably can count on one hand in the last 2 years the amount of broken down mk4 golfs on the road.

I'd imagine having to call out the RAC to attend ….a sudden break down.
You will see more modern cars on the hard shoulder as there are sort of more modern cars on the motorway to breakdown.
Not every broken down car is on the road at the time of breakdown.
I had a MK4 it was a great car and no trouble apart from the coil packs one time, I don't think it's on the road now though. (tell a lie for some reason it has not had an MOT test certificate between 2012 and 2018).

As long as you are enjoying the car then that is all that matters.

seatbeltnoob

I tried to cancel with carparts4less, but it was too late. I was then able to reject the parcel on delivery so it's on its way back and I will expect a refund from them some time between now and never.


I did some research, the reason why the battery probably didn't last as long as it should is because it well well under specced for my car. On entering the reg on the carparts4less website, you are given two batches of batteries size 012 and 027. 012 is the smaller battery which typically has less AH and CCA. This bosh one has 45AH and 400CCA.



You can get 012 batteries at larger capacity, some will be very dense and have high capacity than batteries that are larger. But generally larger means more powerful and more capacity.


Well 012 battery is small for this car, and VW recommend a 027 battery which are typically 65AH and 550-600 CCA. Had I bought the correct battery 3.5 years ago I probably wouldn't have been in this position today.

Herzlos

That would certainly do it and probably explain the price difference too.

Johnmcl7

I did notice when I was looking for batteries for my car the prices seemed a lot higher than when I bought one in 2015, this is exactly the same item number as this one:

https://www.eurocarparts.com/ecp/p/car-parts/car-electrics-and-car-lighting/electrical/car-battery/?444770057&0&cc5_1002

It was £69 when I bought it in 2015 (before discounts) and now it's £151. I thought Euro car parts had massively hiked their prices but I've not seen the battery for anything like the original price anywhere else.

John

seatbeltnoob

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

I did notice when I was looking for batteries for my car the prices seemed a lot higher than when I bought one in 2015, this is exactly the same item number as this one:

https://www.eurocarparts.com/ecp/p/car-parts/car-electrics-and-car-lighting/electrical/car-battery/?444770057&0&cc5_1002

It was £69 when I bought it in 2015 (before discounts) and now it's £151. I thought Euro car parts had massively hiked their prices but I've not seen the battery for anything like the original price anywhere else.

John

I'm glad i'm not the only one, yes I used discount codes and checked the priced difference on the exact same part number and it was a lot higher.


Googling hasn't shown any discussion from the UK. but a lot of US searches have suggested that the low supply of recycled car batteries used to make new ones.

droopsnoot

Don't forget that Euro Car Parts (and CP4L, as they're the same company) move their prices around, and hike them for a while so they can run a massive discount sale. So you need to monitor prices for a while to get a decent idea of whether they've changed much.


Perhaps batteries are a thing that fluctuate a lot - I bought one a while back for £50-odd, I forget exactly how much, and when I went back a year or two ago (probably 3 years after the first) they'd jumped to £90-odd, but the same price hike hadn't appeared anywhere else like Halfords.

Rainbowgirl84

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

I did notice when I was looking for batteries for my car the prices seemed a lot higher than when I bought one in 2015, this is exactly the same item number as this one:

https://www.eurocarparts.com/ecp/p/car-parts/car-electrics-and-car-lighting/electrical/car-battery/?444770057&0&cc5_1002

It was £69 when I bought it in 2015 (before discounts) and now it's £151. I thought Euro car parts had massively hiked their prices but I've not seen the battery for anything like the original price anywhere else.

John

Battery is around £70-£80on ebay.

seatbeltnoob

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