Price of brake pads and discs replacement

worried123

whilst talking the mechanic mentioned the garage he uses for parts and the area. so i have looked this up. For my car they sell juratek which is what he put on the car. The discs were £41 a pair inclusive of vat and the pads were £36 which is £77.
He charged me £160 for the parts. I think that is a nice little profit of £83 without the £75 he charged me for labour....it didnt take him long to fit them either.
Basically he more than doubled the cost of the parts. He may even have got them cheaper than the listed price as he is in the trade.

DUTR

worried123 wrote: »

whilst talking the mechanic mentioned the garage he uses for parts and the area. so i have looked this up. For my car they sell juratek which is what he put on the car. The discs were £41 a pair inclusive of vat and the pads were £36 which is £77.
He charged me £160 for the parts. I think that is a nice little profit of £83 without the £75 he charged me for labour....it didnt take him long to fit them either.
Basically he more than doubled the cost of the parts. He may even have got them cheaper than the listed price as he is in the trade.

Just like you he has a family to feed and overheads for the garage, do you expect him to work for free? Then he has to pay tax on that gain, you haven't been ripped off, maybe you may have go it cheaper, but the running around may have offset any money 'saved'.
Out of interest, what do you think is a fair price to pay?

ratrace

I thought that was normal all trades charge a mark up on supplying parts such as builders, sparks etc...

I work in a garage part time (done so for a few years now mainly on vw's) and we do allow customers to bring they own parts for us to fit but we make it very clear that if anything is faulty with the part that you have supplied then we will charge again for labour to replace it as we did not use our suppliers that cover our warrenty claims

for eg: we had a customer who wanted to replace both rear wheel brake cylinders which he bought from online cheap, blank box etc... as he didnt want to you use the ones we suggested all to save a bit of money, 3 months later the car was back with both cylinders leaking oil from the rubber seals due to the crap quailty of them, we had charged again for labour for both sides and this time supplied his with the oem spec ones

so new crap parts in the bin
2x labour
2x new oem spec parts with 12 months warrenty

if he just went with our parts he would have saved a lot of money plus had free labour and parts warrenty if the parts failed as we would just put a warrenty claimin to our supplier

Penny rich pound foolish comes to mind

People dont realise how expensive running a garage is
we have 3 full time mechaincs every day

rates
electric
rent
3 ramps that need servicing
mot bays that need servicng and claiberting
tools
diagnotic computers that need updating yearly

all in all we need to avaerge about £60hr (not sure about the exact figure) just to keep us from sutting down.

Thats the reason i would not ever open a garage as its just too expensive and risky the boss has had to pull money out of his house just to keep us going for a few bad months

i fully undersatnd that there will be places that rip people off (just like any trade) but you as a customer have to ask all the right questions

we never start a job before telling the customer the price and to confim if they want to go ahead and try to get a few diffrent prices for parts and let them decide depending on the car they have some want the top end stuff some just go for mid range

Jumblebumble

DUTR wrote: »

The OP though is not talented at certain tasks on cars, me? I could do it, but I'd sooner pay the £40 per wheel Brembo discs and pads for my car come to £225/pair for the fronts.

Me too
The last pair of Pagid Disks I bought form ECP lasted 2000 miles before warping
Utter garbage

Paully28

If you were going to get someone else, a friend, to change your brake pads and discs all round, how much money would you give them. They are doing me a favour, but I don't want to give nothing, and they wont say how much they would want (well they actually said nothing), but that's not going to happen. Given how much Halfords were going to charge me. What is fair do people think? thanks

DUTR

Paully28 wrote: »

If you were going to get someone else, a friend, to change your brake pads and discs all round, how much money would you give them. They are doing me a favour, but I don't want to give nothing, and they wont say how much they would want (well they actually said nothing), but that's not going to happen. Given how much Halfords were going to charge me. What is fair do people think? thanks

The actual labour cannot be less than NLW, the parts need to be ordered which takes time, so say 2hrs labour, then the overheads unit rent rates etc.

Paully28

Thanks, I just mean as a favour to me as they are a mechanic and know how to change brakes and pads, not as part of their business. They are just doing me a favour in their spare time, and said that they didn't want any money, but i don't think that is right and wondered what people thought I should give them. I have all the parts already.

debtdebt

Paully28 wrote: »

Thanks, I just mean as a favour to me as they are a mechanic and know how to change brakes and pads, not as part of their business. They are just doing me a favour in their spare time, and said that they didn't want any money, but i don't think that is right and wondered what people thought I should give them. I have all the parts already.

I'd say £20-£40 would be fair.

debtdebt

peter12345678910 wrote: »

I think worried123 has a point, with the money he saved he can take his family on holiday. Possibly a little harsh comment for someone who may be fed up with car servicing and want to fix something on their car.

What I was getting at was that the OP seems to begrudge paying someone for labour and a mark up on parts.

fred246

I think she was charged a bit more than a 'mark up' on the parts.