charges for MOT fail

patricia_martin

my 4 year old fiat 500 failed its MOT today. 11,000 miles. had an interim service first. everything ticked ok eg tyres all good. w/screen wipers and washers good. inside and outside lights good, in fact everything ticked good. rung up after MOT. told needed new front tyre,new windscreen wipers, and headlight alignment plus oil surcharge for specialist oil. I 'm confused as service was ok. also told i should have an engine flush? total I am going to have to pay is £387-56. am I being charged fairly.

TELLIT01

Was the MOT done at the same place as the service?  If so, I would want to know why items reported as OK at service suddenly failed the MOT.  Costs seem high.  New tyre about £60, MOT max £56, wiper £10, headlight alignment £20?  That leaves about £230 unaccounted for which seems high for an interim service.

FreeBear

patricia_martin said: also told i should have an engine flush?

Never heard of an engine flush being needed for a service on a new(ish) car.

On a couple of occasions, I have done an engine flush, but this was on a very high mileage engine (100K+) prior to doing a complete strip down. Unless Fiat recommend an engine flush (check with their technical dept, not a mechanic), I'd say you are being taken for a ride.

maxsteam

patricia_martin said:

am I being charged fairly.

No. You can get quotes for tyres online (I've found AsdaTyres competitive). You can buy and fit the wiper yourself (again, it's easy to get the price online). Headlight alignment is a five-minute job that many MOT garages do without charging anything more than the test fee as the headlights are already in the right place to be adjusted as part of the test. Forget about the "oil surcharge" as oil is nothing to do with the MOT. The price of the oil should have been included in the cost of the service. Your car requires standard oil that costs £30 for an engine-full. You should not let them talk you into an engine flush after only 11k miles.

There should be a standard fee that you have been told about for the MOT. I am unsure what you have agreed to pay for the service. It sounds like the biggest thing was the oil change which takes a mechanic 30 minutes at most (but it's a messy job and the old oil must be disposed of properly). Hopefully the garage will let you take the car away, get a tyre and wiper fitted and let you take the car back for a retest if you offer to pay £20 more than the agreed fee for the headlight alignment.

Personally I find it best to say that I simply want a MOT with a retest (often included in the price) and I say that I will take the car away after the test with the list of faults, get the faults fixed, and come back for the retest. While they are welcome to quote for fixing the faults, I always tell the garage not to do any work and I infer that I want to do things myself. Otherwise it's in the garage's interests to find a lot of faults. My usual garage, that I have used for many years, tried to tell me that the car was unsafe to drive away last time. This was nonsense, I drove away without any problems and I will use a different test centre next time.