Should I be suspicious of large servicing costs?

ButterCheese

Main Dealers are always more expensive; it's why car manufacturers design things in stupid ways so that sinple things can only be fixed at a garage, and they hope you'll take it to a dealer.  Find a good local one, you;ll save money every time.  And if it's not dangerous, drive your car home and look up the fix on Youtube.  Then you can have a go yourself and if all else fails take it to the (nearby) garage then.

Bigwheels1111

Main dealers are a rip off, that’s for sure.
Helped my mate change his Prius water pump and antifreeze + spark plugs.
Water pump £200, Antifreeze £12 Costco and Denso spark plugs £27.
Plus 2 hours of our time. YouTube helped a lot.
Main dealer price = £600 plus 

[Deleted User]

Why is £600 a rip off?
are they meant to work for nothing and not pay any utility bills and business rates etc?

facade

Deleted_User said:

Why is £600 a rip off?
are they meant to work for nothing and not pay any utility bills and business rates etc?

Things are relative. Maybe rip-off is wrong, but it certainly feels like one when you are on minimum wage and someone wants £300* for something you would earn £20 for. I always feel that traders are trying to rip me off when they effectively want the equivalent of my total income for a month for a days work.

*£300 being the difference between what the parts cost retail and the final price, they pay a lot less than retail for the parts so they make even more.

Ebe_Scrooge

Bigwheels1111 said:

Main dealers are a rip off, that’s for sure.
Helped my mate change his Prius water pump and antifreeze + spark plugs.
Water pump £200, Antifreeze £12 Costco and Denso spark plugs £27.
Plus 2 hours of our time. YouTube helped a lot.
Main dealer price = £600 plus 

So £240 in parts, and 4 man-hours of labour.  Main dealers will typically charge £100 per hour for labour, so that sounds about spot-on price-wise.  And no, of course the fitters don't get paid £100 per hour - that covers all overheads, wages, holiday pay, sick pay, cost of premises & tools, all the many costs of running a business, plus they have to make a profit.

Don't get me wrong - I can do lots of stuff myself, and use a brilliant local mechanic for the stuff I either can't or don't have the time to do, and he's an absolute diamond; I'd never use a main dealer.  Just saying they're not all crooks - more expensive than an independant, sure, but not necessarily crooks or rip-off merchants.

Ibrahim5

Not sure when very expensive becomes a rip off. What I do object to is the idea that a service from them is better than an independent or DIY. An oil change is an oil change whoever does it. If you think it's worth it for "goodwill" OK but the service is no better.

sheslookinhot

Ibrahim5 said:

Not sure when very expensive becomes a rip off. What I do object to is the idea that a service from them is better than an independent or DIY. An oil change is an oil change whoever does it. If you think it's worth it for "goodwill" OK but the service is no better.

Some folks enjoy a free coffee and walking on a tiled floor.

jbainbridge

Wouldn't be taking a 10 year old car to a main dealer. Get recommendations for smaller independent garages. Some of the things will be half main dealer prices or even less.

Ibrahim5

sheslookinhot said:

Ibrahim5 said:

Not sure when very expensive becomes a rip off. What I do object to is the idea that a service from them is better than an independent or DIY. An oil change is an oil change whoever does it. If you think it's worth it for "goodwill" OK but the service is no better.

Some folks enjoy a free coffee and walking on a tiled floor.

I think our local independent has a tiled floor. It's just not been cleaned for 20 years.

Robbo66

One of the biggest issues is that some manufacturers are now making some of the simple parts dealer only, I recently had to have a radiator pipe replaced and although this was done by an independent the pipe was a dealer only supply and of course many people would then just end up letting the dealer do the work for a lot more money