£30 to clear Engine Management Light

JohnSwift10

I have a 11 plate Hyundai i10 and on Saturday night the engine management light came on just as I was getting home so only drove 1 mile with it on.

So I went to my usual garage on Tuesday and the mechanic plugged a thing into my car and said

"it seems the exhaust triggered it, it does that sometime, I'll just clear it, nothing to worry about but if it comes on again come back. I'll give it a thorough check when I give the car it's service in March" 

Then he said "see the boss in the office"

So I did and the boss said "£30, cash or card?"

All this took 10 mins max,.

£180 an hour to turn off a light.



 

 

droopsnoot

It's based on the cost of buying their diagnostic machine, several thousands, which also has a monthly ongoing cost for updates to cover new vehicles, possibly several hundred pounds a month. £30 is on the low side, there are plenty of main agents that will charge double that to put a car on their diagnostic machine to scan for faults. 

facade

For £30 you could have bought an OBD dongle, e.g. Vgate Icar pro, and the paid (no advert) version of CarScanner pro for your phone/tablet, then you can read the codes and clear them yourself at home.

There is a help file to tell you what they mean, and you can post on forums to ask.

(Just clearing the codes is A Bad Thing, there is usually an underlying problem to sort out)

Lorian

Hyundai garage would possibly have charged you £80 plus something to fix it. As facade says It would have been helpful to know the code shown to understand the actual issue. If it happens again make a note of the code(s)

FlorayG

Mechanic hits part of engine with hammer. Car is fixed. Mechanic bills £100. Customer complains. Mechanic produces itemised invoice which says;
Hit affected part with hammer £10
Knowing which part, what to do and how hard to hit it £90

Herzlos

You're not paying for the time it took to do the scan; you're paying for the whole business and experience.

The scanner they used almost certainly cost thousands rather than the £10 eBay ones, and the mechanic has experience that it's occasionaly a false code. If it comes back on with the same thing later then they'll be further towards diagnosing it.

It sounds bad but a lot of places would charge a lot more.

searchlight123

JohnSwift10 said:

I have a 11 plate Hyundai i10 and on Saturday night the engine management light came on just as I was getting home so only drove 1 mile with it on.

So I went to my usual garage on Tuesday and the mechanic plugged a thing into my car and said

"it seems the exhaust triggered it, it does that sometime, I'll just clear it, nothing to worry about but if it comes on again come back. I'll give it a thorough check when I give the car it's service in March" 

Then he said "see the boss in the office"

So I did and the boss said "£30, cash or card?"

All this took 10 mins max,.

£180 an hour to turn off a light.



 

 

Silly comment.
It isn't £30 to turn off a light is it, as if it was that simple you would have done it yourself. How about the cost of the equipment. the knowhow of how to use it and the time to do this diagnostic check? If you had taken this to a main dealer that could have easily been triple that. 

400ixl

Hope many of the posters here don't work in a customer service role.

Charging for what they did to a regular customer is a ridiculous thing to do. Any professional backstreet garage worth their business wouldn't.

If they had diagnosed the fault and fixed it then fair enough, if they had even understood that it was something like a DPF blockage error and told the OP how to go and take it for a drive  to clear the blockage and reset it, then fair enough. To just reset on a hope and a prayer and charge for it has added absolutely no value to the OP whatsoever.

Time to go and find a new regular garage who know what customer service is.

born_again

400ixl said:

Hope many of the posters here don't work in a customer service role.

Charging for what they did to a regular customer is a ridiculous thing to do. Any professional backstreet garage worth their business wouldn't.

If they had diagnosed the fault and fixed it then fair enough, if they had even understood that it was something like a DPF blockage error and told the OP how to go and take it for a drive  to clear the blockage and reset it, then fair enough. To just reset on a hope and a prayer and charge for it has added absolutely no value to the OP whatsoever.

Time to go and find a new regular garage who know what customer service is.

Could be that normal charge would be £60 hour or part of labour 🤷‍♀️

Nebulous2

400ixl said:

Hope many of the posters here don't work in a customer service role.

Charging for what they did to a regular customer is a ridiculous thing to do. Any professional backstreet garage worth their business wouldn't.

If they had diagnosed the fault and fixed it then fair enough, if they had even understood that it was something like a DPF blockage error and told the OP how to go and take it for a drive  to clear the blockage and reset it, then fair enough. To just reset on a hope and a prayer and charge for it has added absolutely no value to the OP whatsoever.

Time to go and find a new regular garage who know what customer service is.

To offer a contrary opinion, if people set up a business they need to charge for what they do. Doing favours leads to people taking advantage.  I've twice that I can recall encouraged people who bailed me out to charge more. I wasn't a regular customer for either though. 

Most recent one, I got a towbar fitted when picking up a new car, several hours away. I got home to realise the garage had fitted the wrong towball for my caravan. I had a spare towball with the right neck, but no means of removing the nuts or torquing them up again. I had a caravan site booked that evening and needed it fixed. Two local garages wouldn't entertain me, the third a new start, said I'm really busy but that will only take a minute. He changed the ball, torqued it up and said it's okay it only took a minute. I told him that it maybe only took him a minute, but it had bailed me out and was worth a lot to me, so I gave him £30, which was all the cash I had on me. 

Grumpy_chap

Herzlos said:

You're not paying for the time it took to do the scan; you're paying for the whole business and experience.

The scanner they used almost certainly cost thousands rather than the £10 eBay ones, and the mechanic has experience that it's occasionaly a false code. If it comes back on with the same thing later then they'll be further towards diagnosing it.

It sounds bad but a lot of places would charge a lot more.

The contrary to the Mechanic using their experience that this was likely an erroneous alert and simply resetting the data module would have been for the Mechanic to charge for several hours of diagnostics at £100 per hour and then say they were unable to locate a fault and reset the data module.

£30 seems like a bargain.

Nebulous2 said:

To offer a contrary opinion, if people set up a business they need to charge for what they do. Doing favours leads to people taking advantage. 

I agree - doing stuff for nowt is the surest way to ensure the business is not there do do stuff next week...