Your worst service bill?

[Leyland Lawrence]

Having become somewhat jaded by the quality of servicing from Smart specialists either not servicing the car properly, not calling back or being totally inflexible with regard to dropping the car off with them for work to be carried out, I was resigned to handing my Roadster to the main dealer to service properly. Proper and regular maintenance on the Roadster is essential.

 

The bill for a properly executed C service (e.g remove the back end to replace the 6 spark plugs not "clean them up" etc) and all the additional work the car needed has come to £1075! Given the work involved, I am not particularly surprised and at least I am confident it has been carried out correctly.

 

However, this isn't the end of it. The car needs a new SAM (ECU) due to water ingress via the wiper tray preventing the horn from working and keeping the airbag light on. At its worst the odometer suddenly added a few hundred miles on as the relays and circuitry went into overload one wet afternoon. That's £990... My one work around will be to fit a temporary horn for the MOT and then save up for replacement.

 

The only redemption is that the car is the best car I have ever driven in terms of driver enjoyment at realistic legal speeds

 

Yet the old MGs and the BMWs will just soldier on and on...

[ashmicro]

My mate paid the guts of £800 for an oil and filter change on his Audi RS6, and the dealer (same one) are looking £1100 for discs and pads on my Merc. They can get lost!

 

Some years ago, a full major service on a V6 Vectra cost £19 more than a full major on a Ferrari 355.

[willswitchengage]

A friend of mine bought a 2003 Primera a few months back, first service £1600: Rear pads £150, exhaust rear and centre £400, brake lines £600, new shock £330...

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I took a 1990 E30 318i into a main dealer once for a cambelt change - this is a long time ago now as I was told that only dealers with the digital belt tensioning tool could do it. Yeah, right.

They did that bit alright, as well as replacing a few other bits without asking me. I got a bill for £650 but they'd left the old, fucked alternator and PAS belts on and not mentioned the shagged water pump that failed the next day requiring AA roadside assistance to change it. I kicked up a right stink. I knew them all well enough and over the next 2-3 years had 200 quids worth of bits FOC.

 

Back in 1991/2 a mate took his 944 to a main dealer in Kidlington (gone now) for a service and they replaced the exhaust woithout asking 'because it was about ready'. It fucking well wasn't and he told them to put the old one back one because he was going to sell the car. They'd chopped it off and thrown it in the skip. He got a free exhaust.

[CortinaDave]

I wanted to get my saab de-sludged ( sludge builds up in the oil sump on these engines, blocks the internal filter and starves the engine of oil and buggers it if its not serviced often) basically its a drop the sump off and clean it out job.. its a bit of a pain tho because you have to unbolt the subframe and exhaust and lever the engine up to get the sump out apparently.

 

Anyway I went into a local garage who were deserted. Three mechanics sat on their arses drinking tea and watching telly... they quoted me "about £350, providing it comes apart easily enough, more if it doesnt" This garage has recently had to sell off half its workshop because they are so starved of business just now.

 

Rang another place 10 miles away - saab specialist. £160 with an uprated breather kit included.. But he's so busy he cant fit me in til the end of next week. Guess which one got the job?

 

For whatever reason, theres still a culture in a lot of garages of trying to shark the daylights out of the punters, then they sit and wonder why they've no work. A good mechanic who does a good job at a fair price is always in demand, I just wish some of these other places would realise that

[John F]

Er... probably about £450 in parts (camshaft housing & one dinged valve, gaskets, fasteners, lubricants, filters) to rebuild the top end of the engine in my Maserati?

 

I won't use garages, especially main stealers.

[panhard65]

That maserati price is cheap. When I had my bi-turbo it cost me around £300 just for the parts to do the 24000 mile service properly. The specialists were charging about 400 for a cam belt change so how they could do that using the correct parts I don't know. I remember buying the proper workshop manual which was about 120 quid but cheaper than a valve they told me. The service bill on the smart is a bit ott as well I did a fourtwo thing a few months ago including the plugs I think it was about 300 I charged I did buy the tool to take the plug leads off which is essential really. It had also been modified so it had a sump plug. How daft were mercedes with that design a truly awful car to drive and work on

[Shep Shepherd]

I paid £440 for a full service for The Volvo at a Volvo specialist in spring 2004 not long after I bought it, which was for my peace of mind more than anything else, and was the first and only time a garage has ever serviced any of my cars*. They said that I'd bought a good one, which was nice

 

 

 

 

*I let my local garage do the things I can't/won't do, such as cambelts and exhausts.

[Joseph]

Found a slow puncture on the Polo whilst on holiday, so had no choice but to use a small, local garage.

 

A puncture was subsequently found. Puncture repair patch cost £16. Sadly puncture repair didn't work so took the car back the following Monday for this to be checked. Returned to be told that "...We've fitted a new valve". Cost of valve, labour etc=twenty quid. Left feeling a little 'robbed', then mentally added £20+£16, equals £36. Then I realised that all in, a new budget tyre would be circa £30.

[ashmicro]

Some years ago, a full major service on a V6 Vectra cost £19 more than a full major on a Ferrari 355.

 

What, the engine-out belt service?

Fucking hell, you could have had a new Vectra for that money.

 

I think my worst bill was £550 or so for a cambelt change, service and some other bits on an A3.

 

 

Engine-out belt service at 29000 miles is a separate job on the Ferrari schedule (well the sched I have anyway). Me and a mate did one on a series 2 348 GTS, and it wasn't too bad actually.

[trigger]

I've only ever used the main stealer once, back in 2007ish for a 64k service on my old Focus TDCi, £180 later and all they done was change the oil which i could have done myself and tell me two of my perfectly good tyres were low... Worked out to be a bloody expensive stamp in the book, at least i got some free mints.

[ProgRocker]

I do wonder how competent main stealers are...

 

Took my Almera dCi into Desira Nissan for a 'silver' service* in April so that it was ship shape for the commute to my new job. Should have cost c.£190 but was relieved of £277 when they conviced me that the front brake pads needed replacing. Strange I thought - brakes seemed fine to me.

 

Brakes felt the same once I had driven away too - no sharper at all. And also they haven't asked me to take the car back for readjustment of said brake pads once bound in (I had done with other older cars). Should they have done this?!

 

I must say that the day I dropped it off and later on collected it, despite paying through the nose I felt treated with an air of contempt. I wonder if it had anything to do with car being obsolete and older than the majority of their regular customers' cars or the fact that I was dressed very casually?

 

Some months later I take the car in for an MOT. It passed but I was given an advisory on the slack handbrake. This should have been tightened up under the Nissan 'silver' service. Took it back to Desira a few weeks later and asked them to do it, which they did. Makes me wonder what else they didn't do right the first time?

 

To add to my suspicions, Desira recently sent me a text message stating that my car was due for MOT. INCORRECT! Although my car was registered in December 2003, somewhere between December 2006 and before I bought it, the car must have been taken off the road for several months and was MOT'd in July between 2007 and 2010!

 

* Three teir servicing structure for older cars. Gold, Silver and Bronze.

[Pillock]

I had a bit of a grump last week about this.... fixed price Ford servicing shows my car costs £99 for an interim service.

My local dealer was listed on the site so dropped it off, luckily checked the price before I left... £165. Why? Because they opted out of the fixed price stuff, in his words "that's just to get you in the door so they make money on brakes and exhausts". They allegedly don't like doing that and to be fair my car needed nothing else at all. Still, it's annoying that Ford list my dealer as a fixed price place. I might write a strongly worded email.

[skattrd]

I can't come anywhere near you lot. I've only been driving 7-8 years and all that time my sisters been married to a local mechanic/garage owner, so I'm very fortunate to have him do my work (and usually under charge me).

My worst bill was for my Alfa 155, which was £980 - that did include a clutch, a top end rebuild and the most expensive spark plugs ever.

[Spiny Norman]

Once got stung for the best part of £800 at a supposedly well respected Alfa specialist in the south side of Glasgow when I took my 156 in for a service, cambelt and MOT. I wasn't expecting it to be cheap but I knew he was at it when he phoned me up claiming it had failed on emissions and it was going to cost another £150 to for his mate with a laptop to fix....

 

Never went back after that.

 

My mate recently paid Arnold Shark about £400 for an interim (oil change) service on a Mazda 2....

[John F]

That maserati price is cheap. When I had my bi-turbo it cost me around £300 just for the parts to do the 24000 mile service properly. The specialists were charging about 400 for a cam belt change so how they could do that using the correct parts I don't know. I remember buying the proper workshop manual which was about 120 quid but cheaper than a valve they told me. The service bill on the smart is a bit ott as well I did a fourtwo thing a few months ago including the plugs I think it was about 300 I charged I did buy the tool to take the plug leads off which is essential really. It had also been modified so it had a sump plug. How daft were mercedes with that design a truly awful car to drive and work on

 

Yep, I shopped around. I got most of the service items from a company called MIE in America for a fraction of what they'd have cost in the UK (the cambelt was about 35 quid iirc, an inlet valve was less than £11), the camshaft housing was an OE item from Eurospares and was a surprisingly reasonable £200.

 

The workshop manual is available as a free PDF download on the Internet, and is also available to browse at Enrico's Maserati Pages.

[Albert Ross]

I only ever paid a repair bill once. That was in 1984 for a clutch on my Super Minx. I had no chance of being able to do it myself. I was fleeced £130, and that apparently included skimming the flywheel. I had cause to remove the gearbox a couple of months later... (I was fitting a Sceptre overdrive unit!!) The flywheel was still scored, clutch plate in back to front, and one of the flywheel bolts was loose!!! (Albeit not "free" on the threads.... it required retapping...) I went back to remonstrate with the "garage" that did the "work". The Boss took me to one side, asked me to keep quiet about it, the bloke that was working for him had done similar things to a few cars..... I was handed £30 out of his pocket within 5 minutes. I never used them again, and have worked my way up and do everything except painting and glazing now. I now work in a Main Dealer, am Quality Controller for Mots, and one of the "Senior" Mechanics that they wheel out to explain things to customers.

[R9UKE]

Renault Avantime V6 belt change - £1285 from Renault. Painful.

[ProgRocker]

In respect to steep repair bills, last December I had to have a new clutch on the Almera - £1,100! Lucky that I had some money saved up.

[Station]

Only ever used a garage once to change a front wheel bearing (I gave them the wheel bearing), and it cost 2 hours labour at 80 quid.

 

I'd advise anyone to tell the garage to put all the bits they take off in the boot as you'd like to see what the condition was. You won't get messed around then.

[Baz]

In about 2004, I paid £1500 plus at an Alfa dealer for Service, Cambelt and a couple of suspension links on my 156 2.0 Twin-Spark Lusso.

 

Beautiful car though!