Parts Price Rip Offs?

[Hendry]

How do these pricks get away with what they charge?

 

My old man went through a puddle concealing a pot hole and buckled one of his alloys, tried to hammer the dent/flat spot out with a rubber mallet but it won't hold air.

 

Anyway the car is a 2009 VW Jetta (mk5 Golf based one) in 'Sport' trim with 17" 5x112 multi spoke alloys made by Ronal for Vw oem, anyway they are rare 2nd hand as were only fitted to Sport spec Jettas and Golf GT Sport TSi/TDis so next to none on ebay, gumtree, in scrappys etc so I bit the bullet and called 2 VW dealers for prices, expecting it to be expensive like about £180-£200 for one based on how much Vauxhall and Ford charge for 17"/18" wheels, well thank fuck I was sitting down when they stated the price: £415 plus Vat for 1 wheel!!!!!!! that'd buy you a whole fucking car. How can they justify this, £2K for a set of wheels for a humdrum VW family car, no wonder so many useable cars get written off in minor shunts with list prices like this.

[forddeliveryboy]

Buy a more sensible set of wheels which can cope with most potholes, original quality but perhaps vastly reduced in price because they've proved themselves good rims (ie second hand) and the boy-racers don't want them. Chances are the ride and handling will improve also. My OM got rid of a set of 16" alloys on my advice and was amazed at how the deeper sidewalls and marginally narrower tread on the slightly smaller new ones made such an improvement. Anything with MacPh strut front suspension struggles to accurately control such low profile, wide rubber anyhow - it's often a total waste of time and money.

 

Sell the other 3 for vast amounts of money on ebay if there are so few others available.

[Spiny Norman]

Always been the case.

Didn't someone once price up building something like a Range Rover from the parts bin and found it would have cost about 3 times what a new one would have cost before you even thought about the labour involved?

 

Also, a lot of copyrighted model specific stuff like wheels and trim parts are mega expensive because they know you can't just go down the local motor factors like you do for service bits, so they've got you over a barrel.

[PiperCub]

Because they can get away with it! You're right about spares prices being a source of reasons to write something off. The annoying bit is not so much that but stupid prices mean that when someone damages their car, instead of footing the bill, they just claim on their insurance which gets inflated by all the hangers-on in the claim-chain so this gives the insurance companies the ammo to keep hiking the prices. It sucks.

 

Just a suggestion but why not buy a set of suitable sized wheels with decent tyres from a V-dub breaker or ebay, use them until a suitable Ronal shows up (it will eventually), then you can sell off the replacement wheels on ebay and get much if not all your money back.

[Hendry]

Buy a more sensible set of wheels which can cope with most potholes, original quality but perhaps vastly reduced in price because they've proved themselves good rims (ie second hand) and the boy-racers don't want them. Chances are the ride and handling will improve also.

 

Sell the other 3 for vast amounts of money on ebay if there are so few others available.

The cars used as a private hire taxi, and its spare is a 17" steel with same dimensions and tyre size as the alloys, another 3 of these would be ideal but again only Sport spec Jettas had a 17" steel spare, Golfs and other specs of jetta had space savers or inflation kits and Passats all had alloy spares in different style to what we are after so think we may need to buy another full set of 16 or 17inch VW wheels like you say.

[Stixy]

I use this when looking for cheaper more durable tyre/ wheel combinations 

 

http://www.kouki.co.uk/utilities/visual-tyre-size-calculator

[forddeliveryboy]

Yea, get rid. Chances are he'll break another in 6 months. Never realised taxis used such 'upspec' wheels!

[Des]

Surely the cost of this wheel is  irrelevant as whoever failed in their duty to maintain the road will be stumping da readies.

[srad34]

Yeah, sue the council...twunts

[lisbon_road]

I've been told by people that race cars that the lowest profiles aren't the best as the wheels are very heavy.

 

So very low profile tyres make much more tendancy to bend wheels, don't give good ride, seem to have very expensive tyres.  I would have thought they'd be more inclined to uneven wear as they must be less tolerant - no evidence but surely makes sense.  Isn't this all madness?  It isn't insignificant in terms of the cost and waste.  Sorry, bit of a rant.

[twosmoke300]

With regards to parts prices I have always maintained that the manufacturers use 2 tombolas to price parts.

 

one with the prices in and the other with part numbers.

 

Its the only way I can explain the randomness of prices , Crankshaft sir thats 87 pounds , small bit of interior trim 257 pounds

 

Oh and what lisbon says is right , look at F1 cars , no low profile tyres there.

[DodgyBastard]

Just buy a set of steels with baloon tyres...

[castros_bro]

I've been through the loop of trying to claim for damaged wheel rim caused by a pot hole (where M25 changes it's name to the A282 for the Dartford crossing) and found Essex Cunty Cuncil have subcontracted their side to a 3rd party possibly trained by the SS for customes services. Frustration and no success was the result.  I'd have thought that the correct second hand 2009 Jetta 17inch alloy wheel would be possible to find from a specialist breakers in Euroland (or Yanksville) if that style of wheel was fitted elsewhere as the Jetta is more common in Euroland. Part number and photo and then ping emails to German, Polish etc. VW owners clubs.

[Parky]

Skodas, Seats, and Audis will almost certainly have identical fittings and in the case of Skoda wheels will not be subject to VAGTAX. I dare say the Bay will turn up a set of 16 inch steelies with the right PCD and offset to which you can fit higher profile tyres for an instant improvement in comfort and ride quality. And unless you are a helmsmith who only has ten minutes to get to work on the Nurburgring every day you won't notice any loss of handling.

 

Tyres will be a shitload cheaper too. Just a thought

[Ratdat]

When I had my Daihatsu Mira, the dealer charged me £6 for a full set of rear suspension arm bushes, then £65 inc vat for an exhaust but a new roof aerial?  Ã‚£171+vat! 

[steve_earwig]

The Ferrari/John Deere one kind of overshadows this majorly, however..

 

Mate of mine works in a car spares shop here, I was out with him on his delivery run a few months back and he was telling me he had some Hungarian guy come into the store with a wheel bearing gone on a 2009 Merc E clarse and asking for a genuine replacement. My mate looked it up - 9,800Kn (that's about 1,080 quid ). My mate tried to point out that he was just paying a fortune for a box and even showed him the same thing made by SKF in his catalogue for 3.400Kn. No no no, he must have the genuine part. So my mate goes and gets it, brings it back and the first thing the guy notices is, underneath all the Mercedes emblems, it says "Made in China" Then he opens the box up and written on the part itself is "SKF" My how we laughed.

[The Moog]

My OM had an interesting challenge when buying something a few years ago. I cant remember what it was but the left hand one was 5x price of right hand one. The reason being that the mold had broken for the lh so they had to recreate it and put that cost into the first x number of parts bought.

[Pillock]

Cosmetics cost more because they're not shared.... so your VW wheel is only on a VW (and quite a specific one too) where an alternator, or a fuel pump or whatever will be across the whole VWAUDISEATSKODA range so make more, lower prices, done.

 

But yeah, that price is a joke. 

 

It does get me grumpy that the only reason parts cost as much as they do is because very little is shared any more. Back in the day, a Metro would use loads of parts that a Maestro and Montego did. Relays, control units, switches, fixings, brackets, clips, grommets. All made by the hundred thousand at a time. Now, a look through a parts list from a dealer will reveal such beauties as a Ford Focus bumper that has a different part number depending on whether it's for a diesel or a petrol car. A Golf Plus shares very little with a Golf. An Astra has at least eight different centre consoles - four colours, plus electric or manual handbrake in each. Make fewer of each part, they'll cost more.

[Richard]

The yellowing plastic diffusers for Mondeo headlamps were different prices for left and right.

 

The biggest difference I've experienced was a dealer price of £238 + VAT for a Mazda 626 bottom ball joint compared to £10 inc. VAT from the motor factor.

[dome]

It can go both ways-I got bits for my 944 cheaper from the dealers than from online specialists-a lot of Porsche owners buy the "find a good independent specialist" line and blindly believe it. Said specialists can charge what they like regardless of whether its cheaper from Porsche or not... 

[Hendry]

Dealers can be good sometimes, when I had my Vauxhalls I'd quite often find consumables to be much cheaper than those of motor factors and car parts stores, I even managed to get a Trade Club account (Trade Club is Vauxhalls nationwide discount for the trade e.g. Independent garages and mechanics, to compete with motor factors on price) and it had a book full of parts for most Vauxhalls and even included things like headlight units often much cheaper than 2nd hand on ebay.

 

Anyway back to the Jetta, he's tried claiming the council who blame the gas board for causing the pot hole, they blame the water board etc just passing he buck and going round in circles, and yeah they are quite upspec wheels for a taxi because my dad bought the top spec model the "Sport" not intentionally but he went to a Ford dealer to look at Mondeos and the sales guy said they'd just had a 3 year old diesel Jetta with 40K FSH traded in, my dad drove it, liked it, it was diesel with decent mpg, running costs looked good, car looked nice, durable interior, big boot and good amount of cabin space and it was decent price so he bought it, and ended up with a car with 17" wheels, shite he wot use like mp3 compatability, electric windows in the back, media interfaces, auto wipers and lights etc when given the choice I know he would've much rather had the base model with remote locking, electric front windows, air con being the only must have features.

 

I spoke to him last night and said getting another 17" alloy that style or 3 17" steels wasnt going to be easy and that we should look at 17" wheels from a Passat, or 16"s from a Golf, lower spec Jetta or an Octavia, his mechanic is a fellow taxi driver so is going to see if he can get a set of 4 16" steels from a Skoda as they must be plentiful then we'll use the same size tyres as Golfs/Jettas with 16"s had, think they are 205/55/16 so should be better ride and more common size so cheaper to buy tyres like some of you have suggested.

 

The poor guy at VW was clearly mortified when he saw the price, he said I wouldn't bother if I was you but the price is: then said all he could do as a discount was 10% as well.

[New POD]

This is why there are people breaking working cars with MOT's. 

[martybabes]

Yeah, sue the council...twunts

Hang on a mo - it may not be the Council's fault there was a pothole (or that you drove into it). If the Council failed to have in place a proper system by which it can inspect the highways under its control, and/or failed to have in place a system to implement any appropriate repairs, then you may have a case, and you might receive some compo.

 

Remember, you are looking for fault or negligence otherwise look elsewhere.

[Station]

A single bolt for a suspension unit for an old Vauxhall I had - £22. I wasn't going to buy it, he just asked if I needed them.

22 quid!

[steve_earwig]

Did you ask how much it would cost without the bag?

[forddeliveryboy]

Dealers have shot themselves in the foot if you're going to do the collecting yourself - the local Merc one is far better than most, but if you're in oily working clothes or a boiler suit you have to negotiate sales reception, then an intermediary, who can't understand your language so eventually you speak with a time-served parts man who knows his way around the computer. Quite fun scaring people in shiny plastic shoes and shiny nylon ties who look like they've seen a Neanderthal, though. The local Audi dealer is truly appalling - parts people are often totally up themselves and ignorant as can be.

 

Right about prices, though - local motor factors have been found to be charging twice the price of Mercedes for non-genuine parts. And for some jobs on Mercs, like the bottom balljoint, it's a pain having to replace every year.

[alf892]

Bottom (rad) hose for a VW LT35 was £109.........this was about 20 years ago before the specialist factors were on the scene so you just had to pay up for vehicle specific bits.