Garage's Hourly Rate
Discussion
My Landrover Discovery has recently been causing me problems, with both bad starting and intermittently cutting out, so decided to leave the car with a local garage, for them to investigate the same.
Today collected the car, and was presented with a bill charging at a hourly rate of £50, with 10 hours being charged at that rate.
So after collecting the car, the ABS warning light shows, and does not go out, and when I contacted the garage they said it must be a brake fault, although I believe the possible fault is that the diagnostics code for the ABS needs to be reset.
My first question is, what is an acceptable hourly rate for a garage to charge, and what, if any, is the redress a customer may have against a garage, which holds the clients/customers vehicle, with the same facing an unacceptable/inflated bill.
Whilst I have my vehicle back, with the ABS light remaining on, I lack both confidence in the garage’s ability to diagnosed the fault, with the same possibly increasing the number of hours needed required to achieve the same.
Today collected the car, and was presented with a bill charging at a hourly rate of £50, with 10 hours being charged at that rate.
So after collecting the car, the ABS warning light shows, and does not go out, and when I contacted the garage they said it must be a brake fault, although I believe the possible fault is that the diagnostics code for the ABS needs to be reset.
My first question is, what is an acceptable hourly rate for a garage to charge, and what, if any, is the redress a customer may have against a garage, which holds the clients/customers vehicle, with the same facing an unacceptable/inflated bill.
Whilst I have my vehicle back, with the ABS light remaining on, I lack both confidence in the garage’s ability to diagnosed the fault, with the same possibly increasing the number of hours needed required to achieve the same.
£50 isn't a bad rate - you should probably ask and it depends where you are, although it's not obviously cheap.
10 hours is a lot of time to spend on diagnostics though and not immediatley reasonable unless they came back to you and got your authorisation - or does that include time spent actually fixing the fault. What have they actually done during that time?
10 hours is a lot of time to spend on diagnostics though and not immediatley reasonable unless they came back to you and got your authorisation - or does that include time spent actually fixing the fault. What have they actually done during that time?
[quote=Engineer1]The big consideration is does the £100 an hour garage have the skills and equipment to do the job quicker than the £50 an hour garage, if the £50 an hour garage takes twice as long due to it being a backstreet none specialist then the £100 an hour would have been a better choice.[/quote
Absolutely, although on the end of a tow truck the options are slightly limited. So should one pay for what a job is worth, or the competence, or rather lack off the mechanic attempting to do the repair.
Any way this particular garage had the car for 10 days, under no pressure for quick return of car. Collected car Friday, bill came to a total of £950, possibly car’s trade price.
After leaving/driving away from garage, car’s ABS light remained on, so telephoned the garage up when I got home, I was told it must be a fault with the car’s brakes. Reading the garage’s invoice/bill, the fault appears to have been in the electrical relay between the vehicle’s solenoid relay and ECU, with the former being located and part of the ASB relay (now faulty).
Now I want to be reasonable with the garage, which is the reason for my original post, should i/one being charged for what a job is worth, the value of the vehicle/item in for repair, the competence of the mechanic in finding the fault, or the difficulty of finding the fault? I suppose there is also a possibility that an unscrupulous garage, might want to delay finding a fault, in order to increase the size of their bill.
I need to take the car back to the garage to get the ABS light sorted out, and I really must raise the high labour charge, since their diagnostic for the ABS light remaining on, causes me concerns at their total honesty and/or efficiency.
Absolutely, although on the end of a tow truck the options are slightly limited. So should one pay for what a job is worth, or the competence, or rather lack off the mechanic attempting to do the repair.
Any way this particular garage had the car for 10 days, under no pressure for quick return of car. Collected car Friday, bill came to a total of £950, possibly car’s trade price.
After leaving/driving away from garage, car’s ABS light remained on, so telephoned the garage up when I got home, I was told it must be a fault with the car’s brakes. Reading the garage’s invoice/bill, the fault appears to have been in the electrical relay between the vehicle’s solenoid relay and ECU, with the former being located and part of the ASB relay (now faulty).
Now I want to be reasonable with the garage, which is the reason for my original post, should i/one being charged for what a job is worth, the value of the vehicle/item in for repair, the competence of the mechanic in finding the fault, or the difficulty of finding the fault? I suppose there is also a possibility that an unscrupulous garage, might want to delay finding a fault, in order to increase the size of their bill.
I need to take the car back to the garage to get the ABS light sorted out, and I really must raise the high labour charge, since their diagnostic for the ABS light remaining on, causes me concerns at their total honesty and/or efficiency.
Hourly rate is variable. Depends on who you take it to, Like higher posts said, LR dealers might charge £100. Our external labour rate is £75 if I remember rightly, Im sales not service. Always ask in advance what the labour rate is and an estimate of how long it will take to do the job. That way you know how much the labour is going to cost. If they then come back and say that they took twice as long, you have reason to believe they pulled a fast one on you.
As for the current abs fault. Get it into another garage, another Indie will do and get them to check it out. Ask them specifically if the fault could be or is a result of the work carried out by the other garage. If they say yes, get a quote for fixing it and go back to the original garage. Get them to pay the bill. You can decide if you want them to have your car again. Dont back down, say that you want Garage A to reimburse the expense of using Garage B or you will take them to court. They should pay up prity quickly.
As for the current abs fault. Get it into another garage, another Indie will do and get them to check it out. Ask them specifically if the fault could be or is a result of the work carried out by the other garage. If they say yes, get a quote for fixing it and go back to the original garage. Get them to pay the bill. You can decide if you want them to have your car again. Dont back down, say that you want Garage A to reimburse the expense of using Garage B or you will take them to court. They should pay up prity quickly.
I generally get my car sorted at home (Cornwall) where rates are the cheapest in the country 
about £25/hr, but I ALWAYS, ask them to provide me with an estimate of cost before starting repairs to save myself from have a heart attack over the bill when it eventually comes through....! If you're not happy, go to the garage and ask them to justify the time spent fixing the fault (or not...). I've done this before and saved myself £25 when the manager agreed that the time put down to change the broken part wasn't reasonable. If you don't ask, you don't get.
about £25/hr, but I ALWAYS, ask them to provide me with an estimate of cost before starting repairs to save myself from have a heart attack over the bill when it eventually comes through....! If you're not happy, go to the garage and ask them to justify the time spent fixing the fault (or not...). I've done this before and saved myself £25 when the manager agreed that the time put down to change the broken part wasn't reasonable. If you don't ask, you don't get.Thank you for all your replies, the contents of which I can recognise as being valid, although the £500 labour charge I still find difficult to accept, particularly as the garage had the car for 10 days, and then released the vehicle with the ABS warning light flashing, which for me raises questions on their ability to promptly diagnose the original electrical fault.
£50 an hour is a lot money in the scale of things, I mean it equates to a £90K salary. I don't see how its justifiable. Only my VX220 see's a garage only to protect residuals, but to be honest its first visit to a garage ended up with £900 of labour so really its borderline if its worth the bills in the long term.
None of my other cars I've ever taken to garages always doing the work needed myself. Mechanical working on cars is easy, the sort of thing anyone can do with minimal training. Electronics are more difficult but still not really hard in terms of dealership kind of work i.e. just replace bits no attempts to fix. Plus of course the dealerships have the full workshop manuals from the manufacturer so making life even easier and less needing of experience / knowledge / skills - that usually determine how much you pay someone. With this in mind £20/£25 an hour to include cover of overheads would be a more acceptable rate. Funnily enough the sort of rate the more expensive of the local old boys charges and has made a life long career out of, the local MOT garage charges £12 an hour for any work needed.
None of my other cars I've ever taken to garages always doing the work needed myself. Mechanical working on cars is easy, the sort of thing anyone can do with minimal training. Electronics are more difficult but still not really hard in terms of dealership kind of work i.e. just replace bits no attempts to fix. Plus of course the dealerships have the full workshop manuals from the manufacturer so making life even easier and less needing of experience / knowledge / skills - that usually determine how much you pay someone. With this in mind £20/£25 an hour to include cover of overheads would be a more acceptable rate. Funnily enough the sort of rate the more expensive of the local old boys charges and has made a life long career out of, the local MOT garage charges £12 an hour for any work needed.
Herman Toothrot said:
£50 an hour is a lot money in the scale of things, I mean it equates to a £90K salary. I don't see how its justifiable. Only my VX220 see's a garage only to protect residuals, but to be honest its first visit to a garage ended up with £900 of labour so really its borderline if its worth the bills in the long term.
None of my other cars I've ever taken to garages always doing the work needed myself. Mechanical working on cars is easy, the sort of thing anyone can do with minimal training. Electronics are more difficult but still not really hard in terms of dealership kind of work i.e. just replace bits no attempts to fix. Plus of course the dealerships have the full workshop manuals from the manufacturer so making life even easier and less needing of experience / knowledge / skills - that usually determine how much you pay someone. With this in mind £20/£25 an hour to include cover of overheads would be a more acceptable rate. Funnily enough the sort of rate the more expensive of the local old boys charges and has made a life long career out of, the local MOT garage charges £12 an hour for any work needed.
15 years ago the garage that I used to work for charged £50 an hour,left the motor trade as a mechanic 2 years ago and then the dealer was charging £115 per hour,a garage charging only £25 per hour can not possibly survive,but £115 per hour is taking the piss !! None of my other cars I've ever taken to garages always doing the work needed myself. Mechanical working on cars is easy, the sort of thing anyone can do with minimal training. Electronics are more difficult but still not really hard in terms of dealership kind of work i.e. just replace bits no attempts to fix. Plus of course the dealerships have the full workshop manuals from the manufacturer so making life even easier and less needing of experience / knowledge / skills - that usually determine how much you pay someone. With this in mind £20/£25 an hour to include cover of overheads would be a more acceptable rate. Funnily enough the sort of rate the more expensive of the local old boys charges and has made a life long career out of, the local MOT garage charges £12 an hour for any work needed.
a garage/dealer having all the manuals makes little difference if you get strange electrical faults,the technicians have a hard time at the moment,we used to get all sorts of strange things like the windscreen wipers wont switch of and the fault was a faulty alarm module with no codes set etc.
Edited by cracked one off on Sunday 20th December 21:16
I'm an auto electrician, a mobile one at that.
I charge:
Local call out including first hours labour £45
Labour per hour £35
If the work involved means turning off airbag lights etc then no extra charge, but if I turn up on a quoted job for say parking sensors and the owner says "can you just turn that airbag light off for us mate" then I charge £35 for a diagnose including a print out.
Now I don't at all think I'm expensive, I started at £26/hour about 6 months ago. But after a few of my customers saying "your so cheap" I've put my prices up.
But with that, If I'm at your house for 4 hours, turn the light off but the fault is still there I will only ask say £10-£20 to cover diesel etc. Now what I will do though is ALWAYS give a printed "engineers report" of any work carried out which includes any advisory things that will need sorting soon.
Personally I subcontract to ALOT of local garages and I know the ones that I trust and ones that I think are competent, and one thing I will say is that hunting around for the cheaper hourly rate can often be false economy.
I charge:
Local call out including first hours labour £45
Labour per hour £35
If the work involved means turning off airbag lights etc then no extra charge, but if I turn up on a quoted job for say parking sensors and the owner says "can you just turn that airbag light off for us mate" then I charge £35 for a diagnose including a print out.
Now I don't at all think I'm expensive, I started at £26/hour about 6 months ago. But after a few of my customers saying "your so cheap" I've put my prices up.
But with that, If I'm at your house for 4 hours, turn the light off but the fault is still there I will only ask say £10-£20 to cover diesel etc. Now what I will do though is ALWAYS give a printed "engineers report" of any work carried out which includes any advisory things that will need sorting soon.
Personally I subcontract to ALOT of local garages and I know the ones that I trust and ones that I think are competent, and one thing I will say is that hunting around for the cheaper hourly rate can often be false economy.
carsounds_dan said:
I'm an auto electrician, a mobile one at that.
I charge:
Local call out including first hours labour £45
Labour per hour £35
If the work involved means turning off airbag lights etc then no extra charge, but if I turn up on a quoted job for say parking sensors and the owner says "can you just turn that airbag light off for us mate" then I charge £35 for a diagnose including a print out.
Now I don't at all think I'm expensive, I started at £26/hour about 6 months ago. But after a few of my customers saying "your so cheap" I've put my prices up.
But with that, If I'm at your house for 4 hours, turn the light off but the fault is still there I will only ask say £10-£20 to cover diesel etc. Now what I will do though is ALWAYS give a printed "engineers report" of any work carried out which includes any advisory things that will need sorting soon.
Personally I subcontract to ALOT of local garages and I know the ones that I trust and ones that I think are competent, and one thing I will say is that hunting around for the cheaper hourly rate can often be false economy.
You pay for a van, diesel, tools and you. I charge:
Local call out including first hours labour £45
Labour per hour £35
If the work involved means turning off airbag lights etc then no extra charge, but if I turn up on a quoted job for say parking sensors and the owner says "can you just turn that airbag light off for us mate" then I charge £35 for a diagnose including a print out.
Now I don't at all think I'm expensive, I started at £26/hour about 6 months ago. But after a few of my customers saying "your so cheap" I've put my prices up.
But with that, If I'm at your house for 4 hours, turn the light off but the fault is still there I will only ask say £10-£20 to cover diesel etc. Now what I will do though is ALWAYS give a printed "engineers report" of any work carried out which includes any advisory things that will need sorting soon.
Personally I subcontract to ALOT of local garages and I know the ones that I trust and ones that I think are competent, and one thing I will say is that hunting around for the cheaper hourly rate can often be false economy.
A dealership pays for insurance, manufacturer required Point of Purchase materials, a large premises, a number of technicians, usually somewhere between 500000 and 1M in parts holding to cover most jobs, training staff, telephony, it communications, receptionists, managers, manufacturer specialist tools, not just your tech2 and that sort of thing, but the really anal stuff for removing the wheel hub retaining pin on a vectra or stuff. (Made that Up, dont know if veccy has a wheel hub retaining pin.)
They also subsidise the sales department. Contribute to the drivers, run a fleet of courtesy cars which need fuel and damage fixing, they also need insurance. Get the point?
carsounds_dan said:
I'm an auto electrician, a mobile one at that.
I charge:
Local call out including first hours labour £45
Labour per hour £35
If the work involved means turning off airbag lights etc then no extra charge, but if I turn up on a quoted job for say parking sensors and the owner says "can you just turn that airbag light off for us mate" then I charge £35 for a diagnose including a print out.
Now I don't at all think I'm expensive, I started at £26/hour about 6 months ago. But after a few of my customers saying "your so cheap" I've put my prices up.
But with that, If I'm at your house for 4 hours, turn the light off but the fault is still there I will only ask say £10-£20 to cover diesel etc. Now what I will do though is ALWAYS give a printed "engineers report" of any work carried out which includes any advisory things that will need sorting soon.
Personally I subcontract to ALOT of local garages and I know the ones that I trust and ones that I think are competent, and one thing I will say is that hunting around for the cheaper hourly rate can often be false economy.
I think your prices sound sensible, the very fact you go to the problem; convience makes your service worth more. Electronics are basically the most complicated bits of cars these days and do require specialist knowledge if your working on all sorts of cars, unlike the average dealership. The manufacturer manuals for toyotas for sure have detailed fault finding procedures for all electrical systems etc so the dealers techs won't be working blind like yourself depending on your knowledge.I charge:
Local call out including first hours labour £45
Labour per hour £35
If the work involved means turning off airbag lights etc then no extra charge, but if I turn up on a quoted job for say parking sensors and the owner says "can you just turn that airbag light off for us mate" then I charge £35 for a diagnose including a print out.
Now I don't at all think I'm expensive, I started at £26/hour about 6 months ago. But after a few of my customers saying "your so cheap" I've put my prices up.
But with that, If I'm at your house for 4 hours, turn the light off but the fault is still there I will only ask say £10-£20 to cover diesel etc. Now what I will do though is ALWAYS give a printed "engineers report" of any work carried out which includes any advisory things that will need sorting soon.
Personally I subcontract to ALOT of local garages and I know the ones that I trust and ones that I think are competent, and one thing I will say is that hunting around for the cheaper hourly rate can often be false economy.
A dealership getting cars in for service etc because the owner feels they need to because of the residuals or warantee and doing jobs like changing brake pads, oil, replacing knocking drop links, dampers etc and wanting over £50 a hour is a bit much, the talk of £115 an hour is nothing more than a piss take. These are jobs that are really easy when following instructions, no way are those skills required worth those amounts an hour.
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