Rip off garages alive and well.

[Fastpedeller]

I've asked this on PH before and not got a response, but I'll try again.
Does anyone know if this is a rip-off........
"We need to check your AC, it's ££££." It seems logical to me that it either works and produces coldness, or it doesn't. I can understand it may not be as cold as it should be, but there should be a measure of that - not just an arbitrary "we'll check it anyway at £££"
This also raises the question of the AC 'service' to ensure you don't get legionnaires disease - now surely that's a scare tactic, as any condensed moisture goes out from the underside of the car, and 'checking' the compressor, re-doing the gas or other such doesn't have any effect because it's the 'other side' of the heat exchanger. Unless they take out the drainage system and clean it (unlikely). I'd prefer all the gas seals on my AC to be untouched until there IS an issue - undoing them to 'check' is just likely to introduce a leak. Or maybe it's just a 'paper test' anyway?
Someone must know??

[Rat_Fink_67]

jamoor said:

I am not a qualified mechanic, I haven't been trained by anyone to be one either.

I do have a fully equipped workshop and do all of my work on my car myself. I can say being a mechanic isn't exactly a skilled job.

I wish I'd have known this sooner, I'd have just bought you the Kuga I've been working on for you to diagnose the intermittent LIN bus fault on the reverse camera. There's a twin clutch unit on a Powershift to do shortly as well, seeing as it's not a skilled job to install though I may as well get you to do that too

I love threads like this, and it's no wonder all the decent guys have either left the trade or want to leave it. Nobody wants to pay a decent price for a decent job anymore, so the pay stays low and you end up with minimum wage kids working at garages.

Edited by Rat_Fink_67 on Wednesday 15th November 10:17

[Shuvi McTupya]

Nanook said:

So the hourly rate will need to increase to cover these costs.

So now your local garage want £90/hour to change your pads and discs, the reason being he needs to cover the cost of all his computing and diagnostic equipment.

We'd then have threads and threads of people complaining that they just want an oil change, brakes, bushes, whatever, and they're being charged a fortune.

I disagree, that is like asking a painter to paint your bedroom and he includes the costs of erecting scaffolding as he had to buy some for another job so now he charges everyone for scaffolding whether it is required or not.

[Shuvi McTupya]

Nanook said:

I'm still not seeing the comparison tbh. DId you spend years at college and learning on the job for a qualification that provided you with the knowledge to pass to the customers?

If you're good at something, you don't do it for free.

Not at college , but I worked for a blind company to learn the skills.

Let's face it, fitting blinds isn't rocket science, but neither is changing brake pads and spark plugs etc.

[Little Pete]

jamoor said:

I am not a qualified mechanic, I haven't been trained by anyone to be one either.

I do have a fully equipped workshop and do all of my work on my car myself. I can say being a mechanic isn't exactly a skilled job. They do however have overheads that need to be recovered but charging £120ph is scandalous for the work they do. Even £20 is too much

Most pointless post of the thread. Most people can't repair their own cars and have to take it to a garage. Get on your local Facebook page and ask for recommendations. There are thousands of local independents around the country doing good work at a reasonable price, find one and stick with them. It's true there are some bad garages around but in my experience there are a lot of bad customers too!

[SonicShadow]

Good luck with any warranty work with parts you've supplied yourself. At least if a shop supplies and fits it's a single point of contact.

[Shuvi McTupya]

SonicShadow said:

Good luck with any warranty work with parts you've supplied yourself. At least if a shop supplies and fits it's a single point of contact.

I totally agree that I would not expect a mechanic to offer a warrantee on parts that I supply!

[C70R]

f1nn said:

There is just so much bullst spouted on threads like these.

Suspension belt, yeah of course...

Lots of people who freely admit they know nothing about the car, the fault, the parts, have no tools or facilities and no ability to diagnose or solve the problem, yet are experts when it comes to the price.

I can't wait to hear the myriad of tales about how the main dealer wanted more for an oil change than what it cost to do it yourself using oil from the pound shop.

FFS, buying your own parts to save a couple of quid...how tight do you have to be!

I get the sense this won't go well for you..

I fully accept that some markup goes into parts prices to cover sourcing time/effort and contingency etc. However, when it's such a blatant cash cow for garages (the hundreds of examples in this thread alone are testament to that), it's easy to see why anyone clued-up has such a negative view of the industry.

[coldel]

Shuvi McTupya said:

Not at college , but I worked for a blind company to learn the skills.

Let's face it, fitting blinds isn't rocket science, but neither is changing brake pads and spark plugs etc.

But if you balls up fitting some blinds it wont result in your car plowing into a crowd of people because your brakes failed ;-)

OK was a bit flippant but I think that post back further up about mechanics not charging more than £20 because its so easy was probably one of the funniest things I have read on here, ever.

[Shuvi McTupya]

Nanook said:

I thought your point was that it's not fair to charge customers extra, if the fancy diagnostic equipment is required, that should be covered in the hourly rate?

So you're saying that the person that needs that equipment used on their car shouldn't pay for it, and neither should anyone else?

I'm beginning to see why your business venture didn't work out...

What I said was that a company needs to buy the tools to do the jobs they are doing.
Just because a mechanic has bought a shiny new set of ramps doesn't mean he can justify charging more than he did with his old ramps. He can try of course, and some people will pay.

Let's be honest here, garages have trainees on £8 an hour but you still pay £70 an hour for their time doing the basic grunt work.
Let's say a new diagnostic kit cost £1k. Is it really reasonable to charge £100 every time it gets used, it is not like it is only good for 10 or 20 uses.

They don't do that with any other tools!

[Shuvi McTupya]

coldel said:

But if you balls up fitting some blinds it wont result in your car plowing into a crowd of people because your brakes failed ;-)

OK was a bit flippant but I think that post back further up about mechanics not charging more than £20 because its so easy was probably one of the funniest things I have read on here, ever.

Very true, fitting blinds etc isn't likely to burn the house down or kill anybody
But how many garages are actually found liable if your brakes fail and you kill someone? I genuinely do not know if that is a thing or not, I guess it might be!

[HedgeyGedgey]

Calling all garages rip offs is a bit harsh, some people do need to earn a living. Tools cost thousands, ramps cost thousands and the diagnostic machines are very expensive. Had a problem with a car recently, misfiring really badly thought I'd plug in my laptop and see if there were any fault codes. Only cylinder 3 misfire, bugger. I then decided in my wisdom to activate injector 3 through my laptop (it has that function) to find out that the injector had just popped off the rail ever so slightly and fuel was pissing out. I wouldnt have to guess that a garage or even specalist would take a few hours of their "knowledge" to work out what the issue was as it wasn't clear at all

[coldel]

Most businesses assuming they are not some dodgy side road business have to pay national insurance on top of employee salaries, annual corporation tax bills, liability insurance, they have overheads of rent, electricity, water, they pay tax to the local authority for services to the place they rent. They pay their staff as discussed, they have to make large investments in tool sets and pay for updates to software that needs to cover every type and make of car when running diagnostics which is very expensive. They have to pay their accountants to submit their numbers to the government each year, they pay for ongoing maintenance to their tools and equipment, they may have a marketing budget to cover, they probably have backroom staff such as staff that do the administration - honestly the list goes on and on it really is a bit more than they pay some young mechanic a tenner and charge the customer £80 therefore its a rip off.

Not having a go at any individual here but I really do think some of the comments have simplified what running a business constitutes and how the pricing is subsequently deemed a 'rip off'

[Alex_225]

I have experienced the whole big chain thing of trying to sell you things you don't need. Took my car in for a slow puncture, turned out to simply be a fault with the valve. Didn't stop the lad who swapped the valve telling me that the tyre should really be changed as driving it with such low pressure has caused damage. I just asked him to re-fit the tyre and that was that as it was nonsense. I suspect a lot of people would have gone along with that though.

Yipper said:

There is so much competition out there now, it's almost impossible to run a garage without ripping a few people off every week. That's where the profit comes from.

I suspect you're right, a lot of garages probably do tout a bit for extra business.

That said I use a small family run place for servicing and MOTs, they are actually the total opposite of this. My aunt for example took her old 207 in to have new discs and pads fitted as the local dealership advised they needed doing. Booked in with the local garage who looked at the brakes, cleaned the discs and said the discs were fine. They could have just gone along with it and swapped it over but actually advised her properly.

As a result, they get business from at least four cars within the family.

[Emanresu]

Shuvi McTupya said:

What I said was that a company needs to buy the tools to do the jobs they are doing.
Just because a mechanic has bought a shiny new set of ramps doesn't mean he can justify charging more than he did with his old ramps. He can try of course, and some people will pay.

Let's be honest here, garages have trainees on £8 an hour but you still pay £70 an hour for their time doing the basic grunt work.
Let's say a new diagnostic kit cost £1k. Is it really reasonable to charge £100 every time it gets used, it is not like it is only good for 10 or 20 uses.

They don't do that with any other tools!

Do you really think you buy a diagnostic computer at £1,000 and that’s the end of it.

Something at £1,000 will be incredibly basic and become outdated in no time.

Proper diagnostic gear with scope and probe functions costs many many thousands of pounds. Then you have to buy updates for it regularly as the manufacturer updates their software and brings out new models of car. Then you need hours of training to use the new software and more training as new technology is introduced in cars. It’s impossible to get your investment back unless you charge it to the car you’re using it on.

Maybe back in the 70s or 80s, you learned to fix cars and that was the end of it, you were a mechanic. Now it is a never ending cycle of training and buying new tools.

If I have something in the garage, say a Porsche that I need a special tool for, which I may end up only using 3-4 times, I can’t add it on to the price of your oil change or before you know it, I’ll be charging everyone £250-300 an hour for labour.

[xjay1337]

Emanresu said:

Shuvi McTupya said:

I have no issue with what tools a mechanic decides to use but when I get the bill I don't expect to see:

Hourly rate:£70
Tools used:
Spanner £5
Screwdriver £5
Computer £80
Ramps £50
Parts: 100% mark up

Tools cost money and they have to be paid for somehow so the mechanic can make some profit. Some diagnostic computers run into many thousands. The training to use them to their full potential is also expensive. Finding a canbus fault could take hours and these hours have to be paid for. If mechanics and techs didn’t get paid for fault finding work, they would stick to easy money jobs like oil and pad changes.

Then charge an hourly rate appropriately.
I do some VAG diagnosis stuff. Never has it taken me more than an hour perhaps to find a fault.
Everything is guided these days.

I'm all for paying a fair price for parts and labour.
But sometimes if an alternator for example is £250 from the garage or £120 online you can't blame someone for buying the cheaper option.

Of course, you'd lose the labour warranty you tend to get . But that's a risk you'd need to decide to take.

It takes approx 10 mins to do a full scan of most cars and £80 is ridiculous.
If they actually spend an hour investigating etc then that's value for money. What usually happens is the tech gets the scan going and goes and has a st or a coffee.

[Little Pete]

HedgeyGedgey said:

Calling all garages rip offs is a bit harsh, some people do need to earn a living. Tools cost thousands, ramps cost thousands and the diagnostic machines are very expensive. Had a problem with a car recently, misfiring really badly thought I'd plug in my laptop and see if there were any fault codes. Only cylinder 3 misfire, bugger. I then decided in my wisdom to activate injector 3 through my laptop (it has that function) to find out that the injector had just popped off the rail ever so slightly and fuel was pissing out. I wouldnt have to guess that a garage or even specalist would take a few hours of their "knowledge" to work out what the issue was as it wasn't clear at all

So it's harsh to suggest garages are a rip off but ok to imply at the end of the post?
We charge £45.00 for a diagnostic test. That includes one hours labour. That's how much your repair would have cost. Hardly a few hours!

[crankedup]

njw1 said:

Yipper said:

There is so much competition out there now, it's almost impossible to run a garage without ripping a few people off every week. That's where the profit comes from.

If a garage is honest and does a good job that's where the profit comes from, if a garage needs to rip someone off to make money then they are doing something wrong imo. If they think it's ok to rip someone off then they deserve to go bust.

Indeed, 100% agreed and hopefully rip off merchants will quickly go bust. Can’t compete so need to rip off, absolute stupidity.

[Emanresu]

xjay1337 said:

Then charge an hourly rate appropriately.
I do some VAG diagnosis stuff. Never has it taken me more than an hour perhaps to find a fault.
Everything is guided these days.

I'm all for paying a fair price for parts and labour.
But sometimes if an alternator for example is £250 from the garage or £120 online you can't blame someone for buying the cheaper option.

Of course, you'd lose the labour warranty you tend to get . But that's a risk you'd need to decide to take.

It takes approx 10 mins to do a full scan of most cars and £80 is ridiculous.
If they actually spend an hour investigating etc then that's value for money. What usually happens is the tech gets the scan going and goes and has a st or a coffee.

That’s not proper diagnostic work. That’s just scanning fault codes. My 5 year old son even knows how to plug in a Bluetooth dongle and pull them from torque app on a tablet.

Proper diagnostic work involves using the equipment to measure voltages, reading graphs, using maths to work out voltage drops and resistances over a length of wiring loom.

Sure, anyone can plug a computer in and read the codes but that’s not what the diagnostic charge is for.

[TekoTime]

My sister in law bought a 2004 Mondeo 2.0 from a dealership without test driving it because surely a dealership wouldn't sell a bad car. Turned out the engine was rough as guts. She took it to her local garage in rural New Zealand, miles from anywhere. They said it needed new spark plugs, but they're special plugs so they need to be ordered In. A week later the six plugs turned up, they installed them, and told her the car was ready. They charged about £350 for six spark plugs on a four cylinder engine and didn't even check to see if that was the problem. It wasn't.

This is when I heard about the whole ordeal. I have a kitcar with a 2.0 Duratec so I've got a bunch of spares in my cupboard. It turned out it was the coil pack, which had cost me £25. I also had a bunch of spare plugs that had cost me £5 each. I was a bit miffed that I wasn't the first person they asked, given my knowledge of that engine.

On the other hand, the other SiL has asked if I could fix the head gasket on the Holden Vectra she bought from the same dealership two weeks ago. She's going to reject the car instead.