Reply With QuoteGive Darren or Daryl at Protek near Tadley a call as I’m sure he can do better than that. A decent indie with all the equipment and ex Mercedes technicians, they looked after my C, E and SL and CLK and couldn’t fault them
This is more of a rant than advice. Just had a mail from MB saying our car is due its service in the next Month. So looked on their website, put the details in/mileage etc and was informed I needed an "A Service" which is the cheapest service largely consisting of an oil and filter change and some random checks to make sure the seat belts, tyres, lights etc are all working. For the 1.5 hours work they are wanting £450! Now I have had main dealer services on BMW and Audis in the past but don't remember them being that expensive for very little work that I could do easily myself.
Any recommendations on places near to Reading that I can get it serviced at a more reasonable cost (whilst maintaining warranty etc?)
Rant over..... Thanks for listening
Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk
Give Darren or Daryl at Protek near Tadley a call as I’m sure he can do better than that. A decent indie with all the equipment and ex Mercedes technicians, they looked after my C, E and SL and CLK and couldn’t fault them
Go back and ask for a service plan, my cost dropped by 75%
Cheers chaps. Will give both avenues a try now I have picked my jaw up from the floor....
Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk
Those vast glass and marble showrooms don’t pay for themselves you know.
Cheers..
Jase
Oh I know. But even allocating £100 for some overpriced oil, a filter and a couple of o rings or washers, £350 is quite a bit for an hour and a half's labour (which is probably in reality less than 45 mins actual labour).....
Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk
And Ive just looked into the service plan on the Web, that works out at ~ £500 per service. So either next year's type B service is exponentially more or it's an easy way to get even more out of the customer and also pay up front for the pleasure.....
I think I'll call them In the morning and see if there's wiggle room
Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk
The service plan is the way to go. Labour is around £150+vat per hour IIRC.
We bought an ML at just below 40,000 miles; the 40k service was over £1000; that was back in 2014!
They’re not cheap cars to service but overall, we’ve found them to be a relatively cheap car to run, we’ve had very little go wrong with any of ours.
Mine was in yesterday to have a diagnostic for a faulty DRL. That will be £99 please sir and by the way we couldn’t work out what is wrong with it
Merc main dealers managed to cock something up at every service and MoT on mine. I’ll be getting rid and won’t go back as even the response from their executive customer service team was appalling. The servicing costs are even more outrageous when still required yearly when many other premium brands are now bi -yearly or mileage based.
Sorry guys but you’re wrong about service plans, I mean that with no disrespect, they’re the biggest rip off ever.
Show me a vehicle with a service plan and I’ll show you a car that’s been serviced poorly.
You only have to run the maths to work out what happens.
Im talking VAG, Ford, Merc, BMW and just about anything.
Use an independent. Not cheap, but cheaper. Alas no free coffee while you wait.
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Originally Posted by Franky Four Fingers
My B service was £1800, 4 services over 2 years is £2400 total. so how is that a rip off?
I also got a quote from two independent's, they were more expensive than the main dealer because it is a low volume car.
All routine car servicing is a complete rip off, change the oil, check the codes (but any repairs aren't included) and kick the tyres, most dealers only check the brakes on one side and don't even take the wheels off, they might sent you a stupid video telling you you tyre condition and break pad wear.
The only reason I don't do my merc myself is that it is under warranty.
Unless you don't have to pay personally then avoid main dealers.
Plenty of decent indie garages, mostly run by ex main dealer techs.
You don't even need main dealers for warranty work.
As has been said already, someone has to pay for the showrooms and free coffee.
Sent from my SM-T590 using TZ-UK mobile app
Im sure garages have three main profit centres, car sales , parts and service. My experience of Honda service was sufficient for me to move brand’s despite having owned 4 Hondas. Quoted £1600 for a/c pump bearing failure, told them I was going Indie , within an hour the service manager offered to do the job for £700! Outrageous
Steve
They are nice cars to work on and service parts are entirely reasonable. I did all the filters and the plugs on my wife's old but beloved B170 yesterday, plugged in the OBD. checked all the levels and kicked the tyres, I think it was a tad under two hours in total. It is going in to a local garage for tracking and a rattle as the wear patterns at the front suggested a bit too much toe out, but that's 25 quid. As for parts. ebay does the job: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/291799007723 for example.
Financially, if the service was done correctly then yeh, they’re fine but from my experience over the years service plans aren’t worth the money.
Going back a few years ago JLR were doing service plans for 3-5 years for stupid money, when you considered the price of some of the new 0W/30 oils which can be in excess of £20 per litre there is no way it was financially viable for the dealer to make money on them. Of course they were pushed by the sales teams but the reality was that the service team were on the losing end.
I have frequently seen mould and all sorts of detritus in pollen filters which should have been replaced each year- I’ve seen air filters badly blocked, I’ve seen oil and fuel filter so tight that you have to get heavy with them....all not necessary when components are replaced frequently.
We can tell within minutes if a car has had a service plan....it’s a sad truth but shortcuts are made.
Ive seen this time and time again and not just of JLR products
I went Indy for mine (Autoclass in Milton Keynes) cost me £350 for a 9g gearbox service (basically a new GB sump, gaskets and oil) which was way cheaper than the local main stealer. Everything was recorded on the electronic service book and included a loan car.
A service plan can work out expensive, especially if you have the original 7g gearbox which needs a service every 40k miles.
I had a service ( oil change and filters) on my Harley. £750 !!
Apparently a mechanic ( sorry, technician) charges at £185 per hour and when you use the machine to pump out brake fluid that’s the equivalent of two hours labour.
If i can get hold of the schedule (have you got autodata?) ill check next time
No we use snap-on which is Haynes pro
I had a 1.4 tsi golf with 80000 miles on it that had been serviced on a 2 yearly service plan I noticed after a few weeks it was using a fair bit of oil I’m sure this wouldn’t have been happening if the oil was changed yearly a lesson learnt
BMWs are about £300 for same service. I took out a service plan which covers first two services, end of warranty check and MOT. It saves me approx £200 over a normal service cost. I also change the oils every 12mths (main service intervals are every 24 mths). They are done by an Indie at around half the price of a main dealer. Once out of warranty I’ll just use the indie.
They just do what many IT support teams do: Get a tool to do the job exponentially faster but log time as if you did it manually "to pay for the tool" (cost never goes down when tool is paid off). The corporate version of work smart not hard
Last edited by Scepticalist; 6th August 2021 at 11:02.
Thanks, thinking about it I might have access to that.
Independent Merc place in Reading? Go to Star Motor Services - ok they’re technically in Caversham but close enough.
I take my SL there and the B service was less than your quote for an A service.
They have all the STAR diagnostic stuff etc.
No affiliation, have just used them a few times and they know their stuff.
We used Colin Fearns in Richmond - just find an independent with Mercedes trained techies.
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."
'Populism, the last refuge of a Tory scoundrel'.
They admitted as much. Won’t be going there again.
Taking your car to a main dealer really should be the best thing for your car, they’re factory trained, have access to all of the latest technical bulletins and info, have the correct diagnosis equipment along with special tools. In the last 10 plus years though that really isn’t the case, more and more older and experienced techs have jumped ship because of the pressures and ethics of dealers. You can’t lose 100 years of experience from any business with people who care and replace them almost monthly with people with little experience and who more importantly don’t care.
I use https://www.hampshireservicecentre.co.uk/ for my SLK 32 AMG -- not too far from Reading.
Cheers,
Nigel
See adigra's magnum opus thread for an example....
https://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread.p...th-the-outcome
If it breaks because of poor servicing the customer will still have to pay to get it fixed, there is no accountability or responsibility any more.
I regularly get CHMSL's back from JLR as warranty returns, when we do the route cause analysis, it is always a duff alternator spike, you would think the dealers could recognise that as it wont be the only bit of the car that is buggered.
How come they fail, you’d think they would be able to cope with something like that?
I guess if the rest of the car is running/operating ok with nothing logged they’ll just replace what’s necessary but yes I get your point.
I decided to get a 5 year service plan with my new AMG C43, costs about £33 a month and will include MOT’s in 3 years when due.
Seems a reasonable price to me at around £400 a year for all servicing?
If you want a proper old school mechanic with very good pricing, have a look at Mel’s Motors in Bracknell.
Mel is brilliant & use him for all the stuff we don’t want to pay Porsche for. He’s really good at what he does and still does mechanics vs simply replacing bits until it works.
Are these service plans truly ‘all servicing for 3 years ‘ or whatever? I got caught out when I bought a few years old VW which was sold with a 2 year free service plan included, I do a lot of miles and the first couple of services came up and all was good, when the 3rd service came up at 18 months I was told that it wasn’t included, the way the plan was set up it assumed one service a year, so the 2 year plan was in fact 2 services. I did have a moan that the way it is worded was misleading but fell on deaf ears.
Cheers..
Jase
£20 a litre for oil! When I ran a parts dept I bought it in bulk that came out at approx £1.40 a litre, we still charged £12.00 at servicing but prices are getting silly, ex employer raised hourly rates from £70 to £110, techs got £1.00 an hour rise, who gets rich there.
Some of those prices are eye-watering! And I thought my Golf service was dear yesterday at £417, (including brake fluid replacement and air con service/refill). Mind you, they did advise that it will need a timing belt and water-pump replacement in November, even though it's only done 25,000 miles since new! Apparently VW specify inspect at 60,000 miles then check every 20,000 and replace as necessary, maximum 140,000; or 5 years whichever comes first. Just shy of a grand that will be!
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
When you're looking for cheaper servicing, you also need to factor in the impact on resale value caused by not having a full main dealer service history. Some buyers - myself included - would not even consider buying a car without it.
Any warranty claims (in my experience) are also much more likely to be successful if you can show that the service history has been entirely main dealer.
The (relatively small) amount saved by getting the service done by an independent may cost you a lot more in the long run.
New car warranty’s aren’t currently affected by lack of dealer service....it’s been like that since the 90s
This is who I was going to suggest. I've not been there but they have a good rep on the owners forum. Alternatively Wayne Gates in Harrow or PCS in Horndean a bit further afield.
Be careful on the service plans. If you’re on longlife servicing, you might only have one service every two years which might be a bit galling if you’re paying monthly for a plan.
I gave up on mercs a while back partly due to the servicing costs. Wouldn’t buy a German car these days. Japanese for me - more “honourable “ I find.
Ditto for this, but the car has to be under 12 months old to take out the service plan. Well it did a few years ago when I enquired.
You will definitely be able to find an independent specialist that will at least halve your service bill quote.
The cost of the parts is the very reason I gave up driving Mercs and BMWs. Every time something would go wrong, the parts were sold at extortionate prices, and in the end I just thought they weren't worth keeping any longer.
I used to be hung up on getting the dealer stamps,on my own stuff for the resale and when buying used,from personal experience and all this stuff was main dealer for the brand and invoiced,
Volvo. Cabin filter invoiced twice in the paperwork. I changed it and it was absolutely minging had a date on it from 2008 this was leat year. Car was manufactured in 2008
Volvo. Same car, 2008 V70 D5, fuel filter invoice twice,car conked out with fuel starvation so i changed it as a start point, filter was dated 2013 but invoice was 2018, black as sin. My belief is it wasnt swapped at last invoice.
Fiat. Fitted Crosland air filter at service and invoiced for Genuine, £27 from fiat, i bought same filter to swap my self for £4.06.Crosland is Eurocarparts own brand.
Jaguar, Air filters on X351 invoiced and not swapped
There will be other stuff, and i bet this kind of thing happens a lot on the harder jobs, the stuff most people just dont look for, i didnt look till i busted them, Brake fluid,PAS other scheduled stuff, targets to meet for the bean counter, this bush/pad/pipe etc, wasnt needed and not done either.
i have lost all faith in the Gin Palace.
Air filters must be a money maker. I bought a 2006 BMW with full dealer history. Last service in Dec 2020. Gave it a service a month ago and the indie guy I use showed me a filter with 2016 date stamp.
Was that the date it was fitted or the manufacturing date?
As they don’t have those fitted stickers anymore I’m guessing the later
You can’t for my Merc, I tried
Is this sort of price not par for the corse on a Merc?
Posting Permissions
