Reply With QuoteI know that £150 (+VAT) should be expected, but it still shocks to see it written !!
I know we have had many examples of car main dealer rips offs in the past but here is my latest one, my car, a VW Passat start / stop needed a new battery, prices seemed al over the place but found a decent branded one at a local motor factors at £121 + VAT , 4 year warranty, slightly better spec than the OEM one in the car, took me 5 minutes to fit, just out of curiosity I phoned my local VAG garage to get a quote, there are two battery options sir, a economy one that has a 1 year warrenty £196 + VAT or there is the premium battery that has a 2 year warrenty for £396 + VAT and fitting for either of those is 1 hour labour @ £150 per hour. Quite scandelous in my opinion., I know the coffee and huge glass windows don't pay for themselves at a main dealer but bloody hell thats taking the piss.
Cheers..
Jase
I know that £150 (+VAT) should be expected, but it still shocks to see it written !!
Is that what dealer rates are now ?Originally Posted by blackal
I was basing my comment on what I remember Mercedes main dealer prices were several years ago (£120 +VAT)
With rising energy costs etc - had to be up around £150.
Oh yeah, I'll not disagree, it was more of a "wow" comment. I need to get out more.....
I know
Same with the BMW main dealer I use. I was in shock.at the labour rate of £150. I was saying most doctors etc don't get that. It obviously includes overheads, but it's still exorbitant.
The real hourly rate would be £300 per hour as it is likely they would fit it in less than 30 minutes!
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Really does shock !!!!!!!!!!
The low wear warning has come up on my mercedes, phoned my local dealer, front discs and pads £730, rear discs and pads £601 incl fitting.
My local independent Mercedes workshop, front and rear discs and pads £895 incl fitting.
Steve
I used to use a specialist independant MB workshop years ago, who were half the hourly rate of Main dealer and who sourced the discs from the foundry in Wales which supplied MB/BMW/VAG - just not in MB boxes. The brake parts were less than half the MB costs too.
They claimed to have the best mechanics, poached fom the main dealers- because despite charging half the rates- paid the mechanics more.
FTFY
I was more shocked by 1 hours labour for a few turns of a 10 mm spanner.
Probably includes the cost of coding since many newer cars need the battery coded to the vehicle (Even if yours doesnt its probably added as a standard charge).
Ex main dealer parts manager here, yes some parts are stupidly priced but it is not the dealer who sets prices. When my customer needed a battery I just sourced one from a local factors( Bosch decent warranty) and charged a little over what it cost me, 1/2 hour labour to fit and code battery to car, only time I used manufacturers batteries was warranty jobs.
Result was happy factors guy, happy customers and me assuming I got thanks and a smile from the customer.
Anything to do with cars, be it sales, service or parts, is just f**ked up at the moment and doesn't look like it's going to get better anytime soon - if ever.
Totally agree. I was quoted £650 inc vat for rear pads and discs by the main dealer. An Indie can get that down to £560 for OEM (to avoid a warranty dispute...) but it's the part cost that is killing things more than the labour when good aftermarkets are £400. The analogy I'd use is how the standing charge for utilities has shot up. Yes the unit charge has come down, but bills are still high as the suppliers are now charging an arm and a leg for providing a supply even before you use any!
I believe we have people who work/have worked with main dealers before so they may tell me I am mistaken but the work rate was calculated by dividing the Branch's overheads by the number of billable hours in the garage. Hence the stupid rates that try to match Harley Street consultants.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
It may be 10mm, but it could be 13mm. That's why they charge the big bucks!
Can someone explain coding the battery please?
Is it recoding the electronics because of disconnection from a battery or something else?
If it’s the former, you can just use jump leads to connect the new battery to the terminal leads whilst you swap them over.
It’s just to cover the cost of the coffee and biscuits along with the girl that delivers it. That’s so you can drool over the shiny things in the showroom from the inside rather than be a window licker out on the cold.
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I'd never use a main dealer for faults unless it was warranty work.
Last week, I needed a wheel bearing fault sorting on a Toyota. Went to my independent garage, and the owner took the car out and confirmed it was the issue. Booked me in a few days later. Took it in at 9.00 am and was done by 12.30 pm.
£37.50 for the bearing, £4.99 for sundries, and 2 hrs labour @ £48 per hour.
Great service and no stupid inflated prices. The garage is mostly old school mechanics with a few upcoming apprentices.
I use a 9v power pack battery connected to the terminals so that the voltage doesn't go too low if doing 'owt on the BM - has always worked for me.
However you should register it and recode so that the stats register will reset in the ECU and the new batterywont be charged in the same way as the old one - hence it shoudln't overcharge it.
B
Last edited by Brian; 5th December 2023 at 13:12.
Stop/start batteries now require coding to the car, something to do with charge rates/charge available I think, didn’t need to know so didn’t ask. Sorry not much help.
It’s to tell the car that a new battery has been fitted. Then it will adjust it’s charge rate accordingly to take into account the new capacity of the battery which maybe different from the old one.
Hi, I worried about this too, reading up on the battery websites it says you need to code the battery to the car when you change it so the cars battery monitoring systems don't throw a hissy fit, especially with modern cars and start stop systems apparently, I spoke to my indi VW mech and he said its pretty much bullshoot and he's never coded a car battery ever, however, what he does is attach a jump pack to the car when changing so the car doesn't know its been changed, but he said that this isn't strictly needed, when i changed mine I did have loads of amber warning lights come up and I thought uh oh, but most car forums have endless threads on this and the advice was to drive the car a mile or so and the lights would go out as the car sorts itself out, which is exactly what happened.
Cheers..
Jase
I had to have some work done last week on my Audi - Nox sensor. The hourly rate there is now £180. Way, way over £1,000 for the new sensor, in a young car, low mileage, albeit just out of warranty.
It does seem strange that cars have been successfully charging batteries for over a century and even your average £10 battery charger can manage it without damaging the battery, but modern cars have to be told exactly what new battery is being fitted or all hell will break loose!
Last edited by Dave+63; 6th December 2023 at 08:27.
I've started buying my spare parts from the German website Autodoc. They're OEM and a third the price.
hurray for crappy little second hand skodas.
new bulbs 11 quid for 2 from halfords. one went , only had the one spare so fitted it and went to get more. yay me!
bloke in front of me in the queue coincidentally buying identical twin pack but also wanted them fitted - 9 quid per bulb. so 29 quid in total.
18 quid for almost 5 minutes work - open bonnet, pop off light unit cap, twist and pull out light fitting, remove old bulb, replace new bulb, push and twist light fitting back in, pop cover back on - repeat for other side (i assume you dont need to re open an open bonnet) - close bonnet. put detritus in bin, finish fag lit just prior to start of operation fleece the mug.
it dawned on me the mug must have been driving about with one light gone and did bugger all about it until the other one blew - which is bloody stupid in winter in scotland - so mug he may be but sympathy none given.
unexpected pointless rant over
re battery - have only had to remove battery once in many years if skoda company and private car ownership - recently as it happens. negative off first and back on last - nothing exploded and nobody died. i did have to reset the clock which for the first time in my ownership shows almost the right time.
Had the same issue re our VW Up. New battery required at service at a ridiculous price.
I used our local Indy and they charged me half of that quoted by main dealer.
However, when it needed new discs and pads the Indy’s prices were virtually identical to main dealer. I used the main dealer for this job.
The problem is often trying to find out who actually makes the OEM parts, for instance brake components
I don't do a great deal of VW’s for obvious reasons but we did a battery a few months ago on a newish Golf. After fitting we had all sorts of errors codes and we required the BEM code off the battery. All double Dutch to us as its generally JLR stuff we do however a quick call to our mates who own a VW Indy in BATH and all was sorted. Seem to remember not needing the code but having to change the distinguishes one by a digit or something like that.
I find this really frustrating.
£650 for a new car battery!
Way more than a week's take home pay for the average wage.
Its a Passat not a Ferrari for pity's sake.
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Last edited by xxnick1975; 5th December 2023 at 21:06.
Agreed, people on a modest income (many pensioners for example) just won't be able to 'run' a car in the future when it costs hundreds of pounds to change a light/battery and they're just too unnecessarily complex for DIY.
Changed my battery this weekend. Knew not to even bother going the main dealer route, usual online mobile fitters were looking to charge £350 for the battery plus up to £50 to fit on the drive. Local place had cyber week deals on and I got the battery for £130 and fitted myself. Kept a power supply going to the computer whilst changing, no warning lights and seems to be good.
Ironic that a Ferrari dealer could be charging less than a VW dealer.
The owner of this 250 Lusso shared a few invoices on PH when it was getting restored and DK Engineering were charging him £95p/h. For context, this is one of the most highly regarded workshops in the vintage Ferrari world and they do everything from routine servicing to concourse standard restorations on some of the worlds most expensive cars.
It’s a con. Right to repair style legislation should be introduced. Even where there are technical reasons to “code” the battery it would be trivial to have a service menu in the car system to tell it you’d fitted a new battery.
Not many other walks of life where the “admin console” of a tech product is forbidden to the owner.
Dealers can offer “managed services” to those who don’t fancy their own minor repairs or replacements.
I expect it’s a generational thing too, I grew up being able to do routine stuff like this especially on the simple cars I had and teach my kids to do what they can or work it out, but as normal stuff gets apparently too complicated or not recommended for DIY, then the skills or will to have a go will fade away.
Cheers..
Jase
There is right to repair- it’s been in place since 1998. Vehicles electrical systems are now optimised to give the best charging rate any any given time which means that loads are constantly monitored and charged rates adjusted by that. If you had a situation where a customer could simply click a button and say that a battery had been done when it hadn’t ( people do silly things ) then the dealers would chasing their tales constantly. Dealers however need to charge a decent rate and stick by their own job times. They charge it would seem an hour to do any basic operation now which tbh I don’t generally charge for. If someone rang up today I’d get them to pop in to read the faults FOC and then rebook- dealers want an hour minimum for this which is a piss take
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If the battery doesn't need charging then the car, in order to conform to the regulations, musn't charge it; hence not waste the energy and improving mpg and emissions - unintended consequences....ahem....engineering workaround caused in most cases by our really angelic politiicians. What do they care about pensioner citizens (they who are all really wealthy because of the baby boom).
B
If the battery has not been registered properly then this may cause issues down the line as the car systems may be compensating for a previously duff battery and the fitment will not be registered or recognised.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
If a battery is fully charged surely it will only take a minimal current, will this really affect mpg?
£150 + VAT labour for changing a battery.
I paid £50 labour yesterday and they removed a severely stuck break drum, cleaned all the rust from inside it, fitted new pins and fitted new nuts on both rear break drums. Tested it all worked properly and phoned me up to come get it.
There seems to be a fault in the logic where cars can tell the state of a battery when it's failing but not when it is good. There is perhaps something in registering the type of battery but after that it's just basic stuff depending on the voltage. As long as you are replacing like for like and maintain the voltage while changing there shouldn't be any issues.
30mins for a battery change!!!??? Ignore, just read the above posts to explain why... :0)
Last edited by redmonaco; 6th December 2023 at 12:19.
Surely if you don’t tell the BMS that a new battery has been fitted the charging system will hammer the battery, shortening its life and burning fuel unnecessarily
Excuse my total ignorance on the matter but can't the BMS tell whether a battery behaves like a new one and an older one? What are the differences?
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
How does the charging system 'hammer' the battery? Doesn't it just present a voltage (14V or so) as a simple alternator would? My battery lasted ~15 years w/o anything so complcated.
I think they are too clever for their own good, they rely on look up tables and not actual measurements
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