BMW Stealer taking the P***

[l5foye]

A friend left his X5 in the dealers for fitting of new front brake discs ( to cure judder) The discs were priced at £68 each. On collecting the X5, he received a bill for almost £500. He asked how this amount was arrived at.
Answer - £38 for road testing vehicle to check for judder.
£x's for removing wheel and fitting discs
£136 for discs
£x's for 'refacing' brake pads (?)
£x's for copper ease
£x's for safety spray (?)
£x's for refitting wheel
£38 for road testing vehicle to see if judder was cured -
making a grand total of almost £500 ( £493 to be exact).
Is there a school of creative accounting for garages?

 

[CLK320Vert]

A friend left his X5 in the dealers for fitting of new front brake discs ( to cure judder) The discs were priced at £68 each. On collecting the X5, he received a bill for almost £500. He asked how this amount was arrived at.
Answer - £38 for road testing vehicle to check for judder.
£x's for removing wheel and fitting discs
£136 for discs
£x's for 'refacing' brake pads (?)
£x's for copper ease
£x's for safety spray (?)
£x's for refitting wheel
£38 for road testing vehicle to see if judder was cured -
making a grand total of almost £500 ( £493 to be exact).
Is there a school of creative accounting for garages?

There is, BMW $tealerships...thats horrific £500.. ..exactly why I left the BMW marque..

 

[Seamster15]

Sadto say it, but that sounds about right, the X5 is not a buget car.... but I understand your thoughts.

 

[jeremytaylor]

There's a BMW dealership near where I work, and they clearly drive customer cars to the sandwich bar to get lunch. I pressume this is their 'test drive'.

 

[Steve_Perry]

Crikey! and I thought the Merc Stealerships were bad.

S.

 

[Rose Chap]

Whilst I'm in no way defending the BMW dealership, do we really think that if you took a new ML to a MB dealership to get the brake discs replaced the bill would be significantly less? I doubt it very much...

 

[Shude]

Well I have to say that it comes as a huge surprise to me that a big, heavy expensive car costs more to maintain than a light, cheap car. Who would have imagined that?

The sooner people realise this the better! There are way too many chavs blasting about in wrecked BMWs and other prestigious brands, people need to understand that status costs money, that's why it's status!

I had to chuckle when it cost more to repair the same aircon fault on a renault espace than on my ol' 202, mixture of oem and hella parts

 

[Fady]

Yes big expensive cars cost more to maintain - which is what one might expect. It's just that they also provide more opportunity for dealers to take the p***. So pricing for service items start to be determined by what the dealer thinks they can get away as opposed to what the actual costs are, i.e. profit margins are bigger. This is one of the reasons I have with previous cars simply bought the discs, pads, back boxes etc. from the dealer's parts department and had them fitted elsewhere. But then a lot of people would find this an inconvenience and would rather just pay.

 

[Vips]

Come on guys, lets get real? I admit that with a prestige car, it is paramount to have the service carried out by the stealers. However, I don't understand why one would want to have the piss taken out of them by the stealers for items like brake pads/disks etc which are not service items. A good indi can carry out these tasks at a fraction of the cost.

This pees me off the most. My friend took his X5 for servicing. His bill was 560.00. He than realised the stealers had charged him 150.00 to replace and fit 1 wiper at the front and one on the back!!! To cap it off the front wiper was put on the wrong way round!!

 

[Rory]

I'm sure many people just pay the bill - often it'll be a senior managers car and their company will pay the bill without question. When I worked for a company that owned its own cars I never once had a bill queried.

However you can be pretty certain that where the car is owned and maintained by a leasing company, then the dealers don't get away with these charges.

 

[pineer35]

if you cant stand the heat .
keep out of the kitchen ???

 

[fuzzer]

A friend left his X5 in the dealers for fitting of new front brake discs ( to cure judder) The discs were priced at £68 each. On collecting the X5, he received a bill for almost £500. He asked how this amount was arrived at.
Answer - £38 for road testing vehicle to check for judder.
£x's for removing wheel and fitting discs
£136 for discs
£x's for 'refacing' brake pads (?)
£x's for copper ease
£x's for safety spray (?)
£x's for refitting wheel
£38 for road testing vehicle to see if judder was cured -
making a grand total of almost £500 ( £493 to be exact).
Is there a school of creative accounting for garages?

at the end of the day , its not what they charge for the parts of the process thats being moaned at. ITs the £100 an hour labour rates. Im sure they did everything above and you can't expect someone to work for nothing.

but , really .. the labour rates should be hovering about £60 which would have made a significant difference to the bill. Something thats annoying is how the work isnt graded to a skill level. Im sure it was prob the workshop junior that did this work as changing the discs and pads isnt difficult with the correct equiptment and procedure to follow .. so maybe a graded labor rate would be more appropriate.

ahh well , nothing we can do about it ...