$tealer text me to say I was due a service, so I dutifully rang them to enquire. Yes Mr Wright blah blah, so I enquire as to how much, I say that’s rather a lot, dont mess me around what’s the best price. So he immediately drops it 30 quid. I then ask what it includes, it’s just oil and filter he tells me and the usual once over. Anyone fancy a guess?

140 (after the drop)

What Mazda is it?
I reckon you’ll be looking at around £350, maybe more.

My sister had a Mitsubishi Shogun Pinin and that was £400 for a service!

Have a quick ring around including budget places like Hull and Bradford (no disrespect those places – stuff is cheaper) and then tell em to price match on the proviso that you’re visiting Hull for work in the imminent future.

Our Volvo XC 60 is expecting is annual in a couple of months time, so I popped into the dealer to find out its service schedule. He said they were the cheapest. I said, yeah, really, with being a main stealer. They will carry out an oil/ air/ pollen/ fuel filter change and oil. Do the usual checks. Update all the software and supply a years breakdown cover, all in including VAT was………………..£250………
As for Mazda, I think they are cheaper than Ford, as a mate has just got a 6, after PXing his Mondeo and he said it was less……

Just had my Audi done for £80 that was new filters (oil and air pollen didn’t need doing) new full synthetic designed for audi oil (im sure its a scam), and a check over of the rest, whilst i waited.out come will need new tyres and front pads in the near future,

£270

Oil and air filters and new tub of oil for my MX5 were £28 from the factors.

I’d say about £350 as a nice little service number.

Quite interested to know. Currently thinking of changing one of the cars and the Mazda 3 or the new CX3 are right up there on the possibles list!

180 after the drop! Just oil and filter!!!!

My abarth 500 esseesse costs more than that every 6k. Think yourself lucky 🙂

So you’ve an hour/hour & a half of their time, 5+ ltrs of oil, filter, the Mazda knowledge, and support if anything goes wrong, i.e. 12 months warranty, possible bit of Mazda/Dealer Goodwill if anything BIG goes wrong and you think £180 is expensive?

I pay in excess of 25k per year for access to all the Manufacturer systems, Tech support etc…….

These Guys need to make their money somehow, yes I agree there are some Cowboys out there, and yes a lot of them are main dealers, but £180 for a service aint expensive!

The parts are 47 quid.

More like £15 and then a wodge of profit + lots of lovely labour, probably not doing half of the “checks” and then VAT to rub salt in the wounds.

Lol Andy, yearly service costs are a piss take, you only need to look at the actual cost of the few parts and the piss easy nature of the work involved to know that.

Genuinely the parts are that price, it’s some fancy low ash dpf specific oil which is 39 quid from the spares shop I use, priced up correctly with my reg, the dealer told me it was a 102 quid. Please justify that andydicko.

When it came to work experience at school I told them I wanted to be an engineer (piss poor careers advice at my school) and they sent me to our local Citroen dealer while my friend who didn’t went to a local engineering place 🙄

It was actually fun though and I have a lot of memories, one was managing to do a service in 20 minutes from wheels up to wheels down on a xantia. To be fair that did involve checking around the car and lubing hinges and checking tyre pressures so more than I have seen other garages do in a ‘service’

I’ll do it for a ton. But I’m not a qualified mechanic.

You pay peanuts etc.

Genuinely the parts are that price, it’s some fancy low ash dpf specific oil which is 39 quid from the spares shop I use, priced up correctly with my reg, the dealer told me it was a 102 quid. Please justify that andydicko.

Edit- apologies, am on phone so completely msread that 😳

andyl look at the posts above you 😉

Woh there moody, look at the post a few above yours AndyL!
I’m well aware of how it works price was, as it’s partly what I do for a living when buying materials, but when I’ve already received a reduction and ask for a breakdown of costs I really don’t expect to be told it’s 100 odd quid when clearly ad you state they’ll be getting far cheaper than I could anyway.

Sorry, just spotted it. Apologies 😳

180 after the drop! Just oil and filter!!!!

And labour (plus buildings etc etc).

What would an hour of your time at work cost?

Servicing costs get my goat because the high costs either rip people off who don’t know any better,force people to go to dodgy places or just neglect their cars so they then run poorly and cause problems for subsequent buyers.

I’m not pretending there aren’t a lot of costs but some of the labour and parts charges take the pee.

I nearly choked when I saw the service bill for a friends petrol Mercedes A-class. 4 spark plugs were over £100. Along with replacing the air con rad the bill was into 4 figures. Probably a mornings work but I guess that depends on how hard Mercedes made it for mechanics to work on.

Not all dealer prices are bad, some of the fixed price work is reasonable and its always worth checking parts. I used to tell Peugeot owners to go to the dealer for some service parts as they were cheaper than the usual parts suppliers and decent quality. But then I found a company selling own stuff at half the dealer cost. I still check though and for the land rover. Don’t be afraid to ask the guy on the parts deck for discount, as the OP did with his service cost.

Car dealers only make money selling you money (car timance) and servicing.

What would an hour of your time at work cost?

Probably around £30 if I was doing OT.

At those rates I’d be doing it myself. And I’d be buying a vac pump and be doing it in style.

squirrelking – Member
What would an hour of your time at work cost?
Probably around £30 if I was doing OT.

At those rates I’d be doing it myself. And I’d be buying a vac pump and be doing it in style.

No disrespect but would it? I’ve no idea what a mechanic (engineer <sigh>) earns in a Main Dealers but that clearly isn’t the cost to deliver that time is it? There’s obviously all the oncosts of employment plus myriad overheads and ta da.. profit to add. Without that children, no Dealer network.

I know they seem expensive at sticker price but as with most things, the game is to reduce the wallet lightening to a minimum. The reality is stuff costs money. Yes, a bloke working on axle stands in the street outside his house with Eurocarparts errrm, parts is cheaper but apples are cheaper than pineapples ne pas?

your version of the parts from your spares shop are 39 quid

your version of the part are not the same as the dealer version of the parts.

At least if the dealers paper filter colapses and damages your injection pump your covered – if your cheap stuff does the same your boned. likewise if your cheap oil filter is one of the many substandard (even branded) oil filters kicking about then your oil will not be filtered correctly.

but then if its all on price , just buy the bits and get it done.

its not even an hours work all in. dont forget to follow the rest of the service schedule – even an oil and filters isnt JUST an oil and filters – its a check the brake pads and tires – tell you they are 80% done….. when what they mean is theres 80% left 😀

Thing is, whilst all that is perfectly true it comes back to whether you trust the dealer to either do the work or honour the warranty. Maybe i’m overly cynical but I wouldn’t trust one as far as I could throw them. If it helps I’d theoretically buy the parts off the dealer, at that price why not? How much can I possibly lose off FSH value over a reasonable period of time?

That is also true. So if you have any interest in dealer servicing, you need to find one you trust. It’s like any service provided by a 3rd party, if you don’t trust them, don’t use them.

I bought my current car from a main dealer but wouldn’t dream of getting them to service it. I bought from them as they were the only ones with the right combination of price and spec though they managed to make the process unpleasant enough for me never to use them again. I tried another main dealer for servicing recently and they couldn’t be more different.

Yes you have haggle to trim off some of the fat but I do that as a matter of course whatever I’m buying.

Interesting game this. I took my 2006 Ford Focus in for a service recently. It’s a 1.6Tdci and has done 108k miles. I checked main dealers and some trusted local garages first. They were all in the same ballpark, main stealer was £280 and garages £270-£290. That was for oil, fuel, air and pollen filters, new oil, screen wash and a thorough check over. The older they get the more expensive the service!

Thing is, whilst all that is perfectly true it comes back to whether you trust the dealer to either do the work or honour the warranty

Yeah, I thought that.

At least if the dealers paper filter colapses and damages your injection pump your covered

yes but that means I need to know what those things are and link it back to the original work and prove it such that they would accept it. All seems unlikely.

Game is the word – but if it works for them why change 🙂

OP, £200 for a main dealer service isn’t so bad. If you want to save money go to a non-franchised workshop. I’ve paid more for the bike.

It doesn’t sound bad for a main dealer. Have you got a price from a reputable independent garage for comparison? It will probably be a fair bit less but then their overheads & margins will be lower. Some folk don’t mind paying a few quid extra if it gets them a nicer place to drop the car off, “free” tea, courtesy car etc.