Dealer Service costs and General Information.

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warpc0il
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Re: Dealer Service costs and General Information.

Post by warpc0il »

They don't replace the fuel pump, just the external seals.

It could be that the PCM had mis-learnt the fuelling over time and disconnecting the battery allowed it to re-learn better data.

It can be amazing how much better a car can run, just from this single action
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Re: Dealer Service costs and General Information.

Post by SmuttyHutty »

I don't know if this is the right place for my post, or possibly I might be venting my spleen....again. But this kind of thing just cheeses me off. I have no problem paying for a service and I have no problem paying the going rate for a part. But there are limits.

Caveat: this is not my car and not my receipt. It is from a car currently being sold on Autotrader and it is not the selling dealer's doing. The car is a one-owner RX8 and has been serviced for all of its 16 year life by the same garage. Looking at the receipt, it was serviced and MoTd in January (where they charged him £50 for £25 worth of oil) and then a whopping £235 for a single brake caliper.
Screenshot 2021-02-16 at 13.20.31.png
Screenshot 2021-02-16 at 13.20.31.png (686.87 KiB) Viewed 2630 times
I totally accept that the garage is a business and not a charity. But I fail to see how that can be justified. And this was a car owner who had taken his car back there year in year out.

I accept that I don't know the full story and am jumping to a few conclusions. But.....
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Re: Dealer Service costs and General Information.

Post by warpc0il »

That was a bargain. Mazda dealer retail for a front right brake caliper, not including pads, is £348.51 plus VAT :x

This is why services such as Biggred are so valuable. :thumleft:
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Re: Dealer Service costs and General Information.

Post by SmuttyHutty »

warpc0il wrote:
Tue Feb 16, 2021 4:16 pm
That was a bargain. Mazda dealer retail for a front right brake caliper, not including pads, is £348.51 plus VAT :x

This is why services such as Biggred are so valuable. :thumleft:
Definitely. I was explaining the economics of Bigg Red to my son. Total refurb of all four calipers in a standard silver, black or gold is £225 plus postage both ways with the club discount.

I'm in two minds what to do with my spare set of calipers once I'm done with the refurbish/repaint swap out.

I can leave the final set as they come off the 192 and save them.

I can refinish them to my standards and leave the mechanicals as they are and sell them on.

I can send them to Bigg Red and have them refurbished and sell them on.

Or, what is more appealing to me, is to use them as a donor set and send them to Bigg Red on someone else's behalf who then sends me their old ones once the refurbished calipers are fitted to their own car.

A caliper lending library kind of set up.

If members think there is mileage in this then I'd be happy to do it. Otherwise I'll take one of the other options.
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casey (Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:54 pm)
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Re: Dealer Service costs and General Information.

Post by ChrisHolmes »

SmuttyHutty wrote:
Tue Feb 16, 2021 1:30 pm
I don't know if this is the right place for my post, or possibly I might be venting my spleen....again. But this kind of thing just cheeses me off. I have no problem paying for a service and I have no problem paying the going rate for a part. But there are limits.

Caveat: this is not my car and not my receipt. It is from a car currently being sold on Autotrader and it is not the selling dealer's doing. The car is a one-owner RX8 and has been serviced for all of its 16 year life by the same garage. Looking at the receipt, it was serviced and MoTd in January (where they charged him £50 for £25 worth of oil) and then a whopping £235 for a single brake caliper.

Screenshot 2021-02-16 at 13.20.31.png

I totally accept that the garage is a business and not a charity. But I fail to see how that can be justified. And this was a car owner who had taken his car back there year in year out.

I accept that I don't know the full story and am jumping to a few conclusions. But.....
It is important to get these things correct. T W Whites did not charge £50 for £25 worth of oil and it looks like they did not supply a Mazda caliper given the retail price Dave mentioned. OE pricing is often set on a cost plus or multiplier basis and rolling weighted margins can produce some crazy results as I found out to my amazement at times when i worked in the OE and the non genuine parts business.
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Re: Dealer Service costs and General Information.

Post by warpc0il »

They may have fitted an OEM caliper but based the charge on what they paid when brought into stock, rather than the Mazda current retail list. T W Whites are one of the few dealers that have a large stock-holding and have been known to do this to protect customers from the (sometimes massive) monthly pricing re-alignments from Mazda.
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ChrisHolmes (Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:13 am)
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Re: Dealer Service costs and General Information.

Post by warpc0il »

SmuttyHutty wrote:
Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:28 pm

Or, what is more appealing to me, is to use them as a donor set and send them to Bigg Red on someone else's behalf who then sends me their old ones once the refurbished calipers are fitted to their own car.

A caliper lending library kind of set up.

If members think there is mileage in this then I'd be happy to do it. Otherwise I'll take one of the other options.
When I was talking to Biggred and negotiating the OC discount I did suggest that we send them a spare set of calipers that they could have on the shelf for members to draw on.

The idea was that a member could order their preferred finish and have these calipers prepared and delivered on an exchange basis, paying a premium that would be refunded when they swapped the parts over and returned their old calipers, ready to repeat the cycle.

The benefit being that the member wouldn't have the car off-the-road longer than it took to swap the parts, rather than the complete post-refund-post cycle.

It seems that Biggred used to operate this process for many car models but it ran into difficulties because there were often subtle differences between the calipers from one version to another, even within the same model/year, so sometimes the one's they'd finished for a specific customer would be wrong. Some customers didn't bother sending the exchange items back for the refund, or if they did then sometimes they were in too poor a state to be used; either way the process broke-down.
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Re: Dealer Service costs and General Information.

Post by WildMan10 »

IMO those prices are quite reasonable, even if I add on 20% VAT. A dealer service for £165 seems quite reasonable, as does the £320 for a front brake caliper.

Yes, we'd do it ourselves for a lot less, but for those that can't or won't do the work themselves then I've always found TW Whites to be good quality and value for a dealer. I prefer them to my nearest dealer, although that is now a bit moot as they've stopped selling and servicing Mazdas there.

As an aside, the owner paid full price for an MOT. When I've asked, dealers have always price-matched the half-price offers from the likes of National Tyres and KwikFit.
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ChrisHolmes (Wed Feb 17, 2021 2:16 pm)
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