Garage Bill

[twinspin]

Hi guy's, got a quick question... Usually I try and do my own jobs but I have been pretty busy for the last couple of weeks. The car needed rear brake shoes so as I didn't have the time myself I popped it into the local garage. Work done was new rear brake shoes, a bit of a clean up and an ABS error was reset on the ECU. All pretty straight forward stuff. I was pretty shocked when they called this morning to advise me the bill was £150 and the job was complete. First point is, I'm not really up on current garage prices but knowing what was involved I could help feeling £150 was a tad excessive and secondly should it not be standard practice to call with the price before continuing with a job? Maybe I'm just too tight lol

[GingerMagic]

To be fair, its probably 2 hours work @ £50-£60 per hour + shoes which are at least £15....

You may have paid a bit more than some but not as much as others. If they have done a proper job and sorted the ABS too then maybe the price isn't too bad.

Its just a shock when you are not used to it - my Pug mech charges £31 per hour and he does a great job so I stick with him....

[PeterN]

I would agree, that sounds about right for a suburban/rural area, in cities the labour charge can be up to £100.00 per hour. When you see how much some people pay to have their cars repaired - its more than I pay for a car.

Peter

[trufflehunt]

Hi guy's, got a quick question... Usually I try and do my own jobs but I have been pretty busy for the last couple of weeks. The car needed rear brake shoes so as I didn't have the time myself I popped it into the local garage. Work done was new rear brake shoes, a bit of a clean up and an ABS error was reset on the ECU. All pretty straight forward stuff. I was pretty shocked when they called this morning to advise me the bill was £150 and the job was complete. First point is, I'm not really up on current garage prices but knowing what was involved I could help feeling £150 was a tad excessive and secondly should it not be standard practice to call with the price before continuing with a job? Maybe I'm just too tight lol

My local garage , semi-rural Somerset, charges £50 an hour. A while back, before I bought a code-reader, they charged £35 to read the codes, and reset.

On the lack of a phone call, did you ask for a price, or did you just ask them to 'do it' ?

[Captain Jack]

Trufflehunt, why garage do you use? I live about 10 mins away from you in Langford...