Derv Megane - max damage?

Mill-Autos ( snipped-for-privacy@nd.die) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

"Hello garage, my car needs an 80k service"

"Right, that service includes the cambelt, so the cost will be around £xxx

- it's higher than other services, but the cambelt change takes around x hours. Yes, we could do the service without changing it, but when it breaks

- which it will do with no warning - it will do at least £xxxx damage and leave you stranded at the side of the road. Would Monday be good for you, Sir?"

Aaaah - so you've had a car serviced at Dixon's as well!

It gets better. The missus had a leaking camshaft oilseal on her Nova. The cambelt was also due a change so I phoned local Vauxhall dealer to get cambelt changed and to do the oilseal at the same time as its behind the top pulley so only needs an additional 2 minuts and one bolt undone over a cambelt chain. They were going to charge me the full price for the oilseal change (1hr plus parts) plus the full charge for a cambelt change (1hr plus parts). Even the service manager I spoke to thought it was ludicrous but that was Vauxhalls way of charging for it.

Thankfully the guy was a good one, told me to buy the seal seperately and just book it in for a cambelt change and he would make sure the seal accidentally fell into the recess on the cam carrier.

99% of customers don't know what the cambelt does or the ramifications if it goes wrong. They'll suddenly be presented with a potential £60- £150+ increase in the cost of that service and many will choose not to do it.

Conor ( snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

So the garage *explain*.

I tend to agree - it's good business practise, common sense and good service. Oh my, sorry, I've mentioned the three things missing from most retail scenarios these days...

The message from Adrian contains these words:

Not hard - but unlikely. Companies just don't think like that.