My cluth release bearing went on my 95 cavalier yesterday. OK, the car's 10 years old, but in good nick, but even as a top range CDX only worth around =A3500-=A3600.
So I start the usual ring round for a price, and all say they will ahve to do the cluth complete - fair enough I suppose as I figure it'll be pretty worn with the mileage it's covered.
Vauxhall's, Master Fit at that, wanted =A3600!! probably more than the car's worth. I eventually paid a fair chunk less than a quarter of this price to a national clutch centre dealers who did the job in around an hour and a half.
I can do you a clutch on a Honda Accord, using genuine parts for about £500, and they are a darn sight harder than a Cavalier to do (about 5-6 hours), and the parts are at least twice as much as the Vauxhall bits.
Some dealers are keen to negotiate, some aren't, so don't put us all in the same toolbox.
FWIW, we had a Civic in a couple of weeks ago, and had just had new front pads and discs fitted by a national cheapy workshop. They were charged £320. We would have done them for £215.
I wonder that about Bristol St. Motors here in leicester with their Citroen dealership. Citroen have sent a letter out with a safety recall, saying a job needs doing, and this job could take up to 2 hours, but in reality, it takes half an hour.2 other people in my Company have had it done while they waited. Bristol St. say I'll have to leave it there all day.OK, says I, I'll leave the job for another 2 weeks, and have it done when it is serviced on a Tuesday.I said I'll drop the car off on the Monday afternoon, then pick it up on Wednesday morning. Droid at the computer asks "what time will I drop it off?" No idea says I, whenever I'm passing."Well we need to know, as we have to book you in". No, I dont want it doing then, I'll just park it up and give you the keys. "yes, but we have to know when you are coming, as we dont want to keep you waiting", I say again that I'm only dropping off the keys, and will be in and out in less than a minute. "Sorry, but we now have a system where everyone is booked in to drop off their car, so no-one is kept waiting". It was at this point I walked out. I then rang up another dealers 16 miles away, asked if I can book it in etc, and drop it the previous day - "no problem,drop it off whenever you want, and would you like to delivered back to you". So they got the business.
I knew I shouldnt have bothered with Bristol St. when I asked them about drilling some holes in the boot floor to fit a safe - it was just drilling 2 8mm holes in the bodywork, and I would fit the safe later, I wanted them to do it, so it wouldnt void any warranty, and the car was in for a service anyway. I asked them to do it,but they would have to do a separate invoice as it wasnt really part of the regular service.OK, I said I'll pay cash, how much please? "£75 + VAT" he said. I laughed, no, really, how much? "£75
vat." To drill 2 holes, which would take all of 5 minutes? "Yes, we need 1 man inside drilling, and one outside checking the drill doesnt hit anything, it is £37.50 per man hour, with a minimum charge of 1 hour per person." He was serious when he said it as well.I told them to get stuffed that time as well. Alan.
we've seen this a lot were the main dealers are cheaper on price, not all things but some, I think they have woken up to the fact that they are no longer getting the longer service interval vehicles in and are now looking at the older cars out there & trying to claw back lost business. in fact our local Vauxhall dealer & others have got their own parts club & some of their genuine parts are a lot cheaper then the factor parts.
Yes, I know, we've been doing some stuff with Honda lately and they've made some dramatic price reductions recently - CR-V rear discs down from £92 to £38 for example.
One thing I have learnt from Honda though, the parts they use are NOT the same as any pattern part you can buy. They do not use any supply of parts that are also supplied as pattern.
To give an example, Honda assemble their own oil filters in Europe [1], but some components (of the filter) have to be shipped from Japan because *nobody* in Europe can manufacture them to the specifications required by Honda.
They have even dropped their supply of exhausts by Unipart for the UK made models, and now manufacture in-house. Mainly because they were unhappy with the quality.
We even beat Kwik-Fit [2] on tyre prices now - by quite some margin.
[1] They are assembled here to satisfy the requirements for % of European manufacture. [2] and most other nationwide tyre shops. In fact there are only one or two small back street shops that are cheaper.
Surely you could just have made up a time then walked in whenever and dropped off the key?
There comes a point below which it is uneconomical to operate. They've obviously decided that one hour is their cut off point, in the NHS, where I work, my cut off point (ooer missus) is half an hour and we charge the internal customers =A335 an hour per engineer. Not that I am saying that =A375 is reasonable for two holes you understand.
Dunno - but I expect the one who failed to stop for me on a crossing a couple of days ago is finding out how expensive mirrors are. Shame it's probably a company car and he'll probably just lie about how it happened.
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