Well, My 97 Golf finally stranded me. After all these years. I wasdriving to early Sunday morning and it just died. Had to have ittowed to a service shop I never used before. They replaced theignition coil, distributor cap, rotor, plugs, wires, valve covergasket, fuel filter, and spark plugs.All of this i am very sure my car needed. I just didnt know it wouldstrand me like this. What I want to know is should this have cost$900? About $400 for parts and $500 for labor. I was totally hosedin that I had to use this shop. Being stranded on a Sunday reallyblows. How bad was I ripped off?On the plus side, the car runs great now.They also mentioned my struts were leaking bad. Shouldnt this showfrom driving? (It drives fine). and is this hydraulic fluid leaking?

I reckon most of those things didn't need replacing, they simply charged youfor everything they could think of that they could replace in the mostamount of time. How many miles had it done?When was it last serviced?Have you read the manual on when things need replacing? did they test thecar to see if it would run after replacing the coil? and the rest of theparts. distributor cap and rotor arm would show a slow deteriation but won'ttotally conk out, but these are easily replaced and cheap too. fuel filterafter 60k miles, valve cover gasket??? what on earth for? spark plugs wouldhave been cheap and easily replaced would also be a slow deteriation incar's performance not a sudden breakdown. Not sure on prices over there butlabour here is £51 ($95) per hour. 5 hours worth of labour???? I've noticedthey don't actually do much work in an hour. An hour to do a geometry teston my golf 96 after curbing it badly??? mad. Isn't $900 1/3rd the price ofthe car it self???? Did they ask your...

How about double time for working Sunday, How about the I dropped everythingI'm doing on my only day off to help your too lazy to fix it yourselfcharge.... .how about stuck in the middle of nowhere charge., how about atow charge, how about do your Preventative maintenance now on your own terms, or later on someone's else's terms. charge.........How about the I got aVolkswagen and the nearest available parts are 70 miles away surcharge. Howabout the you want it when charge. How about how much its worth to find outabout the other things wrong you can fix yourself........How about at leastthey fixed it right, instead of wrong for the same money.........How about Ibet that's what a dealer would of got too if not more...on a Sunday, if theywere open........

Did I get ripped off?

Feb 11, 2004 23 Replies

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verndog 22 years ago

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nospam 22 years ago

You blithering, BLITHERING idiot. The work was done MONDAY morning in the MIDDLE of Chicago. He got the parts from a dealer that was TWO blocks away. It was towed there on SUNDAY.

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Peter Parker 22 years ago

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Woodchuck 22 years ago

independent shops in our area buy dealer parts for 20% discount and then mark them up 50% for resale. I thought only dealers ripped customers off.

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