OT: Vent: Car Repair Charge

It takes 15 minutes. The section in the shop manual is one paragraph. $280 to $600/hr is robbery. The tool is part of their diagnostic equipment. If they perform tuneups then they've already recouped the cost a hundred times.

I have 2 keys, but only one that still works.

This isn't an isolated ripoff. I had a jeep missing the handle for the jack. That $3 piece of metal was $35 at the dealer. I replaced the whole jack with a hydraulic bottle jack for half that.

Just about everything dealers do are at least five times overpriced, from $400 tuneups (plugs, an air filter, fluid check and little else), to $80 oil changes ($4 worth of oil, a $3 filter, and ten minutes labor)

willshak wrote in news:y9- dnZv8OqDbUdnXnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@supernews.com:

Tell them you want your old "parts" and to pack their disposal fee.

Jim Yanik wrote in news:Xns9C3670B29B244jyanikkuanet@74.209.136.85:

But wait! There's more!

Next under shop supplies will be electricity and the grunt using it. Cost of running a shop ya know.

And probably $3 at a junkyard. Why would you even think about going to the dealer for that?

"Charlie" wrote in news:h23og1$nag$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:

They are not going to order parts until you've signed their service agreement.

snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Which was -part of the repair-.

on 6/26/2009 10:25 PM (ET) snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote the following:

In the old days, I was of the mindset that if some worker put something together, I could take it apart and put it back together. It became a little harder when things started being manufactured in Japan, since those Japanese women had such small hands. :-)

I went to the Nissan dealer parts dept. to buy 3 belts for my 97 PU 2.4 l.engine The guy said they only had one in stock and that one was $35. I left without it and bought the 3 Japanese made belts at AutoZone for $36.

My time has some value. I'm not going to drive all over town looking for a compatible jack handle when I can drive 1/2 mile past the dealer to a car parts store and buy a bottle jack. It just isn't worth $200 of my time to acquire a part missing on a mechanical jack, especially when a complete hydraulic jack can be had for $20.

If the dealer had wanted $20 instead of $35 for the jack handle I still would have let him keep his precious hunk of metal. If they want it so bad, they can keep it. When they day comes when the dealer's holdings are sold at auction, I doubt they are is going to get 50 cents for that hunk of metal.

On Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:59:52 -0400, against all advice, something compelled willshak , to say:

I have a German car built in Hungary by Romanian guest workers. It has big plastic panels covering the motor, with little stickers that say "No user serviceable parts inside".

I don't mess with it.

Rueful chuckle. Around here, I have to go 40-some miles to find a yard that carries anything newer than late 90's. Apparently none of the local yards are big enough to have the front money to outbid the big yards one town over, with the insurance companies, or to buy wrecks at the auctions. They only have stuff the fancy yards don't want, or old crap locals sell to them directly. Probably wouldn't matter too much for a jack handle, but a definite PITA for other items. Small stuff ain't on their web sites, so you gotta go look, and most are open limited Saturday hours if at all.

Not at all like back home, with 2 large yards ten minutes in opposite directions from where I lived.

-- aem sends...

A part they don't have costs them virtually nothing. Dealerships love to trade parts. It usually works like this:

Dealer A gets a part from Dealer B's parts room. Both report the transaction to GMPD (General Motors Parts Distribution). GMPD credits Dealer B for the part, plus some small percent profit. GMPD sends a bill to Dealer A for the GMPD price for the part.

In other words, GMPD pays Dealer B to be an ancillary warehouse.

In a large city, much of the traffic on the roads is made up of dealership drivers moving parts around.

Parts move on overnight greyhound busses from a dealership in one town to a dealership in another.

There are over 400,000 individual parts in the GMPD catalog - nobody can stock them all. The largest GM dealership in my town (which has about twenty dealerships) has about 80,000 parts.

Hint: If you need work on your car, take it to the dealership with the largest parts room. This dealership attracts the best mechanics who want to fix your car as quickly as they can, roll it out, and get another patient. Mechanics don't like to cool their heels waiting for the driver to arrive with a needed part because it cuts into their commission.

One of many reasons I try to keep a spare running car around- I don't care to pay dealer labor rates and markup for the sake of fast turnover. I'm sure there are competent dealer mechanics, but I've had better luck with independents around here. Not a big deal to me if it sits in his back lot for 2-3 days while parts are tracked down. For elective surgery versus emergencies, I drive in with the patient the week before, so they can know what parts to order.

-- aem sends...

They do NOT attract the best mechanics. They get their mechanics right out of school. What you're paying for when you go to a dealer is the name on the large expensive sign in front of the large gleaming building on the enormous expensive lot of land.

Then you are going to the wrong dealers.

Don't know about where you are, but the average dealer mechanic around here has been in the same dealership for 15 or more years.. Average mechanic is about 40.. Some of the BEST mechanics (Dealer -on today's cars), however, are in their early thirties, while the best mechanics, overall, are often approaching retirement (independents)

In many cases now the fee is "upfront" - paid on purchace.

Yeah. The authorized dealers.

You're paying for an exhorbitant overhead and sending the mechanics to the manufacturers school constantly and for all the costly equipment, tools and test that a dealer maintains.