help In shock over garage price

Hi, just in shock

I have a 2a and the shackle bushes needed to be replaced in the chassis, one was stuck.
I had new parabolics to put on and 2 new braded flexis,new ubolts, new shackle plates and shackle pins.
So I supplies all the parts.
The flexis were wrong so garage put new ends on and they had a hard time removing the bushes.
But the bill has come in today at over £900

Is this justified to
push out old bushes qty 2 even if they were hard in the bush had the bolt stuck in the middle so could not be extracted with tool going through middle.
fit new bushes to chassis (front only)
fit new springs (supplied by us)
all new bolts (supplied by us)
re-end flexi hoses
bleed brakes

£900?

What would the best plan of action be?

You need an itemised breakdown of the charges from them first. Labour is usually about £60 per hour so depends on how long it took but £900 does sound a bit over the top

I have another garage who I explained the job to, they are going to run it through Autodata to see how much the job should cost.

They said that they needed to make a tool up to do the job which when I took the vehicle in they said no problem they could do it as they had a press that would do it.

The garage has been good in the past, though the prices have been going up and up, but this is extreme.

I am gutted as I have rebuilt this vehicle, perkins engine outriggers rear quarter chassis its just I did not have time to fix it and had injured myself so could not get under it, I know every inch of this vehicle and so know how much it should cost...or thought I did

anyone had any similar prices for the same job?

£900 seems a bit steep without parts but how many hours did they spend on it? Time soon racks up the costs.

Well even if they are charging £60 an hour that still works out at 15 hours!
So if they work and eight hour day thats pretty much three days of work which seems very over the top to me!

Before they racked up a bill that size I would have expected a call for you to authorise the additional labour, and for them to explain what had gone wrong and why it was going to be so much. If you've already paid though I doubt your going to get very far in the way of a refund, but I do think its wrong to just hand out an invoice for £900s worth of work that wasn't fully authorised, as said above get a breakdown of what they done and how much they charged.

finnety said:

Hi, just in shock

I have a 2a and the shackle bushes needed to be replaced in the chassis, one was stuck.
I had new parabolics to put on and 2 new braded flexis,new ubolts, new shackle plates and shackle pins.
So I supplies all the parts.
The flexis were wrong so garage put new ends on and they had a hard time removing the bushes.
But the bill has come in today at over £900

Is this justified to
push out old bushes qty 2 even if they were hard in the bush had the bolt stuck in the middle so could not be extracted with tool going through middle.
fit new bushes to chassis (front only)
fit new springs (supplied by us)
all new bolts (supplied by us)
re-end flexi hoses
bleed brakes

£900?

What would the best plan of action be?

Click to expand...

I would get estimates from three other garages and see how they compare.

If you still think you have been overcharged, then talk to the garage and try to negotiate.

If no joy, start the process of disputing the bill. cab should have stuff online or ring them up.

We have the vehicle back as they bill you a week later so no money has changed hands, I think the point that the additional work was not authorised is good.
I just don't understand why they would do this seeing as all our vehicles 3 cars get mot tyres and service as well as repairs there for the last 8 years plus I have taken near on 15 vehicles there to be mot'ed.

I do know in the last 2 years they have lost 2 mechanics and now have 2 17 year olds and working.

It is a legit garage and mot station

If you havnt paid yet and have the car back then obviously you have the upper hand. I'd go and speak to the owner, face to face, and be firm but fair with them. At the end of the day they may have struggled with siezed this and stuck that but not to the value of £900, maybe you should expect to pay a couple of hours extra labour depending on what it was etc. Before you do anything you need the invoice itemising so you know where the money has gone

£900 has got to a significant proportion of the total value of the vehicle when your are talking about a series 2a.

Surely management at the garage should have had some clue that they needed to talk to you, and get prior approval, if replacing a couple of bushes was running up that sort of bill? My disco's in for work at the moment and they phone me in advance of doing anything, just so that they know that I know what I'm letting myself in for (so far £200 worth of welding. ( ).

I'd work out what is a fair price - other quotes, folks here, the series two club perhaps, and offer the garage that. If they feel that isn't fair they can always try persuing you through the court and see if they can persuade a judge that £900 is a reasonable charge for the work.

Whatever, I reckon it's time you changed garages!

Work out from other garage quotes, how much it should cost. Speak to the owner of the garage, tell him £xyz or see you in court.

Totally agree with all advice here.
Theres always the chance the bill has been incorrectly worked out, but to me this seems way over the top.
Firstly a garage is bang out of order charging full rate for people learning on the job if thats the case.
It may have been a tough one and they may have doubled up the guys working on it but you should have had a call to authorise and thats a fact that would stand up in court. Talk to them am sure they will budge, if not CBA next and trading standards...hope it doesnt come to that though

It's often worth finding out if a garage works on book time or actual time taken when asking about pricing up for a job.

Book time is the amount of time the manufacturer says it should take to replace said part. This is fine when parts are new but can take much longer when parts become old and seized.

Actual time means the actual amount of time it took for the garage to do the job. The book may say summit is a 10 minute job but it actually took the garage 10 hours to do it instead.

The beauty of menu pricing is that you know what the bill is going to be even before the job is started. The downside is that sometimes one of the mechanics may know a shortcut that can dramatically reduce the time required to do the job but you would still pay for the amount of time the book says.

One of our guys used to be able to change a clutch cable on a citroen xantia in around half an hour. The book time was 6 hours as allegedly the dash had to come out to do it.

The good thing with time taken pricing is that if someone knows a quicker way to do a job or has done it so many times it can be completed much quicker meaning that you save money. The bad side is that if a rusted bolt won't come out or has rounded off and it takes 3 hours to undo the one bolt, you pay for those 3 hours.

got some other quotes for the job at around £350 to £500 if the job was gold plated and was a total b*** to get out.
Going to go with what one garage said today which was they should have phoned to get authorization when they hit a problem and the labour bill was going to spiral.

Right my dad in his late 60s who is not the best negotiator has got it down to £750, not the best.
Putting this one down to experience.
Thanks all

finnety said:

Right my dad in his late 60s who is not the best negotiator has got it down to £750, not the best.
Putting this one down to experience.
Thanks all

Click to expand...

Have they given a breakdown of costs yet?

Think they did this verbally with my dad, think they took of the price of making a tool to do the job and that was it.

Lessons learned

finnety said:

Think they did this verbally with my dad, think they took of the price of making a tool to do the job and that was it.

Lessons learned

Click to expand...

So you own the tool then... hope you have it?

The first time I replaced springs and bushes it took me about 6-7 hrs to do an axle, that's on the drive, normal toolkit, no power tools bar a drill and angle grinder and just a trolley jack and axle stands. I'd expect a properly equipped garage to do it in half that. Landy chassis bushes are always stuck and often need the rubber bit burning or drilling out and there are special tools for removing the metal outer without resorting to a hacksaw (how I did it) or having to "make up a special tool". You need them to explain why it took so long.