Rip off cost of service.

[Stu]

I'm sure they do a lot more than change the oil for£170
Sounds a reasonable price to me I paid similar or more for my 4K service.

[L3nny]

My 4000 Mile service was nearly £300, their labour charge is £80 an hour!!

£170 is pretty reasonable IMO

[lukemillar]

Originally Posted by stressed_myke

Can you belive Suzuki want £170 to change the engine oil and stamp the service book.

What is wrong with these people?

Is there anywhere in Essex, ( near Basildon ) that can stamp my book and change my oil for less than the cost of a new bike?

Cheers

Myke.

Out of interest, how do you determine, that £170 is a "rip-off"? I assume you don't run a garage yourself.

[Spanner Man]

Good morning all.


I see a lot of bikes that have been serviced by main dealers. Sadly a lot of them get just an oil change & that's it!

Even at 2.5k & 12 months old, I like to give them a bit of a seeing to. MATRON! So, I include a caliper clean, spark plug check, a nut & bolt check, plus a fair bit of adjusting & tweaking & lubing, besides an oil & filter change.
This normally takes a couple of hours, which is £72 + VAT plus parts to you guys.

Mike, I'm located in Sunbury Middlesex, just at the top of the M3 motorway. It's a bit of a tab from Basildon, but, besides the stamp in your book, the bad taste humour is worth the trip


Cheers.

[cbay]

Spannerman is your man!

[yorkie_chris]

Originally Posted by lukemillar

Out of interest, how do you determine, that £170 is a "rip-off"? I assume you don't run a garage yourself.

Originally Posted by Spanner Man

which is £72 + VAT plus parts to you guys.

So with 3 liters of oil and a filter and the dreaded that's still probably <£100

That is fact determined

Originally Posted by Spanner Man

I see a lot of bikes that have been serviced by main dealers. Sadly a lot of them get just an oil change & that's it!

I've uploaded the maintenance schedule for the pointy in a PDF, you can see most things are marked 'I' for inspect at 4000 miles. But 'I' doesn't just mean look at it and take no further action.

You'll notice that the clutch should be inspected at every service. Soon after my 16000 mile service (I service every 4k, not 3.5k), I ran out of adjustment at the clutch lever, so had to figure out how to adjust my clutch. It was obvious that the clutch cover had never been off and the adjuster screw had never been moved. This bike had just had it's 5th main dealer service and the dealer had never spent more than an hour or two on it, between drop off and collection. This is a main dealer in Edinburgh with an excellent reputation and customer service awards. Needless to say at 20000 I serviced it myself, obviously I'm not a professional, nor is the time costing me money, so I'm slow, but to carry out the service as scheduled takes me most of the day.

My wife's car reached 6 years old last year and I decided for the first time (because it was clear that the Suzuki main dealer service I was getting for the bike was a rip off), that I would service it myself. I checked the book to see what oil to buy, it specifies the VW longlife fully synthetic that is supposed (I know!) to last 20k miles. I was surprised as I had always thought the car needed semi-synthetic, but the car has never needed a top up between services, so I checked all the invoices for the car's full service history. The main dealer had been putting Castrol GTX in it for the last six years. On this car not an issue as it never did more than 10000 miles in a year, but imagine another one of their customers who is doing 20000 miles between services as recommended by the manufacturer, and the dealer is not using a longlife oil, which needs replaced after 12500 miles max. Customers are doing 8000 miles between each service on completely useless oil.

So I'm afraid Spannerman is absolutely right, the main dealers don't service the bikes properly it's all about time taken and how many bikes they can get done in a day, in the workshop, oil changed, rev the engine, out the workshop, next one in.

Get somebody conscientious and reliable like Spannerman to do it, or learn how to do it yourself.

If you decide to learn how to do it yourself, print off this PDF and a copy of the periodic maintenance section of the service manual (can email to anyone that needs it, if it's not still available on here), to use as a check list and set aside a Saturday to go through each bit one by one, ticking off and noting down details (such as 3mm left on front pads, 4mm left on rear tyre, rear brake caliper slightly stuck needed attention, etc). Keep these sheets, along with the invoices for the parts you have bought, and write up your book yourself. If I saw a bike that had been looked after and documented like this by an owner that understood it, I'd much rather buy that bike than one that had only ever been maintained by a FSH with a main dealer, who doesn't give a damn about the bike.

Our usual 4k service charge is circa £145 for the SV650 and we are a main dealer!.

Labour rates vary from South to North. I wish I was charging £30 per hour working out of a shed as id make a mint LOL. My rent P/A is £52k!..shed in my garden..FOC!.

4k service isnt just an oil change. We always change the filter and the whole bike gets spanner checked, lubed, adjusted inc clutch etc, brake fluid checked and coolant checked/replaced if over 2 years old. Plugs checked and air filter checked - may need replacing if you have ridden in really poor weather or in town. We also clear down any FI faults found in the ECU which are stored up and then when you do have a problem you have to surf through lots of old faults before you find the one that is causing the problem, even failure to start can store a fault code!

Ive seen some independant and lots of home serviced bikes (not spannerman i may add!) that come into us in a ****e state, so poor service can be had from independants too.

[yorkie_chris]

Just for once I'll defend the dealer network and say they can't all be useless. SV650racer on here seems to be pretty decent.
Lol! Beat me to post

Main argument I see for main dealers exorbitant rates is the "big overheads" of running a dealership. Local place here seems to use workshop fees to run fancy halogen lighting in showroom, that really should not be the customers problem. Not that I'm a businessman, but a bigger place should be cheaper to run than a small one.

[yorkie_chris]

Just because I been too charitable

Originally Posted by SV650Racer

brake fluid checked

That is hardly labour intensive check