[wwwebber]

Hi Folks - my Mini went into the dealers to day for the following :-

MOT
Check brakes (wear light had come on)
Second brake fluid change
Coolant change
Passenger window problem - doesn't work
Breather pipe replacement (mooooing problem from engine)
Inspection 1 (covered by TLC)

Now, they rang me this morning and said that my rear brakes needed replacing - which was fine - I was expecting that. They also said that the motor for the passenger window needed replacing - again fine.

In total, they have quoted approx £650 for everything mentioned above - is this realistic or am I being done ??

[Fevs]

you havent given us the age of the car i know the first mot is at 3 years but what age is the car as most of that is warrantie stuff

[wwwebber]

The car is out of warranty and I'll be picking it up later - any views either way ?

[humph]

Well here's what I know, and very little of it is fact. Was quoted a dealer price of 65 for a window motor earlier today (part only but I'm guessing at least that again for fitting, probably more,say 100). Another thread this morning stated £120 for brakes at their dealer. MOT is probably about £55 at dealer prices.

So just from this info we get 65+100+120+55= £340

Brake fluid change and coolant changes won't be peanuts either.

Price is high, but main dealers are expensive. Dealer labour rates vary wildly from one dealer to the other, figures as high as £95 an hour have been quoted on here.

If the car is out of warranty then best bet is to get your work, especially things like MOT's and brakes done elsewhere.

[JAMIE1131]

seems reasonable to me!

[humph]

Some more prices (special offer ones anyway) shown in this link

http://www.mini2.com/forum/group-buy...ice-packs.html

So to the £340 we had in post 4 we can add

BRAKE FLUID CHANGE £66.50 INC VAT (But probably more like 100 from any other dealer)

So that takes us to about £440

Include a coolant change and you're up at about £500+.

All the rates I found myself are from Woodmans so expect other dealers to be more expensive. Then you are quickly approaching the price they've quoted you here.

And I wouldn't be surprised if they've changed your disks as well as pads, whether they needed to be changed or not. This seems quite common from dealers, there is a lot of letting off steam about this in M2 threads.

[wwwebber]

Quote: Originally Posted by Humph (original)

Some more prices (special offer ones anyway) shown in this link

http://www.mini2.com/forum/group-buy...ice-packs.html

So to the £340 we had in post 4 we can add

BRAKE FLUID CHANGE £66.50 INC VAT (But probably more like 100 from any other dealer)

So that takes us to about £440

Include a coolant change and you're up at about £500+.

All the rates I found myself are from Woodmans so expect other dealers to be more expensive. Then you are quickly approaching the price they've quoted you here.

And I wouldn't be surprised if they've changed your disks as well as pads, whether they needed to be changed or not. This seems quite common from dealers, there is a lot of letting off steam about this in M2 threads.

Thanks for that. It'll be interesting to see the breakdown when I pick it up later. After investigating further it seems I could have bought the breather pipe from them for around £8 and fitted it myself so I wonder how much they've charged ?. I'll keep an eye on the disc thing too. Will report back.

[Fevs]

just to upset you a little more i did my brakes this week myself 28 quid for pads including vat and 30 minutes of my time

[Richard Crofts]

Dont forget that all that work is hours of 'book' labour. The actual job usually takes less time but every BMW job has a 'time' and when they qoute they base thier labour quote on the fact it will take X hours to do 1, Y hours to do 2 and Z hours to do 3. Thus at BMW labour prices it can add up very very fast to over £500. If parts are 200 then thats around 3 hours labour charge for most BMW dealers. I'd say in one way yes you are being done (but so is everybody) but in anouther breath i'd say that no this is probably about right for the work they are doing (at BMWs prices)

[Richard Crofts]

If you have a haynes manual (£14 from halfords) and some spanners/sockets (£50 for mixed set of both from halfords) you can buy the front and rear pads and some replacement discs for both for around £150 on ebay. The job takes about 30 mins for the fronts and a little longer on the rear due to needing the special caliper unwinding tool (not sure of the price) ... its even faster if your just doing pads and not changing discs. Fluid change and bleeding takes no time at all if you have a manual (for the correct bleed order) and a mate to catch the fluid in a jar and lock the valve up.

Breather pipe is simple and is 2 min job almost. The oil change is simple and takes 20 mins including filter. The coolant change takes about 15 mins too. The air filter is 5 mins.

As you can see the time is negligable really but the cost for said time is massive! Check your labour charges and you will see it is never a great trip when you go bo BMW