Hi all.
Forgive me as im still new to these forums, although i am very active on a number of other online forums, im still finding my feet with mini2.com.
Well im loving my mini cooper r56 (non s) early 2010. owned it for a few weeks now. Drives great, looks great, love it. Anyway i made the mistake of looking at some of the mint minis on here haha. Ive seen a few mods people have done and think they look fantastic. So i have created a list of things that im hoping to do over the next few weeks. haha this mini is going to cost me.
So first things to change are the petrol/filler cap, and the
JCW side repeaters/scuttles.
So i called into my local mini dealership today. This is where it starts to get a bit interesting.
Walked into the dealership, mentioned i was for mini parts and accessories. I immediately got sent over to the adjoining BMW dealership. where i waited for about 5 minutes for someone to be available to see me. I ended up sat down speaking to someone from the parts department eventually. Anyway all going well so far.
So first thing first i asked about the fuel cap. He typed in a few things and brought up the part on the computer. £43 inc vat. Thought this was good. Anyway so i then asked him how much it would be to have the plastic part spray painted red to match the rest of the car. He look surprised, and spent about a minute or two just looking at the screen before coming out with "Prob about £40 + VAT". Considering the size of the part that needs to be painted, i thought this was a little hight. However i was more annoyed about his wishy washy answer.
So anyway, carried on and asked him how much fitting would be. Again he looked surprised and replied "Hang on, i will go and check" he walked of for about 10 minutes before coming back and replying "1 hour £140". Now i know BMW/Mini labour is expensive, but i wasn't expecting that. Esp as IMO the job shouldn't take more than 30 minutes. Its even quoted at 30 minutes on the Mini website (but i decided not to argue this).
So ok i asked him to print out the estimate which included a hand written price of £140 for fitting, and £40+VAT for painting. Cant believe how expensive this is. Im thinking that i might just buy the part, have it painted at a local paint-shop, and fit it myself. Would anyone really pay this high price quoted by BMW/Mini?
I also asked him how much the Mini cooper Works side scuttles worked out without fitting. He spent about 5 minutes looking around the system and eventually turned the monitor around and showed me a screen with about 7 or 8 of the scuttles on it. He actually asked me which ones i was looking for? I said the cooper works (to see if he actually knew which ones they were, despite being on the screen). He didn't say anything at first, instead he just looked at the screen before replying, "Which". I sighed and pointed them out. took him another few minutes before saying "Oh they seem to come in to parts". (£88 or something like that, without fitting if anyones interested)
Anyway i feel im going way off topic here. I just wanted a little moan about the poor service ive had from an official dealer. Im not happy, the guys lack of knowledge was stagering. Overall i got the feeling he lost complete interest when i mentioned "mini".
Either way though. Im still looking at getting the filler cap done. Though im thinking about just buying the part, having it painted myself, and fitting it myself. Although part of me is wondering if it would be worth getting another quote from a different mini garage. £40 for painting, £140 for labour, it seems very steep for whats actually required.
Whats your advice guys?
