To feel ripped off (garage)?

[TheAverageJoanne]

During the icy weather I damaged the door handle on my car driver's side door so it was hanging off. I did some googling and found it's a design fault (Fiat 500) and reading a lot of posts on an owners' forum I joined they advised posters to ask a garage to source a genuine Fiat part and not buy "Chinese rubbish" from eBay or Amazon for £20 or thereabouts as they don't last and you have to start over again, or the screws and fittings aren't right.

I need the car for my job (not just travel to work) so I found somewhere local to where I'd be based today and they ordered the handle and fitted it today. I was remiss in not getting a quote first I know but the total bill is £297.65. For fitting a bloody door handle.

I can't not pay. But is it excessive? I'd have thought a garage would have been able to get a Fiat part for trade cheaper than me. I'm going to ask for a breakdown of costs but it seems everyone is ripping everyone off when they can just using "cost of living" as the same excuse as covid.

I have long believed that when a woman takes her car to a garage for whatever then the mechanic/proprietor automatically mentally shoves at least another £50 onto the bill.
Women drivers are, still in this day and age, treated as the dumbest of village idiots.
Funny how repair garages think our money is OK though......

Sounds reasonable. If they get it cheaper, surely they don’t pass on to you the saving. You should have asked for an estimate before the works. Yabu.
You are not only paying for the part but the experience and know how.

Very helpful. Not.

Total cost is £248 without VAT. The part cost £147 so £101 for labour. It will take about 1.5 hours, which is £67 per hour. Totally reasonable cost.

the same happened to my son’s car. He’s not particularly practical, but in an effort to save money ordered part off eBay, watched a YouTube video and did it himself

It’s such an annoying fault with fiat 500s. I had a local garage use an unofficial part and they charged £120 but that was about 5 years ago now.

My Sons fiesta wing mirror was damage due to someone driving past and knocking it off during the night. Rang our garage who said it would be £240, thought expensive but went ahead and told them to order it. It actually was cheaper to order not painted and they painted it themselves. Had it fitted yesterday, it was £240, plus labour £78 plus VAT so nearly £400 in all.

also if you want to find out if the labour is reasonable, I’m happy to take your reg via pm and quote you from my garage for labour only. Our rate is £70 per hour plus VAT. I know door handles involve a lot of work as it all needs stripping. I think the last one I did was a Kia and took me an hour and a bit.

They should have given you an invoice showing the cost of the part and the cost of labour. I don't think I've ever used a garage that didn't. So yes, do ask for the breakdown, but tbh I'd not have been surprised to receive that kind of bill for the job. Everything involving cars seems to be very expensive.

I agree with this. Also just to add, just because the garage gets the part cheaper, this doesn’t mean it’s passed on to the customer, it’s called profit. It’s not just a case of sticking the door handle back on, they have to strip the door down and put it back together again.

the costs don’t seem unreasonable to me. £147 + labour + equipment + OH&P + 20% VAT.

Whenever I've gone to collect a car having had work done the garage has given me a bill showing breakdown of costs (parts, labour, VAT). Seems odd to be just told an amount.

Anyway, bill sounds okay to me, but I'm still smarting from the £1.2k bill my garage presented me with last week!

Absolutely normal OP.

Why do people think others should work for free just because it's "only" a whatever.

A good garage with competent staff will charge £100 an hour for labour.

Genuine part will be another £100

Add VAT on top an you're already at £250

The "extra" money is for the knowledge and experience of the staff (presumably you don't know how to fix it yourself) and also if the new part breaks they will have to change it for free, which is why most garages won't fit "cheap Chinese parts". Because they will just end up doing the job twice.

Here is an eye opener for you. I am the kind to do my homework, watch youtube videos and sort things like this for myself. I owned a Fiat 500 from new for 12 years. Absolutely loved the car. That door handle issue is a known issue and it happened 4 x over the 12 years. Tends to happen during or just after the winter when the metal part has fatigued and the owner has gone through a period of opening the car door when its frosted up a bit. It happens to the drivers door much more due to more openings.

So now to the value/lack of value in the repair. You are not going to like this. I could have repaired that at home, with a fiat badged part for lest than £15. Its a piece of piss to fix for people used to fixing cars and i had it down to about 30mins. It isnt the door handle that has broken, its a little metal hinge that fits to the handle.

Unfortunately i would say it isnt something most would sort themselves but a garage would probably just order a full handle and replace even when the little hinge is available as a part. Have they charged you for a full handle?

Here is the video for the job

Just checked. Genuine part is more like £20 for the repair kit. Aftermarket are less than £10.

Chances are the other handle will be about 12 months later....

This is not an unreasonable amount to pay when the part costs £147. How much were you expecting to pay for labour? £20?

It is a little more than I would have thought it would be. But to be fair, original part prices are somewhat fixed by the manufacturer. So any discount the garage could get may have been insignificant. Also, the garage would likely have had to dismantle your door to get to the fixings to change the handle. This would mean taking off the interior trim and door cover, disconnecting any electrics etc... So perhaps the job was a little steep in cost, but it may not have gone smoothly and taken longer or the likes. So I don't think they have necessarily ripped you off. If you are concerned just ask politely why it was so expensive. A good garage would happily explain it all to you clearly.

It can be difficult. But as a pp suggested youtube is generally a great resource for finding out how difficult a job is, even if you don't then intend to do that job yourself.

The problem is without that knowledge it is quite hard work to know how much effort a job involves and whether you are getting good value.

Sometimes cars can be designed in really stupid ways, so what seems like a small job actually turns out to be a large one. For example I had a clutch pedal part replaced once and they had to remove the seat to do it. So that added in a lot of labour time. I seem to remember there is one car (maybe a renault) where in order to change the bulb (usually easy) you have to remove the entire front wing assembly.

So sometimes a job can look or sound easy when it is actually a lot more difficult.

I remember replacing an indoor handle on my old Corolla but it was easy as it was all just mechanical. That’s the issue these days all those lovely buttons and electronics make all repairs harder. I remember DH fixed our washing machines internal button mechanism with string when we were first married and a bit hard up, it lasted another year. Now it’s a fancy schmanchy electronic panel. That’s actually a reasonable charge op.

Watch the video. There are now fancy electrics to mess around with. When you pop the door card off you have to disconnect 1 wiring block for the electric windows and mirrors. That is the full extent of 'wiring'. The hardest part of the job for a mechanic is to fit that fiddly little screw into the handle with a small screw driver. A home mechanic can do this job in less than 30mins.

Lesson learnt - ask for a quote next time

they have buildings to pay for, tools to buy (including ones that pop your trim off without damage). Insurance to pay, staff to pay, tax to pay, all the fiddly little clips that broke when they took yours off that they won’t have charged individually for. That little squirt of lube in the hinges.
that’s before they have the knowledge to do the job over a YouTube mechanic.

and they were absolutely right to advise a genuine part over an eBay one. The genuine one is covered with warranty and given the majority of the job is labour you don’t want to find yourself in the same position in 6 months time

You are not only paying for the part and the fitting, you are paying for the workshop, the electric to power the tools, the usage of the tools, and the years of experience and knowledge gained to be able to replace that part correctly.

We replaced one yesterday. The fixing kit (which is probably what went wrong is £18.19 plus VAT and it took about half an hour to fit. You need to find out if it was the kit or the handle as obviously the handle is much more expensive.

Unfortunately, this is what generally happens with genuine parts. They have to make a profit so charge excessively more. From experience, my Toyota needed new rear shocks I priced genuine ones from Toyota garage they said 100 quid each. I then watched some YouTube vids on best ones to buy, KYB was recommended I found them for 65 quid each. Then my DP said genuine is better so we bought. When we opened the box guess what the shocks were? ... KYB shocks but just had Toyota written on side 😂. Next time I won't make the same mistake. Also you can learn to do almost everything online try watching a video and fitting it yourself next time saves a huge amount and usually it's a lot easier than you think!

We did exactly the same when the handle came off a Fiat 500 we owned.

Bought the handle (aftermarket), bought a trim removal tool set (cheap off Amazon) and did it ourselves.

It took about 60 mins, all in. It's a finicky job and needed two of us - one with small hands if I remember (some rod or other that connected the handle mechanism inside). If you got it down to 30, then that's amazing!

I can see a garage charging an hour labour. Maybe 90 if they claim it was stubborn. Could be in line depending on the cost of the genuine part.