Is my local garage taking the piss!

[Sam9769]

Hi,

Brought my car into my local garage yesterday as a speed sensor needs to be replaced.
The speed sensor is £40 plus VAT but they are charging £90 plus VAT for labour which they say will be approximately and hour and a half.

When I queried the hourly rate the young girl behind the counter said that this was cheap and the "industry standard is £150 per hour!"

AIBU to think that £90 plus VAT per hour is excessive?

No, that's pretty cheap.

Presumably they're not holding you at gunpoint so you're free to shop around. But I doubt you'll find anywhere significantly cheaper. Good mechanics aren't cheap and the specialist tools they need to do their jobs these days are eye-wateringly expensive. It's been a long time since all they needed was a socket set, some feeler gauges and a hammer.

They have the experience, training and tools to complete the job, which will take time to complete.

Could you do the job yourself? If not you'll need a professional to do it for you, which costs money.

£90 for an hour and a half labour is REALLY good OP

I think that's pretty reasonable. How much do you think you should pay, bearing in mind they have the cost of the tools, premises, experience and all of the other costs associated with running a business like that.

Do you think thats £90 per hour clear profit for the business?

£90 for an hour and a half is £60 an hour.

That has to pay the mechanic, plus his pension and NI. Pay for their workshop, tools, insurance, business rates, rent and utilities It's a bargain.

I had someone out to fix my boiler before Xmas. £99 for about 12 minutes. 🙄Oh well, easy come, easy go !

But it isn't £90 per hour is it? They said £90 for hour and half. So that's £60 an hour. That's a good price

It's the classic thing - you didn't pay £99 for someone to twiddle a screwdriver in your boiler. You're paying £99 for someone to know that a bit of the boiler needed to have a screwdriver twiddled at it.

It’s a good price. My OH uses a place that charges £60 and are really good, funnily enough they are always stacked out. I couldn’t believe it when I looked at the invoice.

Place we used to go charge £150.

£60 an hour seems very very cheap!

Good point! So same price as what my OH pays.

You can’t complain OP, that’s bloody excellent.

Do it yourself then. Oh wait… you can’t, because you don’t know how. They have the expertise and experience and equipment and the premises. You’re paying for the years they’ve spent learning their trade, for all the costs associated with running a garage and for their wage.

If you don’t like it then go and learn how to look after your own car, buy all the equipment you need and use your own time to do it.

I’m a jeweller and I get so sick of people thinking, “The silver in that onto cost you £100 so that’s what I should be paying.” No. You’re paying for the expertise and the costs of running the business. Stop being cheap.

£150ph is about right. The place I worked for is £198ph

Fuck me they’re having your pants down. Takes about 15-20 minutes to change a speed sensor!

If it's a wheel speed sensor then you're probably right. If it's a gearbox speed sensor then that might be a very different matter.

My local garage charge £55 just to plug in the diagnostic computer. Despite the fact I bought one for £8 from Amazon and it took less than one minute to isolate the fault. Robbing bastards.

Did chatGPT tell you that?

Annoyingly, the ones you can buy from Amazon typically will only read the generic data and fault codes. Modern cars have a load more data that's manufacturer-specific and that is only readable by more advanced (read: expensive) scanners.

Another vote for doing it yourself!

That is good value.

That £60/hr (even though they say industry is £150) you are being charged is fantastic. I pay £90/hr, main dealers can be upto £400/hr.

It includes a premises rent, thousands of pound of tools, software, lifts. It includes staff training and costs over salary (usually around salary+25-35%). It includes the reception and booking process. Insurance. Energy bills. Small amounts of cleaners, oils, greases etc that add up each day. Computers, paper and printer, phone lines, broadband, website and more.

And let us not forget the skill and knowledge to know what sensor, where it is, how to replace, where to source the part from, and how to generally look after your car.

I have more of an issue that the cost of parts is rocketing. That sensor a few years ago was probably £15... I just had a new turbo actuator. Last one I had fitted was about 25 years ago, and if I remember correctly it was £60. Today it was £320+vat, plus a couple of other parts on top. And this is on a small city car...

Cars are just chuffing expensive.

THIS. Most manufacturers only give licence for their full data to be held by very specific brands of scanner and they will be expensive. An £8 amazon one won't give you jack shit apart from a very generic and vague guess.

£60 an hour is cheap.

Luckily, my husband does it for free. He pays for a software licence to scan our cars.

And each brand of car needs specific software to programme in new parts, to drill down from generic codes to exact information / live information. You bought an old Casio calculator - the garage is running a modern PC with live update subscription.

In addition, that one minute check has you booking in, then arriving at garage and booking in. Moving car from car park to ramp, and back again. It includes a wee neb around at the rest of the car. Maybe getting a multi-meter out and checking specific sensor when they isolate it. Also the knowledge to know really odd things - like my old car actually had two MAF sensors, both of which showed up on same fault code, and so you need to spend a few minutes swapping them around to work out which was the failed sensor because of course they were different fitments....I am sure you Amazon scan tool would tell you this of course.

I think you should go set up a garage with your £55 Amazon computer, charge £3 for the minute it took and see how far your business works out...

My garage charges about £60 per hour for labour but I think that includes VAT.

£60 per hour is fairly normal!
I wouldn't say £150/hour is, though.

This is so laughably naive it's just silly 😂

My husband is a mechanic, a cheapo £8 Amazon code reader only reads and clears basic engine fault codes.

A professional mechanic’s diagnostic computer accesses all vehicle systems, shows live data, runs active tests, and performs coding, calibrations, and manufacturer-specific diagnostics. They are not remotely the same thing — the cheap one just scratches the surface.

If my husband only had a cheap Amazon one he'd be turning customers away on a daily basis 🤣