Whet`s the best price anyone has paid for this service, and also drive belt change in West Yorkshire

If it's out of warranty, take it to Chris Umpleby. You'll save a tidy sum over main dealer prices.

hi there is just did my 40,000 mile service from skoda, i called them up and got a price which was £240, they changed the air,oil, fuel & pollen filter they also changed the oil. put it on the computer and check breaks over.

Nobody wants to pay £240 for that!

So this is what i did. i went into to skoda and purchased all the bits that they replace costing me around £45

i then went to halfords for my oil which i use the castrol edge and its £45 for 4 liters which is perfect for oil change, but me being clever decieded to shop around,

i found the same oil on ebay for £29 that was inc P+P, so another saving of £16:)

i then called skoda up explaining i have bought the genuine parts and i need them fitting and i also need the stamp to confirm the service undertaken

he paused for abit and said ok, ill book you in and i said how much am i looking at? his reply was its only an hours labour its £60 plus VAT.

so i took my car in "filthy" and they changed everything over put the remains of the oil in the boot, they checked for fault codes, reset the service light and topped up the coolant.

an hour and half later my car pulls up on the front, nice and clean

i expected it to cost me over an hours labour as it took longer, he stook to his word and charged me an hour.

i have the reciept for the new bits and the reciept for the hours labour and the 40k stamp in my book for the full service.

So.... instead of paying £240. it cost me around £175. - total saving of £65 which i thought was great seeing as its all full skodaSH.

some other places might not allow it, but if you talk the talk, and be sound with them u tend to get something in return.

i did have a slight issue with the car being washe though, as its left my car with fine fine scratches looks like one of those soft sweeping brush types things was used on it, it will buff out but at there expense they tolf me to drop it back in for inspection hope this helps

p.s having the FSSH holds additional value to the car, which most ppl know anyhow

which dealer was this please ?

The only benefit of MDSH is that you have the option of Good Will out of warranty if required. As to value don't kid yourself, most buyers may prefer a car with MDSH but they're not likely to pay extra for it, i'd take a specialist service history every time in preference to a Merc service history as the dealer network is frankly useless, they're so good they published a fixed price service promotion offering to change the rear wiper on a car that was never fitted with them...

In your case the crucial question is were the details updated on DIS, if not you don't have anything more than a stamp in the book and I doubt that would be warranty compliant if it came down to it. We had a similar issue with service work carried out but not updated. The difference was over £700 of Good Will in our case so you may want to check.

Every time I've traded a car in they have been extremely pleased to see a complete set of dealer stamps.

People buying second hand like to know their car is sound and seeing a complete set of Skoda stamps will make a vehicle a lot easier for a dealer to shift.

When you own an expensive and/or performance car then you need to expect and alas, budget for the servicing and any repair work you might need.

My car has just started flashing 1100 miles until next service - that will be around 46,000.

This will be the vehicles 3rd variable service and I've been quoted £230 all in.

All parts and labour and the valuable Skoda stamp.

As it's been a year since my last service, that equates to around £20 per month to run the vehicle (of course not even thinking about fuel here) which really isn't that bad.

Not looking forward to my 4th variable as that will be around 60,000 and that's belt and pump change time.

Just paid £285 for 2nd variable service at 32000 miles. Pretty shocked when I noticed parts were only about £70 of that! This was for a Scout so I don't know if the 4x4 system means the service costs more?! They did clean the car, but for that much labour I would have hoped they'd licked it clean!

Alas this is from the only dealer that's reasonably close to me round here, otherwise its a 90min round trip to the next nearest dealer which kind of negates any savings I might make. I guess once the car's out of warranty I might be more tempted to take it to an independant and see what I can get from that.

Just paid £285 for 2nd variable service at 32000 miles. Pretty shocked when I noticed parts were only about £70 of that! This was for a Scout so I don't know if the 4x4 system means the service costs more?! They did clean the car, but for that much labour I would have hoped they'd licked it clean!

Alas this is from the only dealer that's reasonably close to me round here, otherwise its a 90min round trip to the next nearest dealer which kind of negates any savings I might make. I guess once the car's out of warranty I might be more tempted to take it to an independant and see what I can get from that.

I understand that independants cover all warranty work now,so why wait. An independant - J.B.S. in Chesterfield - does all my work at a fraction of dealerships and I`m more than pleased. You seem to get entheusiasm which you dont always get at dealerships, whatever make of car you have.

One point to think about is that all repairs at a main dealer have a two year Skoda warranty attached.

For big ticket things like Clutch, Timing belt or a replacement turbo would a small premium for a dealer stamp not be worth it?

Main dealers and independant garages are going bust all the time but Skoda UK and the Skoda backed warranty is presumably always going to be around for you to claim on if you needed to.

Plus - my experience is that any garage you trust is sooner or later going to let you down anyway.

i stand by what i say, it does look alot better with the skoda stamps all the work was invoiced and have proof of everything and by sounds of it i got a good deal.

minus the paint work getting scratched

<snip>

When you own an expensive and/or performance car then you need to expect and alas, budget for the servicing and any repair work you might need.

<snip>

It's not an expensive or performance car, even this years VRS can't hit 60 in under 7 seconds in stock guise and the range topping petrol makes all of 200BHP or 133bhp/tonne. For comparison my Roadster's hardly performance (3cyl 698cc engine) but turns in similar power to weight. The Octavia is a family saloon with family saloon running/servicing costs, it's not a 400bhp tyre shredding monster with horrific insurance, short service intervals, a requirement for a tracker to be fitted and every driver to be over 25 and a rebuild every 15-20k.

As to the point raised about service history selling a car i've spent most of my life round the car trade, it may give the sales person an extra selling point but they offer the same warranty irrespective of the history and they aren't going to pay extra for a MDSH.

If the dealer who fitted the parts/consumables supplied for the op's car recorded this on DIS as a service and he's maintained his ability to claim good will contributions then it was a good deal, the thing is I doubt it was, my local VW dealership stamped my book twice but a check with VW UK when we were in dispute with them showed no service history recorded, I had the stamps in the book and the invoices but was basically told I had a bill of circa 1k for a known issue that should have got 50% labour and 100% parts with full MDSH. If his was recorded then it's a good deal, if it hasn't been it's worth less than an indy stamp as at least the indy can claim a full service was carried out, in the event of a warranty dispute all the dealer will say is they fitted parts supplied by the customer at his/her request, no service inspections were carried out and it's non warranty compliant, you haven't got any recourse.

I'm not trying to wind anyone up, just save you what's been three months of agro with two separate VAG dealers, a small claims court case that was pulled at the last minute and an Octavia that was 48hrs away from going back as a rejection. I've still got ongoing issues with Merc over a 2 hour job that took them from the 18th of December till the 30th of Jan and they still haven't resolved.

Hope that helps

I'm sorry you don't feel that the vRS is a performance vehicle.

Compared to the 80%+ of "standard vehicles" on the road it is anything but "middle of the road".

The components inside are far upgraded from the stndard Octy and will be manufacturerd to a higher tollerance.

For this reason you have to expect to pay more for your service.

I'm noty trying to start any arguments - but compared to the vast majority of vehicles out there an Octy vRS is a performance vehicle.

As for the FSH.

All I can say is that the last 3 times I've traded in:

A Golf to a Renault dealer, a Megane to a Peugeot Dealer, a 307 to a Skoda dealer I have had the offer on my vehicle increased each time I've shown them a book of manufacturers stamps.

No need to apologise and i'm not trying to start and argument either I'd like to point out I didn't describe the VRS as 'middle of the road' just pointed out it wasn't what would pass for a performance car in my opinion (it's only my opinion), it is however the performance option in the Octavia range, I do take your point compared to a generic euro box as that's what I seem to see a lot of on the roads but that's not a really a fair comparison in my mind.

It's service costs are identical to the rest of the 2.0 range,as are the intervals, type and volume of oil, in fact the vast majority of changes appear to be cosmetic or bolt on's so I suspect they are all fab'd on the same line (perhaps someone can set me straight on this as i've not seen much detail about Skoda's lines/tooling anywhere ?). Looking at the parts catalogue on-line it appears as though the things i'd expect to be uprated like the clutch are actually the same part as the standard 2.0 (good for normal car owners, possibly not so good for VRS owners, that said i've only looked on ECP and they're not known for being overly accurate), you do get different disc's, callipers and shocks (-12mm), and a number of engine tweaks giving 50bhp extra but the overwhelming majority seems to be standard parts across the range. I'm not saying that's a bad thing (and I suspect the engine internals will be slightly different) but with a small number of tweaks it appears to be the same car that the rest of the 2.0 owners drive.

As to the point about MDSH were any of those opening offers actually at book value on your car at the time ? Reason I ask is the vast majority of dealers will book your p/x on the low side to allow for negotiation on the p/x and/or discount on the screen price which they'd have done anyway if pushed. It would be a *very* rare occurrence for a dealer to offer book price as an opening offer unless he was talking in a rather high voice and you had hold of his lower extremity's*.

*I take absolutely no responsibility if you try this negotiating tactic.