Annual service

[vrsowen]

Hi all,

My fabia vrs has recently imformed me it needs it's yearly oil service. So ive been to a few garages as i cant be doing with hassle of doing it myself as i go back to uni this weekend. Anyway going around a few different places the price of around 80 to 90 pound was coming up most. I then went into my local Skoda dealership to ask them, to my shock they told the cost was £150. how can they getaway with this sort of price bearing in mind the VW dealership would only charge £89?

Has anyone else been asked this sort of price? and do you think around 80 90 pound is reasonable or still to much?

cheers owen

[Marc81]

Hi all,

My fabia vrs has recently imformed me it needs it's yearly oil service. So ive been to a few garages as i cant be doing with hassle of doing it myself as i go back to uni this weekend. Anyway going around a few different places the price of around 80 to 90 pound was coming up most. I then went into my local Skoda dealership to ask them, to my shock they told the cost was £150. how can they getaway with this sort of price bearing in mind the VW dealership would only charge £89?

Has anyone else been asked this sort of price? and do you think around 80 90 pound is reasonable or still to much?

cheers owen

Lightcliffe Skoda in Warrington did mine for £85 and a few pennies.

Marc

['Little' John]

£150 sounds a bit steep, but it depends on the service. They seem to alternate minor and major. I think I paid about £80-£90 for some of my services, and about £120-£130 for the others.

[vrsowen]

Yer well its just the standard annual service of oil and oil filter i belive. Just don't get how they can charge that much even if it was double life oil. Think ill just take it to VW proberly get better customer service in there as well. cheers for the replys anyway least i know 80-90 is about right.

[DRJ]

My fabia vrs has recently imformed me it needs it's yearly oil service.

That's a misnomer. Put simply a Fabia needs an Oil Change every 10,000 miles - no time limit - and an Inspection Service yearly - no mileage limit, with certain other additional items at 20,000 miles and 40,000 miles, brake fluid every 24 months, and a cambelt at 60,000 miles or 4 years whichever comes first.

Hence a car doing the average 10,000 miles p.a. won't ever need an Oil Change since that will be done as part of the Inspection Service. A car doing 20,000 miles p.a. will need alternating Oil Changes and Inspection Services.

A car doing 15,000 miles p.a. has a problem - in theory it needs an Oil Change after 8 months then an Inspection Service four months later. On my car when I was doing more than 10,000 miles p.a. I elected to merely have an Inspection Service every 10,000 miles which worked out about every nine months. Latterly since we acquired pool cars at work, my mileage dropped to under 10,000 miles p.a. so I have an Inspection service every year (and I've dropped the insurance to 8,000 miles p.a.)

A Skoda dealer from my experience will charge between around £160 and £325 for an Inspection service depending on what additional items may be required. I'd have thought an Oil Change would be around the £100 mark but have to confess not to having had one. An Oil Change takes 0.7 hours labour, an ordinary Inspection Service takes 2.2 hours...

[vrsowen]

Ahh right cheers DRJ,

Well ive only had the car a couple of months. I've checked the service book and it had an inspection service at the last service which was just under 10000 ago however there isnt a date with it. So don't no how long ago this was. So do you think it would be worth getting an inspection service done to be on the safe side?

Cheers for the help, owen

[DRJ]

Ring the garage and ask when it was. You haven't stated age and mileage.

[vrsowen]

Sorry its an 04 with 138000 miles. Been into VW today and there doin an oil service aswell as one of thier free inspections. So hopefully theyll pick anything wrong up on that. aAnd getting that for £89 with lift to and from so cant really complain.

[DRJ]

At that sort of mileage there's probably not much point in keeping up a full Skoda service history. Are there 13 previous services showing in the book?