VRS 2 first service.

Rang dealer 1 £119 sir. While u wait sir. 1 hour sir.

Rang dealer 2 £106 sir, leave it with us.

Went to dealer 1. 70 minutes. £199. Paid. Yes I know.

Skoda UK email arrived – Happy? NO I AM NOT. Send.

Dealer 1 rang. Skoda UK jumpin! Problem? Blah.

Ah. Well you see we charged you for an annual service instead of a 10k service. BLAH for oil? OK we give you £80 back. GOOD.

Beware peeps.

I paid £65 for mine last week

lol... indeed

I paid £85 for my 10k service, and only £150 for my 20k service

Oh wait i think £85 sounds right :no:

Dealer 1 rang. Skoda UK jumpin! Problem? Blah.

Ah. Well you see we charged you for an annual service instead of a 10k service. BLAH for oil? OK we give you £80 back. GOOD.

Beware peeps.

So given that the car has to be servived annually or at 10k intervals, I had foolishly assumed the service intailed the same things. Seems a lame excuse by the dealer, but at least you got the money back.

My supplying dealer wanted £118 for 1st annual service on my 105 TSI. Shopped around and got it down to around £80. Went back to Mansfield dealer and got them to drop it to £110 but they were adamant the cheaper quotes were because they used cheaper oil.

They used the longlife spec Castrol 5w-30 which is for variable servicing not fixed but claimed if they used a lower spec oil (VW approved) it has a detrimental effect on fuel consumption. They claimed the lower spec oil when used in their demo cars used more fuel. They could not understand why at first but a change of oil to the Castrol corrected the increase in fuel consumption. The Castrol oil alone cost £56.

This might be a reason why some are getting poor fuel consumption from their 105 TSI's.

Hi just got a card throu the post. From skoda get a minor service £99 does not tell you what you get. My car 1st service 3400 miles or february. So is a first service the same as a minor service cos I will save £20 ish

I will get dealer to do mine until out of warranty then will do it myself crtdi 105 bhp elegance, I just did the 1.4 tdi easy peasy new oil and fuel filter also k&n air filter , interior pollen filter and finally castrol edge 5wx 40 oil done for under £100

Hold on... you were quoted £119 for a service and then were asked to pay £199?

At that point, why did you not ask why it had risen by £80?

Then you go and get Skoda UK involved, who ring the dealer who then rings you... all that timewasting when all you had to do was ask!

First service is just an oil/filter change basically. Annual service involves checks on stuff etc so takes longer, hence more money. Your dealer is telling you the truth, after making an honest mistake.

Hold on... you were quoted £119 for a service and then were asked to pay £199?

At that point, why did you not ask why it had risen by £80?

Then you go and get Skoda UK involved, who ring the dealer who then rings you... all that timewasting when all you had to do was ask!

First service is just an oil/filter change basically. Annual service involves checks on stuff etc so takes longer, hence more money. Your dealer is telling you the truth, after making an honest mistake.

+1

Ok. The purpose of the tale is simply to make others a little more aware of the potential pitfalls here. Maybe I ought to fill in the blahs.

My priorities from a supplying dealer are price and delivery. When buying dealer A offered a VRS in 3 months for £12k to change. When I finally got to dealer K she had one en-route with £1200 of extras delivered in 4 days for £9k7 to change. I will make lots of phone calls to make deals like this.

For servicing price is not my 1st priority. It is convenience and quality that count to me here. Quality I define as simply doing what you promise. Under-deliver for poor quality. Over-deliver for top quality.

I ring dealers wanting a service for a 2010 VRS2 that says it wants a service. I give them the car details and I rely upon them to know what service it will need because they are the experts, not I. They quote, I choose dealer, but not on price (quoted £119).

SWMBO takes the car and waits the quoted hour. Its a few minutes over but hey. The fact that it was only a few minutes over tells you they didn’t have time to do a great deal more work. She pays the menu price they give her at £199 as she doesn’t know the quoted price.

The next working day I ring up to question. Now please bear in mind I would happily pay £199 if thats what it needs, but thats not what they quoted. Yes thats right they say, we did an annual service so the price is right. Well how much extra work did you achieve in those few minutes I ask. I am told firmly its menu prices sir. So I grit my teeth and decide to accept the situation and clearly not return to this dealer at least for service work.

But when Skoda UK asked if me if I was satisfied I decided to tell the truth, thats all.

The dealer got back to me when Skoda UK jumped on them. At first they yet again attempted to menu-price baffle me. When I persisted they asked if i had the original quote in writing. I didn’t. Finally as a gesture of “goodwill†they offered me £80. BUT not in cash, only in the form of a discount on my next visit, which might well be long after the cows come home.

FOLLOW-UP SURVEY.

Am I happy now? Grrrr. Slightly grumpy.

Will I return to the dealer? Mmmm. Maybe.

Will I buy another Skoda? Sigh. Less certain than before but, probably.

Do I love my VRS? YES!! YES!!

Service plan ftw - came free with the car when I bought it

When pricing up services cheaply from other garages it’s important to ensure they use SKODA genuine parts as this will affect the warranty of both the engine and the gearbox... and yes we will check as we have rejected a couple of warranty claims due to spurious service parts could have contributed if not may have been a cause of the problem.

Garages that were not in the SKODA Network 9/10 times will use spurious parts to save money unless you state to use GENUINE

Hold on... you were quoted £119 for a service and then were asked to pay £199?

At that point, why did you not ask why it had risen by £80?

Then you go and get Skoda UK involved, who ring the dealer who then rings you... all that timewasting when all you had to do was ask!

First service is just an oil/filter change basically. Annual service involves checks on stuff etc so takes longer, hence more money. Your dealer is telling you the truth, after making an honest mistake.

Not often you see "dealer" and "honest" in the same sentence.