I have a bit of a horror story with servicing stop.

I thought the convenience of having the car taken away for servicing and being returned afterwards for £150 (including the speciality oil charge I was expecting) was reasonable enough.

However, I received a quote from them after a few hours as in photo.

Utterly ridiculous charges. I told them to change oil and filter and leave the rest. I've bought the belt for less than £20 from AutoDoc and will change that myself. I had already put in cataclean equivalent into the system the week before. Car passed MOT with no advisories two weeks before servicing.

They also drove the car some 40 miles to and from what was supposed to be a local service centre, they disconnected my Dashcam and left it disconnected. They used the Dartford Toll x 2 in the journey, so I had to pay quickly to avoid a Penalty Charge Notice (they did not notify me that they were taking my car over the toll bridge either).

Edited 2 April, 20251 yr by makman

It sounds like a kind of the American way of looking at servicing - the "Jiffy Lube" style of place. A lot of these folks there are barely trained or just starting out on the journey to become technicians - on the basis of how hard can an oil change be - but you will hear plenty of horror stories about those places. From above, it also looks like they didn't charge you for an oil filter (did they change the oil filter??).

I'm surprised too by the charge for (specialist) oil - your postings seem to be around the Superb 2, so I'm not sure what specialist oil you would use over/above VW504/507 spec oil and the engine flush seem really expensive too.

Sounds like you might have had a lucky escape.

deleted

Edited 3 April, 20251 yr by nta16
ETA:

Those are really some amazing prices. Fuel treatment for a 1.4 TSI, and the brake fluid. As far as doing a service and oil change and charging extra because of it being full synthetic or them using long life full synthetic, that is nonsense that many places try on.

I decided against posting this last night buy have changed my mind again. To me it smacks of some sort of algorithm or AI pricing unrelated to any real garage servicing pricing, I wondered if even the oil had been changed or the car put to other use I could well be wrong but at £150 for a "service" and it includes collection and return (and 40 miles away!) it'd be a string of red flags to me in Northampton, and I'd thought, but could be wrong, that generally Kent pricing would be higher than Northampton.

I hope I am being over suspicious because of hearing consumer programmes on Radio 4 for decades with all sorts of schemes going on before you hear about them on the telly box or t'web box but I felt uneasy about this.

Edited 4 April, 20251 yr by nta16
spelling