Having agreed to buy a December 02 VRS with 40,000 miles on it including a full service, I've now discovered that the cam belt should be changed on the VRS at 120k or at four years. The dealer was unaware of this change in requirements from Skoda and is now refusing to do the cam belt change (for free anyway) as part of the service, as the car is low millege and not yet at four years old. Is this reasonable do you think ? One of the reasons I went for an approved used car was that I'd get the service and warrenty, but now I'm faced with a

Ask yourself can you get another example in this condition for under £350 more.

TBH if the belt is under 4 years old and under the mileage then they don't have to change it, and the labour is the expensive bit there. You might be able to negotiate a better labour rate on the work prehaps?

If you don't like how they are behaving then you have to make a decision as to wether you want to deal with this company when it comes to warrenty issues (unless there is another dealer close)

To be fair I wouldn't expect them to change the cam belt given that it isn't required for 5 months. If I was to buy a car and a service was due in 5 months I wouldn't expect it done now for free. If it's any help I would expect that you could get the belt changed for considerably less elsewhere.

yeah you're both right I guess, will be the last service they get from me though as their attitude was pretty poor.

I can see their point thinking about it it, but its basically bumped up the price of the car by

Definately worth it, you can get it done at any VAT registered garage using genuine parts and you should be ok on the warrenty though

buy it and get someone else to do the work later on as above would be my advice

I can see their point thinking about it it, but its basically bumped up the price of the car by

Makes sense yes. I just wanted to make sure they were being reasonable

Picking it up on Saturday, can't wait !

Personally would have thought that for the sake of a £15 piece of rubber they wouldn't risk losing the sale?

I know they have labour costs as well, but what they charge us per hour is no-where near what it actually costs the dealer per hour.

Personally I'd dig my heels in and go elsewhere if they dont agree to change the belt, it's a fairly serious item and i'd want to know it'd been done, it's not like its a rare car so shouldn't be hard to find a similar example.

Personally would have thought that for the sake of a

I have just bought a 5 year old fabia estate tdi from Marlborough Skod - the car has done just under 57000 miles

because of the information i got from Briskoda, i found out that the cambelt needed changing. in the service book it diddnt mention a time scale. They diddnt want to do the cambelt but i insisted and they gave me a 60,000 mile service including cambelt

If I were you I would phone up Skoda main office and ask for Customer Service and see what they think to the response you have had. I think it sucks!

Martin S:thumbup:

I know they have labour costs as well' date=' but what they charge us per hour is no-where near what it actually costs the dealer per hour.

[/quote']

That all depends, sales wont be doing the cambelt. Even at internal invoicing it will still be pricey. The aftersales dept cant afford to give to much of a discount to the sales dept as they still occupy time in the workshop which could be taken up by retail work.

The 'dealer' doesnt pay for it.

Personally would have thought that for the sake of a £15 piece of rubber they wouldn't risk losing the sale?

It isn't just a £15 piece of rubber.

We had 1.9TDi in this week that had 'just this piece of rubber' replaced 10,000 miles ago, and now it needs a new engine due to all the teeth been stripped from the belt. To do the job properly it also needs the rollers and tensioner (use a kit), and maybe, while it is all a part a crankshaft pulley oil seal and a water pump, not to mention some new bolts to prevent it from dropping out later on. We sold a W reg one this week, sales agreed to replace the belt and guess what? - It got all of the above, still cost us over £200.

You can't expect them to absorb the cost of all of that, otherwise they will probably go the cheapest route and replace the belt only. Your best bet is to negotiate a discount on the parts and labour.

Does anybody know why this has changed from the original belt change time/mileage. Its certainly going to make these cars more expensive to run. Mine will be 4 years old in September and its still the same car so what is different?

The belts started snaping at 5 years I believe

Frankly though, myself and i'd imagine 99.9% of car buyers are not even remotely interested in a garages internal politics, I couldn't care less if 'Workshop' are charging 'Sales' etc etc, as far as I'm concerned I go to a garage and thats it, it's not 2 separate entities.

The cost price of the parts, even if replacing all the mentioned items, is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things.

I find it very dissapointing that a business could be so short sighted in the way it does things, for what is really a very small cost to the dealer they may have lost any future business/servicing from the customer.

I'd agree with that, hence i made the comment about using a third party to do the change. Definately make sure they use all the right parts though

I bought my 110TDI from an independant dealer with 56k on the clock,

As the cam belt was due at 60k I asked them to do it as part of the deal.

(I was pushing for the best deal I could get.)

He said that they have a certain amount to make on each car, so I could either have a discount on the price of the car or they would do a 60K service.

I guess if someone wants to do a deal they will. However, it sometimes feels like some dealer just don't want to do a deal.:thumbdwn:

If you can get a similar car elsewhere, walk away, they will soon get the idea that they should be more responsive to customers.

The cost price of the parts, even if replacing all the mentioned items, is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things.

That would depend on the "grand scheme of things"...assuming it's 4 hours labour, it's going to cost the dealership to change the part, *and* it's going to cost them 4 hours in lost chargeable work...

If the "internal cost" is

Your assuming that all the mechanics are kept busy on 'paying' customers cars all day long, and never have any time when there are no cars in the workshop.

As with all businesses there always periods of inactivity, they could use that time to do a job that would potentially bring more business in.

Or alternatively one of the mechanics might have been happy to earn some overtime, hence not eating into regular workshop hours.

There are many ways the dealer could find to carry the job out and it's not an expensive one either.

Oh, and have you ever known a main dealer sell a 'Bargain'?

Your assuming that all the mechanics are kept busy on 'paying' customers cars all day long, and never have any time when there are no cars in the workshop.

This is true - it would depend a lot on the individual dealerships. Of the three Skoda dealerships I've been to though, they all seem to be very busy and have fairly long lead times on getting work booked in - my post was based on the assumption that the dealership in question would be operated in a similar manner...

Or alternatively one of the mechanics might have been happy to earn some overtime, hence not eating into regular workshop hours.

Again, comes down to the dealership - however, paying an overtime rate and associated costs with keeping the workshop open might still work out cheaper than taking it out of bookable time but would push the internal cost of getting the work done up.

There are many ways the dealer could find to carry the job out and it's not an expensive one either.

I guess expensive is a relative term - anything which takes half a day to do will be relatively expensive...certainly compared to the oil change/inspection service included in the deal. And if the cambelt is still a good few months off needing to be changed, I can see why they wouldn't be inclined to do it for nothing as part of the deal...

Oh, and have you ever known a main dealer sell a 'Bargain'?

Well...a "bargain" in the world of dealerships...another relative term...

Rob.

The most important point here was made by rob "...it might seem short-sighted for the dealer to loose the deal over this, but by the same token if the car is a bargain then it probably wouldn't take too long for them to find another buyer for it who was willing to take it without the cambelt change being included...".

Why would a dealer want to lose the costs involved in changing the cambelt when the car could be sold onto someone else as is??

As Rob also points out, like any business, as far as labour is concerned it's not the employees salary that you need to look at but what the dealer would charge a customer for 4 hours work. Given that hourly rates are generally £50 upwards, four hours work + parts is not cheap. Therefore I'm not surprised in this case that the garage refused to change the belt.

I think you should probably push for them to agree to give you a good deal on their labour rate or parts rate when doing the cambelt change for you.

If they usually charge labout at £70 per hour, maybe they would charge more like £35-45 per hour, which would bring the bill down hugely and leave you looking at spending £200 rather than £350, they still get paid more than it probably costs and you get a cheap belt change. BOth parties are relatively hapy and all

I find it very dissapointing that a business could be so short sighted in the way it does things' date=' for what is really a very small cost to the dealer they may have lost any future business/servicing from the customer.[/quote']

Well I aint going back there put it that way...