I m not sure if this is just me but how can mechanics justify 100 pound an hour + VAT for their services.

In fairness a senior dentist in Harley Street who is the outstanding with 20 years experience plus will struggle to quote 100 pound an hour whilst keeping a straight faced.

If i remember right, all the guys at work who smoked behind the shed and struggled to get 1 GCSE went into being a mechanic, but they now seem to be raking money in.

Thoughts?

a freind of mine works for merc as a mechanic merc charge about £95+vat per hour + parts as far as i know he dont see much over £8-9 of that but he dose get the odd bonus the rest of the monney goes to the dealer he did say to me that they make around £2000 proffit a week just in the markup in oil

Point 1.

Unless you are talking about a private run garage the mechanic/technician doesnt charge anything. The dealer sets the labour rate. If that is £120 per hour you can bet the technician is no more than £13 p/h maximum. Some of the best paid technicians in the dealer network wont clear more than £40k per year as a basic with a lot of them on less than half of that.

Point 2

As for someone with less than 1 GCSE working on a modern car, well do you think they would seriously cope given some of the electrical faults you see on here let alone the ones you dont.

I have 10 GCSE's, a national craft certificate in repair and service of road vehicles, a HND in motor vehcile engineering,15 years experiance and hold a VAG mastertech qualification and im not the most qualified person in our workshop.

Plus can you imagine how much it costs to open a workshop let alone pay anyone anything.

I m not sure if this is just me but how can mechanics justify 100 pound an hour + VAT for their services.

In fairness a senior dentist in Harley Street who is the outstanding with 20 years experience plus will struggle to quote 100 pound an hour whilst keeping a straight faced.

If i remember right, all the guys at work who smoked behind the shed and struggled to get 1 GCSE went into being a mechanic, but they now seem to be raking money in.

Thoughts?

In fairness the mechaninc will not see anywhere near that for his services it's the garage that will be making the profit. Some of what you pay is devoted to equipment and training as well as the other ongoing costs.

I think your comment about lack of GCSE's is a little harsh especially from somone who had to ask which side of the steering column carried the indicator stalk. :P

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/fabia/have-just-been-using-cruise-my-fabia/75674/2/#post871751

I'm also a mechanic, I also have 10 GCSE and many qualifications in motorcraft, wich have not been the easiest of courses, if you obviously think that mechanics are just morons with no intelligence, why don't you fix your own car? I'm sure you will find the people who hang arround the bike sheds are now living off our tax's.

I would love to know what field of work you are in and how much money you get??

I'm also a mechanic, I also have 10 GCSE and many qualifications in motorcraft, wich have not been the easiest of courses, if you obviously think that mechanics are just morons with no intelligence, why don't you fix your own car? I'm sure you will find the people who hang arround the bike sheds are now living off our tax's.

I would love to know what field of work you are in and how much money you get??

Amen!

In fairness the mechaninc will not see anywhere near that for his services it's the garage that will be making the profit. Some of what you pay is devoted to equipment and training as well as the other ongoing costs.

I think your comment about lack of GCSE's is a little harsh especially from somone who had to ask which side of the steering column carried the indicator stalk. :P

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/fabia/have-just-been-using-cruise-my-fabia/75674/2/#post871751

not easy to become a mechanic and you need to know what you are doing

If you dont know what you are doing just imagine what is a stake.

You dont last long if you cant cut it these days.

If you dont know what you are doing just imagine what is a stake.

You dont last long if you cant cut it these days.

i want to know how dutton forshaw in maidstone are still going thay dont know what they are doing every time my car has been in there that f0ck up something

I'm also a mechanic, I also have 10 GCSE and many qualifications in motorcraft, wich have not been the easiest of courses, if you obviously think that mechanics are just morons with no intelligence, why don't you fix your own car? I'm sure you will find the people who hang arround the bike sheds are now living off our tax's.

I would love to know what field of work you are in and how much money you get??

Well said.

I hav been an "Amatuer" mechanic for about 15 years and some of the hardest things I have ever done have involved keeping whatever vehicle I had on the road. I would have taken this a lot further but as I wasn't good enough or motivated enough to cut it professionally (The day broke my ribs changing the gear box on my Astra sealed that) I found more agreeable ways of earning money.

My father is a fitter by trade and a few years back he was running his own company repairing farm/garden machinery and he made quite a name and a fair bit of money out of it. Why? Because he was damn ood at something not many other people did.

Why didn't more people do it? Because it was a hard job full stop. Big responsibility with many thousands of pounds worth of kit, overheads increased by the need for "special tools", having to be flexible and adaptable to any given situation, sometimes the hours are awful (Esp if you are self employed) and it's also a sometimes dangerous and physically demanding job as well as compliance with all the pollitically correct legislation.

Fair play to them

Apologies for offending anyone about my GCSE comment - That was not my intention at all...

The dealer i work at charges £105+VAt per hour... our technicians see little or none of that.. and secondly nor does us as a dealer. From that amount all we see is 5% as our actual own, rest goes to UK.

And I can say hand on heart... to be a technician these days takes a hell of a lot of know how, expecially with the electronics based side of cars now. Its gotta be said myself as the person behind the desk who has to deal with the customers on one side and the technicians i'm giving the work to on the other, we know very little compared to them.

I myself have 11 GCSEs mainly science, ICT and Electronics based and i've taken a BTEC National Diploma in Electronic and Electrical Engineering... and i've gotta say i would still feel out of my depth working on/with some of the systems our lads in the workshop have to do on a daily basis on vehicles that are in.

We have 3 apprentice technicians in at the moment training with us and its great to watch them one minute working with brand new incredibly technically advanced cars using computer based guided fault finding and then the next minute stripping down a basic 1.3L 1988 Model E reg to get to the bottom of a non start. Skills are needed for that and i'm sorry i think its wrong that technicians aren't making more of the £105 an hour we charge, they deserve it.

Also speaking as someone who is on the bench and firing line of customers ****ed off with 'outragious prices for repair/servicing'... its common knowledge cars need servicing... when buying a car try perhaps researching cost of maintenance into that as well.... i mean... when you buy a house and a wall cracks.. what do you do? You cant take it back can you.. no you get the builders in and have to pay for it. People need to realise cars go wrong and you will have to pay for it. If you dont want to pay high prices dont buy expensive cars without researching cost of maintenance... simple as! (Sorry i get agitated over this dealing with people everyday!!). Its a lovely experiance spending £20K on a car.. but you will need £25k, not just the £20k to buy it, to cover you for the next 3-4yrs of ownership. I mean what do you do when the fuel runs out.. you fill it up dont ya... same is needed with oil, coolent etc etc!!!!!!!!

Worked on commercial vehicles (sparky) for last 30 yrs no GCSE systems just as coplicated as cars eg EDC ABS EBS ASR EBD CAN ECAS Electronic gear box control

MET

We seam to manage ok retail charge £60 per hour pay @£15 per hour

Why pay dealer prices? Why not find a good independant garage which might give you a better, more honest and personal service for around 25-45/hour.

Simple answer is If a person cant fix their car themself and they can afford to pay them £100 an hour. I guess thats how they justify it

I myself am a 2nd year apprentice mechanic and work at a local garage and belive me getting by the electrical courses etc aint no walk in the park.

Also get really p*ssed off when someone calls me a "fitter" or "filter jockey" as the vehicles I work on are a wide range e.g cars, vans, hgv, plant, etc etc.

Sure enough some of the servicing is the same but as alot of you know nothing ever goes to plan. e.g working on a rusty car when everything snaps and all parts have to be modified to fit, make new metal mounts, replate underbody and a huge list of welding and other metal work. Dont see the likes of Quick Fit doing all that !

I used to work settling insurance claims, which often involved assessing the damage and dealing with repairers. I'd pay no more than about £27.50 p/h labour whether at a main dealer or not, and that was in London.

Not far off what lease companies pay either then.

And you should see some of the stuff they wont pay for, and then you drive around in the car, i wouldn't have one that for sure.

If i remember right, all the guys at work who smoked behind the shed and struggled to get 1 GCSE went into being a mechanic, but they now seem to be raking money in.

in your defence, i must say, that when i was doing a level electronics at college, the machine shop/car worskshop was next to the lab we used, and some of the monkeys they had doing that course were totally unbelievable, like you say, no gcse's, numbskulls etc.... but to be fair i doubt if any of them actually reached the end of the course let alone pass any exams or assesments..

but in summary, working on modern cars with all thier fancy electrnonics systems requires a lot of skill and knowledge..... there are some aspects of repairing my own car that i wouldn't even bother to try to fix myself

If my memory serves me right, when I worked at a major Defence contractor as an apprentice, we worked out that the compnay charged less per hour to work on the aircraft for the MOD, than the local Ford garage would charge me to carry out a service, given the aircraft parts were a little more expensive!!,

PXH

Why pay dealer prices? Why not find a good independant garage which might give you a better, more honest and personal service for around 25-45/hour.

Totally agree:orb_clap:

These days, even locating a fault is a worthy skill. Also, quite why manufacturers design cars with "consumable" parts that cannot be reached is beyond me - i.e. resulting in a labour bill inflated by dismantling other bits just to get to the offending part.

A decent garage is worth the money IMO for peace of mind alone. They can hardly cherry pick only the easy jobs, so a higher level of skill has to be available, including management (customer liaison and admin/ordering competence). I've no doubt individual mechanics would be happy to receive a larger slice of the profit pie - though that could be said of employees in any business regrettably.

Regards

Mo

i work as a technician at a bmw dealership and we charge £110 + VAT and we dont receive much of that, which takes the pi**! you never stop training, because the manufacturers are always bringing out more technology.

If you've got your own diagnostic equiptment, ramps, special tools, warranty computer system, mecahnic training company, tyre fitting machine, etc etc then maybe the dealers might charge you less.....but I'm guessing you haven't!

Gents - we all forget (and seem to be taking umbrage with the techies, won't insult then by calling them fitters or mechs) --that todays car is a hybrid of mechanical bits and electronics , especially computer operated /controlled electronics. These guys started off (especially the oldr ones ) with aquiring mechanical skills and qualifications, now in a short space of time they are expected to get to grips with the complexities of electronicsto the same technical level as their mechanical skills.

I personnally admire them as someone from the electronics /comms field, who has a grasp of mechanicals - about time some of us thought of them as a bit more than just "fitters".

Guys take a bow .

Edit - but then as someone who was till a few years ago self emloyed - can tell you that the firms need more and nore training/courses/ specialisedtools- and some of that is to make sure that you only wait a few hours, not days, and get problems sorted at first go - not 15 visits later.

Sure there are some rip off merchants(garages ) out there - but why take it out on the techies in here- who to often give us free info