There was a letter published yesterday re Saab sevicing costs in Surrey from a disappointed owner. My experience might be useful for others.
I have a Saab 9-5 which was due for a 78000 mile service. Like correspondent NB, my nearest dealer is in Surrey, and they wanted £256 +VAT for the privilege of carrying it out. As luck would have it, it was due about the time I was going to North Wales on holiday for a week. Saab dealer there quoted £118 +VAT. Guess where I had it done?? Even for this relatively minor service, it would have been possible to drive the 270 miles, have a nice meal & bottle of wine, stay the night, have the car serviced & come home with change!! On the assumption that the next (bigger) service will save even more, looks like a nice weekend away is in order!
Another nice surprise was finding a nearly full 1 litre bottle of screenwasher fluid in the car when I picked it up - I know the Surrey dealer would have charged me for the whole bottle, used a quarter, and kept the rest.
Moral is, shop round.
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Mike,
What a good idea, I own a Volvo V70 so, when the next service is due I think I'll ring a few dealers in Wales to see if i can get a better deal.
Cheers
Andy.
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This works even better when you cross the Channel for a service and a long weekend in France. Especially if you drive a French car.
HJ
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Joking apart, you'll find if you sell your house in the south east and move 'oop north,' you can buy a similar sized house to what you had and probably put in the region of £150k into your bank account PLUS have the benefit of cheaper car servicing costs!
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Worth bringing over for the attention of the Technical Matters crew, I thought.
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Joking apart, you'll find if you sell your house in the south east and move 'oop north,' you can buy a similar sized house to what you had and probably put in the region of £150k into your bank account PLUS have the benefit of cheaper car servicing costs!
Of course you'd have to work in a mine, your wife would die in child birth and you children would get TB.
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Parp, Parp!
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You can contact all the Ford dealers(for example)on the net;what is suprising is that dsifferent locations of the same dealer will quote you different prices for service.
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We service a suprising amount of 'weekend' cars down here in Devon
They seem to come down to parents etc for the weekend and get the car done at the same time, saving money and getting a good honest job done
MG-Rover Questions? Click on www.mg-rover.org
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We service a suprising amount of 'weekend' cars down here in Devon
Yeah - for ages after I moved down south I took my vehicles back home for any work/MOT they needed.
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Parp, Parp!
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And there we were, wondering why the roads are congested. All those drivers are going to Wales or Pudsey to save money on their servicing, preferring to spend fuel rather than money, and reduce the used value of their cars with more miles!
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Hi
I've been trying to find a Mercedes Dealership in France or Belgium to find out the cost of a "B" service for my Mercedes C220 CDi. Have you any idears if it would be cheaper to have the car service in europe and if so which country do you think would be the best also do you have any contacts numbers.
Thank you in antisipation
Brian Gastrell
>> This works even better when you cross the Channel for aservice and a long weekend in France. Especially if you drive a French car. HJ
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hj, the reverse certainly was (and maybe still is) true for ford's. whilst living in france and unsure how long the noisy thrust bearing on on my ford sierra would last (140 000 miles), it was cheaper (and cleaner) for me to drive from near paris to calais, day return ferry and get the clutch changed in halford's in dover than i could buy the clutch for in france, never mind fitting it. same with an exhaust, the french equivalent of kwikfit assuring me that the exhausts on the cvh and the ohc were the same (which they're not!). only problem is the food in england, so i brought my own.
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Very good point Mike - have just been down to Dorset so perhaps I should have arranged a service there. My local Volvo dealer's prices are a rip-off, they always seem to find extra (costly) work that 'needs' to be done ! On the final occasion I used them for a service, the bill was £400 and that excluded around £300 worth of work they said had to be done but whch my local independent said was unnecessary ! To sweeten what was a very bitter pill, the guy who took my money told me they'd put a 'courtesy' pack in the car for me and made it sound like quite a gesture. On arriving home I checked its contents - 1 litre oil, 2 disposable gloves & 2 paper wipes. When doing my tax return some months later I discovered to my horror that I'd been charged for it too !
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just been down to Dorset so perhaps I should have arranged a service there... I discovered to my horror that I'd been charged for it too !
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I bet they spend their evenings putting lamps on shoreside rocks as well ... :)
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