ToxicBunny
Oi! Leave me out of this...
As a sort of follow on from the Car Service City threads about them being a rip off, I have my own story now unfortunately.
I had the misfortune of having clutch issues yesterday when I was on the way to work, and it just so happened in a place where I couldn't get the vehicle home to sort it out myself (it would have involved a 35km tow). I had the vehicle towed to the Bosch Service Centre in Mt Edgecombe in Durban thinking they're a relatively reputable place, and may charge a slight premium but at least it will get fixed in a reasonable time frame, oh how wrong I was.
First things first, they couldn't even spare a mechanic for 5 minutes to confirm my suspicions that either the Master cylinder or the Slave cylinder on the clutch had given up the ghost and were letting air into the system on the day the vehicle arrived and instead had my vehicle there for the whole day and up until about 10am today before calling me with a quote.
Now comes the quote, they gave me 2 quotes. 1 for Agent parts and 1 for non-agent parts. I would expect the Agent quote to be bad, but they came back with a price of R6500 (approximately) to replace the master and slave with agent parts. I had a bit of trouble not snorting my coffee through my nose at that point, but i initially just wrote it off to the agent parts being stupidly expensive. The guy then gave me the quote for the job using non-agent parts, and whilst I was bracing for a price that was higher than I was expecting, the figure that was given to me on the phone actually made me ask the guy if he was "fscking serious". They wanted R4500 to do the job using non-agent parts.
I then spent the next hour phoning a few places, and every single quote for the parts I got was in the R500 - R800 range for a master and a slave cylinder. I also phoned the agents and got pricing on their parts as well just for shytes and giggles, and they were about R3400 for both master and slave. Of course I expected the agent parts to be stupidly expensive, but it turns out Bosch were trying to make a ridiculous markup on both agent and non-agent parts.
For the labour, they were going to charge me 4 hours to do the job, at R450 per hour ex vat. so all in R1800 ex vat. After actually using my brain for a second in amongst all of this, i remembered that I had done a similar job on a previous vehicle of mine and it had only taken me (a very much amateur mechanic) about 2 hours. So first off they were massively inflating their labour needs for a very very basic job, and they wanted to charge me nearly R3k for non agent parts, and nearly R5k for agents parts, so they were tacking on a 250+% markup on the non agent parts, and nearly 100% markup on the agent parts.
I'm all for a service place making a reasonable profit, but these guys were hoping to make R3k+ out of me in pure profit for the non-agent job purely because I was in a "bind" and would need the vehicle fixed.
I am now getting my vehicle fixed for an all in price of R2k, that includes paying Bosch for half an hours labour to get the vehicle out of their hands, the tow truck to take it to a mechanic nearby, and for the mechanic to get me the parts and do the job.
For those who go TLDR, here is the summary :
Avoid Bosch Service Centres if you are in a bind and need to get your vehicle fixed, it seems like they will try and abuse that position to make themselves extra money.
I had the misfortune of having clutch issues yesterday when I was on the way to work, and it just so happened in a place where I couldn't get the vehicle home to sort it out myself (it would have involved a 35km tow). I had the vehicle towed to the Bosch Service Centre in Mt Edgecombe in Durban thinking they're a relatively reputable place, and may charge a slight premium but at least it will get fixed in a reasonable time frame, oh how wrong I was.
First things first, they couldn't even spare a mechanic for 5 minutes to confirm my suspicions that either the Master cylinder or the Slave cylinder on the clutch had given up the ghost and were letting air into the system on the day the vehicle arrived and instead had my vehicle there for the whole day and up until about 10am today before calling me with a quote.
Now comes the quote, they gave me 2 quotes. 1 for Agent parts and 1 for non-agent parts. I would expect the Agent quote to be bad, but they came back with a price of R6500 (approximately) to replace the master and slave with agent parts. I had a bit of trouble not snorting my coffee through my nose at that point, but i initially just wrote it off to the agent parts being stupidly expensive. The guy then gave me the quote for the job using non-agent parts, and whilst I was bracing for a price that was higher than I was expecting, the figure that was given to me on the phone actually made me ask the guy if he was "fscking serious". They wanted R4500 to do the job using non-agent parts.
I then spent the next hour phoning a few places, and every single quote for the parts I got was in the R500 - R800 range for a master and a slave cylinder. I also phoned the agents and got pricing on their parts as well just for shytes and giggles, and they were about R3400 for both master and slave. Of course I expected the agent parts to be stupidly expensive, but it turns out Bosch were trying to make a ridiculous markup on both agent and non-agent parts.
For the labour, they were going to charge me 4 hours to do the job, at R450 per hour ex vat. so all in R1800 ex vat. After actually using my brain for a second in amongst all of this, i remembered that I had done a similar job on a previous vehicle of mine and it had only taken me (a very much amateur mechanic) about 2 hours. So first off they were massively inflating their labour needs for a very very basic job, and they wanted to charge me nearly R3k for non agent parts, and nearly R5k for agents parts, so they were tacking on a 250+% markup on the non agent parts, and nearly 100% markup on the agent parts.
I'm all for a service place making a reasonable profit, but these guys were hoping to make R3k+ out of me in pure profit for the non-agent job purely because I was in a "bind" and would need the vehicle fixed.
I am now getting my vehicle fixed for an all in price of R2k, that includes paying Bosch for half an hours labour to get the vehicle out of their hands, the tow truck to take it to a mechanic nearby, and for the mechanic to get me the parts and do the job.
For those who go TLDR, here is the summary :
Avoid Bosch Service Centres if you are in a bind and need to get your vehicle fixed, it seems like they will try and abuse that position to make themselves extra money.
