vito115 wrote:

The easy way out of the labour charge would be for the garage to have said they had 2 "engineers" working on the vehicle Or thats what i used to tell customers if they questioned labour/time taken !

If that's true then that's a good reason for investigation by trading standards and yet another reason that garages in general have a pretty poor reputation  I started with nothing and still have most of it left!

munch90 wrote:

If garages only charged the actual time taken and not book time they not make any money

if a job has a book time of 3 hours , but after doing the job 100 times you get it down to 1 hour the customer still gets charged 3 hours thats how it works

But then there are the jobs, with a 3 hour "book" time, that's taken near 6, due to seized fastenings that have to be drill out, sheared locking wheel bolts, hub bearing that have been to the moon and back, etc etc,,
Is it "book" time, or actual time,, The mechanic's time has to be paid for, and its not the dealer's car , but the customers they are working on !!

Under the heading rough with the smooth !! California F1, 75th 110 "Kermit", 50th Ann V8, 90 V8 Hybrid, 55 Series 1

Main Brian James Trailer Dealer for South West UK

munch90 wrote:

If garages only charged the actual time taken and not book time they not make any money

if a job has a book time of 3 hours , but after doing the job 100 times you get it down to 1 hour the customer still gets charged 3 hours thats how it works

if its a unusual job ( electrical problem ) , then that will get charged out as time taken

Sorry to disagree, but after investigating several large chains of garages on behalf of the then Ministry of Transport and in conjunction with trading standards several successful prosecutions were made to reflect this practice. Contractual terms of invoicing were then quite complex and probably still are, the only legitimate way around this was if a three hour labour time was quoted for example then the job should represent three hours of labour by someone with the desired skills at a reasonable pace, incidentally the ICME were heavily criticised for inaccurate repair times and were seen to be not working independently from the trade, how true those allegations were are speculatory. The investigations never really concentrated on independent operators as the sample size was too small but there was evidence to support that this practice was endemic through the trade but less so in independents. I'm fully aware that this practice is still ongoing but it's not always necessary now as it was then, well run workshops have a good throughput of profitable work however that relies on good skilled labour something which is difficult to come across in this day and age. As seen on this forum there are many with a superlative mechanical comprehension however in my view they are the exception.
With respect.  I started with nothing and still have most of it left!