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hawk20
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Blobcat said:I had this conversation at main Honda dealer on Friday when I took my wifes Accord in for its annual service. £125 inc vat, they also washed and vacuumed it. The Accord is not a Mercedes yet still packed with electronics, their hourly rate is just over £60. The showroom is glass and chrome and 'free' coffee is just as available as at my MB dealer 2 miles up the road. So what is the difference?
First we need to make sure we are comparing like with like. Let us take A services and B services including oil and all materials and including Vat. This is important. The oil for a Merc diesel is synthetic and if you have the particulate filter to meet latest Euro requirements you need the low ash oil at £13 per litre. Great stuff. Increases engine life and so on but it ain't cheap. I know from other Merc owners that Indies often (not always) use cheaper oils unless you ask. If you need 8.5 litres it's a load of money just for the oil.
Here are accurate figures for my S class 320 cdi registered December 23rd and needing low ash synthetic Mobil oil: -
I get serviced at Pentagon Mercedes at Totton, same company as owns the Chichester dealer. Here are todays prices, firmly checked. If you wish to confirm phone 02380 863999 and ask for Sarah, or for Greg the service manager or John the foreman. I have an S class 320cdi. It has done 11k miles since Dec 2005 and the computer says it will need an "A" service in 4100 miles. So approx 15,000 miles between services. The "A" service, including all parts, oil etc is £225 IF you have the particulate filter for Euro 4 (sadly I do and the Low ash synthetic Mobil oil is £13 per litre). Then after another 15,000 mils or so comes the "B" service and that costs £390 (or £350 if I did not have the particulate filter). These prices are ex vat. If you want the Inc Vat prices, by adding 17.5% I get £264 and £458 or a total of £722 for the first 30,000 miles. This gives an average service cost of £361 inc materials and VAT, per 15,000 miles or approximately 2.4p per mile. So what are you going to save by using inferior oil and a non-Merc dealer -could it be as much as 1p per mile? It's not really significant in the overall picture.
An A class would, of course, cost far less. My brother just had his first service on an A class and was surprised how little it cost.
For comparison, on fuel I get an all-round average of 30 miles per gallon (I do quite a lot of short runs at 27mpg and on longer runs get 37mpg). With diesel now at about a pound per litre or £4-54p per gallon, fuel costs me approximately 15p per mile.
So servicing is really the small change of motoring, especially if you add in the depreciation, interest on capital and so on. Now to be fair to Mercedes, servicing with a dealer also gives you a free breakdown service anywhere in Europe. On another thread the AA quoted £103 for Euro cover for a year (see what will it cost me to drive to Florence). And then there is also the 30 year rust guarantee which we know from numerous threads is effective and not ruined by absurd small print.
Finally, look at the Service Plus contracts for 3-6 year old cars up to 120,000miles. Virtually a guarantee, it seems from other threads, and offering fixed price, discounted cost servicing and all repairs for remarkably good prices.
Lastly, we all fool ourselves on servicing costs. Not that long ago cars were serviced every 6000 miles and my Honda Accord never cost less than £200 per pop. (That's over 3p per mile). Before that it was every 3000 miles. Now we go up to 15,000 between services and the costs per mile are really not at all bad especially when you allow for very dear synthetic oils and the value of a Europe wide breakdown service. Lexus charge £80 per year for their breakdown service.
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