Inspection I prices

mmm-five

mmm-five

Lifer
 Liverpool
Site Supporter
Just done a quick ring-around to some dealers for a quote on an Inspection I on my Z4MC.

Williams Liverpool...............£850
Williams Bolton...................£835
Cooper Colchester..............£780
Halliwell Jones Southport....£778
Halliwell Jones Warrington..£766
David Holmes Stockport.....£760
Costwold Cheltenham.........£705

Please note that these prices are just their book price and therefore do not include any discounts you may negotiate.
 
This sort of thing might be worth adding to and keeping updated as and when people get new quotes
 
I'll be updating it with more once I get call backs from 6 who promised to "call back in 5 minutes".

I also asked what sort of notice I was likely to need to give before bringing it in, and most said 2-3 days (one said a week).

Last time I put my M5 in a dealer (a long time ago I know) I was given a date 4 weeks away.
 
I can always get mine serviced within a couple of days.. unless I need a courtesy car, then it's always 2weeks+

As I'm never that organised, I've never had a courtesy car :roll:
 
Err, why's it so expensive? don't they just do an 'oil service' plus a visual inspection, check horn, lights etc etc. assuming a whopping £100 for oil, what do they spend the other 5 hours doing?

Visuals:

External inspection
Lights
Underbonnet (fluid levels), drive belts
wheels and tyres
brakes and tyres
Underside

frankly a rip off. If a 3.0l is £300 odd, there is no way the M could be £500 more. A joke surely?

Don't we all do most of this when washing the car at the weekend? - I have to admit taht I begrudge the cash to pay Mr BMW to 'visually inspect my lights' for me.

- are M lights different ? :cry:
 
The only 'major' difference is that the M has the valve clearances done every inspection. It used to be every 2nd inspection, but they've extended the intervals to make it look more economic, whilst almost doubling the price of the inspection 1.

Labour is 4.5 hours (according to their service 'book') and at £100+vat an hour, you're looking at £520 just for the labour.

I'm not how the parts are £250 though, as all I can think off is fluids (coolant & oil - £100), filters (air, cabin & oil - £50), shims (if any are needed at £8 each) and a valve cover gasket (£25).

My indy is doing mine, so it'll be the same parts cost (maybe a bit less due to getting them at trade price), plus 4.5 hours at £45/hour = £200, for a total of around £400. So a £300-£400 saving.

Plus when it comes to Inspection II, the saving will be even greater as it's only another hours labour plus gearbox & diff oils, and spark plugs (£70) for which BMW charge £300 more.

However...even if BMW did offer to do the work at the same price, I would not let them touch it, as I simply don't trust them. I just know that if I give them yet another chance they'd just screw me over again. What's the saying..."Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."...well I've been 'fooled' too many times - never again.
 
Just this minute come back from getting my Inspection I done - just over 700 quid including the VAT (negotiated Inspection 1 alone down to about 680).

Got it done at Sytner Sunningdale, always found them quite efficient so worth checking out.
 
I paid £569.66 at Rybrook Warwick back in April, and was happy with their service. This included the 2 year brake fluid change.

This was made up of £164.48 parts, £330.88 labour, plus VAT.

They gave me 10% off labour, and 5% off parts as a new customer.

Plus I had a 330D for the day
 
MarkW said:
I paid £569.66 at Rybrook Warwick back in April, and was happy with their service. This included the 2 year brake fluid change.

This was made up of £164.48 parts, £330.88 labour, plus VAT.

They gave me 10% off labour, and 5% off parts as a new customer.

Plus I had a 330D for the day
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That's sounds like a good deal.

When you say you had a 330D 'for the day', at what time did you drop it off and at what time was it ready.
 
mmm-five said:
MarkW said:
I paid £569.66 at Rybrook Warwick back in April, and was happy with their service. This included the 2 year brake fluid change.

This was made up of £164.48 parts, £330.88 labour, plus VAT.

They gave me 10% off labour, and 5% off parts as a new customer.

Plus I had a 330D for the day
Click to expand...

That's sounds like a good deal.

When you say you had a 330D 'for the day', at what time did you drop it off and at what time was it ready.
Click to expand...

Dropped off around 8:15 (they said 8:30 but they were ready), picked up around 17:45 (think they close at six)

The nice chap who took me to the 330D pointed out it was quite a fast car and to take it easy, until he asked me which my car was :lol:

I did get a bit better deal than usual, as the Indie dealer I bought the Z4MC from uses Rybrook from time to time so arranged it for me, but it shows they will do it for a more reasonable price if you negotiate. Sytner Solihull, my local dealer wouldn't match it, but I got them down to around £630 from a starting price of well over £700.
 
MarkW said:
Dropped off around 8:15 (they said 8:30 but they were ready), picked up around 17:45 (think they close at six).
Click to expand...

Sorry, my question was a loaded one!

The reason I asked is because the BMW service instructions state that the car has to be left to go 'stone cold' before they can do the valve clearances on the engine correctly. The BMW 'manual' states it needs to be left overnight - and the 7 or so dealers I've spoken to to get quotes have also stated that they'd need it in the afternoon before so that they can start on it first thing the following day.

Assuming the car was taken into the service bay and switched off immediately (which I doubt), they would have had to allow it to go cold until 5pm before they could do the valve clearances. They could have done all the other bits of servicing & looking during that time, but they would not have been able to measure any gaps until 5pm at the earliest, which means they'd only have 45 minutes to do the job, reassemble it and get it back to you.

Did they give you, or offer you a list of the measured clearances and the shims required to correct any out of spec clearances, or, did they say everything was fine with the clearances, or, did they not even mention it?

I'm not saying they didn't do the job, nor am I saying they did the job incorrectly, but when they don't follow the BMW book what's the point of paying a BMW premium for the supposed BMW 'quality' and 'expertise'? Of course there's no guarantee that they'd have done it any differently had you been asked to leave it overnight, but at least that way it'd put the chance of them not doing it further to the back of your mind.
 
mmm-five said:
MarkW said:
Dropped off around 8:15 (they said 8:30 but they were ready), picked up around 17:45 (think they close at six).
Click to expand...

Sorry, my question was a loaded one!

The reason I asked is because the BMW service instructions state that the car has to be left to go 'stone cold' before they can do the valve clearances on the engine correctly. The BMW 'manual' states it needs to be left overnight - and the 7 or so dealers I've spoken to to get quotes have also stated that they'd need it in the afternoon before so that they can start on it first thing the following day.

Assuming the car was taken into the service bay and switched off immediately (which I doubt), they would have had to allow it to go cold until 5pm before they could do the valve clearances. They could have done all the other bits of servicing & looking during that time, but they would not have been able to measure any gaps until 5pm at the earliest, which means they'd only have 45 minutes to do the job, reassemble it and get it back to you.

Did they give you, or offer you a list of the measured clearances and the shims required to correct any out of spec clearances, or, did they say everything was fine with the clearances, or, did they not even mention it?

I'm not saying they didn't do the job, nor am I saying they did the job incorrectly, but when they don't follow the BMW book what's the point of paying a BMW premium for the supposed BMW 'quality' and 'expertise'? Of course there's no guarantee that they'd have done it any differently had you been asked to leave it overnight, but at least that way it'd put the chance of them not doing it further to the back of your mind.
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Ah, I see :o

The service manager did spend some time going through what they had done and yes he explained that they had adjusted valve clearances at the time. He didn't go to the detail of telling me what time they had been done or give me a list of measured clearances. On the Inspection I service sheet 'Adjusting Valve Clearances' is ticked as being done.

I can understand your concerns if thats what it states, but should the owner be expected to know that? As far as I can be aware, the work has been done, my book stamped and I have receipts and service sheets. I don't like paying dealers any more than anyone else, and am aware that there are good and bad ones out there, just as there are good and bad indy's out there.

It sounds like you have had bad experiences in the past, and hence your reasons for going to an Indy. However, my personal view is that for a car that is still in warranty, I would rather take the extra hit and go for BMW servicing. If I have any problems down the line I believe (maybe naively!) that you have a better chance of resolving any issues if the dealer has serviced the car. I also think that there is still a majority of used buyers that want a full dealer service history and the car will hence retain more value, just like the number of people who won't buy privately and want to go to a dealer for 'piece of mind'.
 
TBH if the manual says 'leave overnight' then that's what should happen. My local indi insists that dealers he worked for wouldn't touch them unless they were obviously noisy. It's a lot of money to pay for a service and the least you can expect is for the job to be done correctly.
 
MarkW - yes I have had bad experiences in the past, and only found out about some of them when the car started breaking down supposedly after it'd just been fixed.

As I said in my last post, there is no way I could state 100% that they hadn't been done, and if the car was left to go 95% cold then the measurements would be almost the same as if it was 100% cold, so don't worry!

The BMW 'book' doesn't always work against the owner either. In some instances the work will take longer than the BMW 'book' time, yet the dealer is only supposed to charge the 'book' time allocated to that job. The problem is that the owner doesn't know or get told this 'book' time and may or may not be charged correctly. It's this lack of enlightenment that lets 'some' of the dealer network behave so badly.

From my point of view, I'd value a car with full BMW service history at no more than one with a full specialist service history, as after the fact you can't know whether the work has been done properly or not at either, so why pay a premium for a car with a BMW history, and pay more for maintaining that history?

As you can tell, I just have a problem with most of my local dealers. As I've given each of them more than a few chances to rectify faults they've created, or to do a job right first time - even though the inspection sheet had been ticked off.

Don't worry, I'm just being paranoid...but it doesn't mean they're not out to rip us off :thumbsup:
 
I'm sure your concern is well warranted mmm-five, we all want the best for our cars and don't like bad service or being ripped off!

Out of interest, where does it state about the car being left overnight? Just had a look in the service book and can't see it. If this is the requirement as you have said, BMW should make it at bit more obvious so that the owner knows what to expect of the dealer....
 
MarkW said:
I'm sure your concern is well warranted mmm-five, we all want the best for our cars and don't like bad service or being ripped off!

Out of interest, where does it state about the car being left overnight? Just had a look in the service book and can't see it. If this is the requirement as you have said, BMW should make it at bit more obvious so that the owner knows what to expect of the dealer....
Click to expand...

It's not in the owner's manual, it's in the BMW technical/service (TIS) manual which the dealers are supposed to follow and which you're not supposed to see (nice level of transparency don't you think?). It shows how much time each part of any job should take - if they do it quicker (which is possible) then they make more profit, if they do it slower then they make less profit.

You can pay to see this online at BMW TIS or BMW Tech Info - or you can buy the CD/DVD on ebay.

I paid about £90 a few years back for the Bentley service manual and the ETK/TIS/WDS/KSD/EBA/ETM discs (see here for details of each) for my e34 M5 (just to do the common, non-M e34 bits myself), but they also do one for the S54 engines too (albeit in the e46).

My indi also has a full set of manuals from BMW's own technician training courses (Joe Public cannot buy them and they're not on CD).
 
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