I have just had the winter tyres taken off the 500 and two new ones put on the front and two ones I had put on the rear.
There is a charge of £15 plus Vat- ie £18 per tyre if there is a straight swap, so I paid for two new tyres plus £36 for swapping the rears.
Is this a fair charge?
Forgive me, not sure if I'm reading this entirely correctly....does this mean you are still wearing winter tyres all round? Or have you got summers on now?
Personally, I wouldn't be running winters right now if that is what you are doing, especially living in the South of England. The conditions down there don't favour it often enough in my opinion and that believe me is from someone who was born and grew up in the South West and South of England (I lived in Portsmouth for nearly 20 years). I know if I were still living down there, I personally wouldn't bother, but that's just my opinion! Oh and for the record, yes, I do know that very occasionally, you get snow down there and it can get down to freezing lol! Trust me, you get nothing like what we get every winter where I live now!
So you are asking if the swap for your rears was fair? Well, all depends on what you class as fair. Did you spend 10 minutes on the 'phone calling round a few tyre shops to find out how much it would cost to swap? Living in the New Forest as you do (and I have no idea where in the New Forest obviously!), well I guess Southampton isn't far and neither is Ringwood, so you would have to take a trip out depending on where in the New Forest you are. The tyre shops near where I live, charge around £10 to £12 per tyre to swap over onto different rims. I just recently had to do that when I bought some replacement alloy wheels which I had professionally refurbished and then my winter tyres remounted from the steels they were originally on, to the alloys.
Tyre shops clearly have you over a bit of a barrel. You can't realistically do tyre changes yourself. It's a dangerous job without the right equipment. The tyres need mounting correctly and balancing etc.
Personally, I think you've overpaid. £18 per wheel on a tyre swap is too much imo, I certainly wouldn't have paid that amount of money. But I guess you have to weigh up how far you would have had to travel to somewhere with plenty of choice against convenience factor. If I lived somewhere remote for instance, I'd plan that sort of job in with a trip out to the city.