yes you read right, our baby eleganza, we've owned from new, is having her first MOT in about 3 weeks, coinciding with the 3rd service. now with the new rules on the testing/pricing £50 was a given, but the service costs? what a variance from £160 odd all the way up to a heady £380ish!!!!!!

My Eleganza is going for it's first MOT tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

i await your result with baited breath!

I forgot about this. It passed (I'd have been shocked if it hadn't) but they can't work out where my leak is coming from and referred me to Fiat in Derby.

Boo!

I could not help but laugh at Jai remarks about the cost for a service. The good lady's last car was a Mazda 2tdci, contacted Edinburgh dealer to get a price for the service. I was quoted £165.00, I then contacted the dealer in Dumfries where the car had been bought.....service cost £77.00. (guess where the car got serviced).
I contacted Mazda UK and kicked up merry hell, but i was wasting my breath. I was told that service costs were the same throughout the UK, but I had to take into consideration that salary rates and property taxes would vary throughout the uk.
WHAT A LOT OF BULL POO.

Tara Ian

dropped into glynn hopkins for the service and MOT at 8.00am, will also need new pads up front, i'm hoping that as i have been awake since about 3pm yesterday, they will be pretty quick with it all, and relatively painfree on the wallet........

so i'm home....and what follows is the product of a mind that has been awake for at least 26 hours, working for 14 of them, and spent 2 hours travelling across north london on three different trains to get home from the dealership....can you guess the rest? here goes.....


drop in a 8am, and very quickly booked in, explained that the front brakes were def requiring replacement as the mrs had not bothered to point out the grouching noises under braking from the front untill too late, hence instead of just pads would now need discs too:bang: cheers mrs jai.....and of course a low mileage service and MOT...no problems sir we'll call you when it's done

i'm off for a coffee, toast and a paper

1hour 45 minutes later...hello sir, glynn hopkins fiat here...oh thats quick...problem, the front brakes, pads and discs need replacing £xxxx, brake fluid£XXX, and the water pump is leaking badly, with a new belt thats £400

now note here the XXX for the first two costs....read that entire sentance at high speed down a not so brilliant landline to mobile connection, and apart from teh bits all i heard was £400!!!!!

oh and no chance of and MOT, because no discs in stock to change the bits over, by this stage i'm a little dazed from it all, i'll come back in, gimme 10 minutes

ok, here we are, face to face, whats wrong? the discs are damaged, so need doing with the pads, new brake fluids...ok i figured as much

and so does the leaky water pump, with will be £400....how can a car less than three years old have developed a fault in such a crucial component, in so low a mileage (22000 miles)? my pajero is 12 years old, 90000miles, and has no such issues.....well thats the difference between japanese and italian engineering...this from the chap running the service desk.......

ok, but it's under warranty, final year.......no it isnt, that ran out in feb.....no, the car was first registered 18/03/2004, 10 days to go.....really?.....do you want to see the service log? again?.......oh, ok, well we'll get that sorted trhough warranty then

phew, so service and brakes, me, water pump, fiat, blood pressure....down...

ok, even i'm bored of this story now........

Sorry to hear about your problems - stealers, dontcha luv em

Interesting stuff, alarming that disc's should fail at 22k, i would ask to see them. Not good on the water pump either. Lucky you got it on warranty, i will make sure my 3 year service is done in time.

the discs were scored because the pads were almost totally worn out, and ground on them, had the mrs warned me in good time, there would only be a bill for pads.

i'm more concerned at the pumps short lifespan though