Mazda Service Rip Off

My initial sevice on my new BT 50 was at 1500kms with the next scheduled for 10,000kms wiht 10,000kms intervals after that.

MM,
Very good point. 10 years from now, I wonder how many car manufacturers will be around to honor their warranties?

Can you point me in the direction.... can't seem to find the posts.

Sure can, top left of screen, little arrow pointing east. If its grey you might have reached the end of the road. :)

Why I like to do all the oil changes myself. I know they are done. Just as well I drive an older car. Don't have to worry about going to dealership for warranty purposes.

AMEN brother, praise the oil and pass the filter wrench.

There is so much going on with vehicle servicing, dealer profitability, costs of ownership, environmental hokuspokus...and quite a lot of it has nothing to do with what is best for the vehicle.

No so long ago, these same manufacturers where listing the diff oil to be changed in their vehicles only at overhaul....thus no drain plug in the dif.

AND.....how often are all the listed items serviced at a dealer service even the good ones.

When I did the first service on my 285 000Km second hand hilux......the front diff oil came out like treacle and I swear the drain and filler plugs where virgin.....
The gearbox oil was clean but the transfer oil was filthy.

This vehicle was always dealer serviced

cheers

The terms "dealer" and "servicing" should never be allowed to be used in the same sentence. A total contradiction in terms.

Excuse me while I drain this customers wallet and tune up their credit card.

G'day Rob & 4 Runner,

I will second that. I buy new & NEVER go back to the dealer except if I have a warranty issue.
I do ALL the servicing myself so I know it's done right. Never had a dealer reject a warranty issue because of it. If they did they would have to prove negligence on my part which I am confident they could not.

Cheers
Stu

Yeah same here. the last two cars we bought new the first one went back to holden for its first service them my mate who owned a car yard around the corner from holden rang me and upped me for driving like a bleep past his caryard flat out. I said mate not me Im at work and my car is getting its first service (was a VX supercharged Spack commodore)

Boy did they cop it when I went to pick it up especially after I left a note on the dash not to be test driven if there are any issues I would tell them. Then they had the nerve to tell me they only moved it so I offered them my phone to ring my mate around the corner and had the call time of when my mate rang me and the time the car had been clocked off the job, put the two together.

Then they scraped the front bar out of their driveway, so that cost them to, pricks. The next new one was the toyota my wife has now has never been back to the dealer in 6 years, i do it all myself.

I also worked for Toyota and can recall when the 80 series were the go at the time and they would be due for their big services and the floor controller would have a look and say this ones a shopping trolley just do the basic like oil and filter no diff oil,gearbox,transfer case changes, but still charged for.

I wasnt a mechanic there just pre delivery manager so we worked along side servicing fitting aircons etc so we saw it all. I was disgusted at the time for the people they were ripping of. When my mate bought his cruiser in I told him to mark every thing that should be touched during the service so he could tell what had been touched and what wasnt.

He cought them out bigtime with a few things. He refused to pay (luckily had keys in his hands before) and told them he was going to report them for their shonky work and the bill had he paid was huge over $1000 back then so was a lot of money..........

G'day,
I actually do service my vehicle exactly as per distance stated in the owners manual & attend to all items as listed. Not so with the dealers from my experience.
My current Falcon has done 340,000 km without issue all servicing done by me. Original radiator (this model BA is known for issues with the cooling system) because I ensure correct coolant maintenance unlike my experience with the dealer.
Afraid due to bad dealer experiences they have lost me forever.

I have even fixed warranty items the dealer could not fix!

Cheers
Stu

Yeh modern ideas like the car should be on the scrap heap after 10 years.

Sorry, cars may have improved a but basic principles remain the same.

Basic vehicle servicing is not rocket science and dealers are doing less and less for their money.

Tell me do they have to retorque the head at the first service, perhaps adjust the tappets, oh what about plugs and points.....adjust the carby.

Most of the early services are llttle more than a simple oil change and fill the washer bottle.

AND last time I saw, motor mechanic was not a licenced trade...mechainics are not required to work to written standards, enforced by law........so dont try and put mechanics in the same league as electricians and plumbers...they arent.

As far as all the BULl$^&T about insurance companies...yeh the insurance is going to reject my claim for a crash or theft because I change the oil myself.

Face facts..every dealer chain would love to put private mechanics out of business and prevent anybody else servicing their vehicles if they could do so legally...in this country thay can not

AS for the OBD2....ya dont need to be a dealer to plug one of those in.....I'm not even in the business and I have an OBD2 reader.

Unless the manufacturer has been underhanded an installed a proprietary diagnostic specificalt to prevent others from servicing their gear.

cheers

Years ago dealer tried to tell me that the OHC timing chain was noisy & that the chain & sprockets would need replacement.

Should have seen the look an the mechanics face when I told him the car had a tooth belt for the OHC NOT a chain drive!

Cheers
Stu

olcoolone
You said "Changing oils sooner is not going to make something last longer.... if the oil and filter can withstand longer replacement intervals then thats a bonus to the customer."
Yes SOME oils are better and SOME filters are better but to change your oil more frequently does definitely give longer engine life and less wear in an engine.


The Bantam,

"AND last time I saw, motor mechanic was not a licenced trade...mechainics are not required to work to written standards, enforced by law........so dont try and put mechanics in the same league as electricians and plumbers...they arent."

Unfortunately most mechanics are about as good as most plumbers and electricians, but there are SOME mechanics who are far above and really know their stuff. They deal with far more technical situations and fault find/diagnose.
Hardly any mechanics/plumbers and electricians can diagnose a problem.

Regarding the crash situation, I would prefer a private mechanic who is capable rather than use a dealer mechanic who is not responsible and can't be pinned down as the cause of a problem and everyone in the place closes ranks to hide the deficiencies of the repair/service.

OH......."100 HOURS TRAINING"...(neon sign with arrows, blows trumpet waves flag)

I am sure you consider that "a major training comitment".

Its 2 hours a week....or 1 two week course and a few tool box chats.

Lots of trades access to training is part of their award conditions...and that does not include "product familiarisation".

Hell I've been on building sites where everbody including labourers gets 2 hours a week of some sort of "training".

sorry...still not impressed.

cheers

Europeans work on an average 30,000 ks p/a as opposed to our 20,000 and we are one of the most urbanised nations on earth - so the 75 series driving down a crappy dirt road to the mine or farm every day in the "harshest conditions in the world" is not exactly representative of the vast majority, who actually sit in urban traffic queues like the rest of the world.

We have a higher vehicle ownership (more cars per family) with a lot of vehicles doing less than 10,000 p/a.

By that arguement, you need to take your vehicle to an auto electrician to change your light globe.
Legally your suppose to get an electrican to change a globe in your house, or so I was told once by an electrican.

Common simple jobs can be done by those who know how. Bigger jobs is a different matter.

sorry buddy australian fuels, especially diesel is some of the worst in the world.
the engines are detuned to handle the crap quality of fuel we have here, this is straight from the manufacturers mouth,otherwise wed have even more grunt from the factory.
pump failures, injectors and other repairs are well known in australia, keeping some the repair industry from having quiet periods.

others have touched on what else you said, seem to be common reply.
good to see no negativity. or too much carryon...

and trades have legal obligations too, a license is just that.
remember the yacht that broke its keel.
one or two persons were killed.
the boilermaker that done the work, was taken to court!!!, his boss told him to do the repair,and the boss was charged.
Soo their are legal remifications for anyone!
Not just for those who have a license!!

Olcoolone makes some decent points,

Technology has moved on and engine technology has also, service intervals set by the manufacturer are because of imporvements in oil and filter technologies. They are designed for the set period plus extra, changing them earlier wont give that much benefit for engine life. Yes, you could chnage them every 5000km and then the oil is fresher, but then why not do it every 1000km? The cost benefit is just not there.

It used to be an issue as oild change intervals were 2-5000Km and because it was so short people missed them, so it was common for cars to have old oil.

Its correct that anyone can work on your car without any sort of controls what so ever. And dealers are not the only mechanics that over the years have had complaints, they are often the only ones still around. The dodgy mechanic around the corner comes and goes. Unsrupulous traders exist everywhere, just as quality ones do.

I choose to have my serviced at the dealer i bought it from and only them. If and when something goes wrong it is clear whether it was service correctly or not. I also check after services as to what was done.

If I am going to spend over $50K on a car I am not going to quibble over a few hundred dollars servicingit every 15 or 20K Kms, 9-12 mths.

I trade my vehicle every 3-5 years, and replace with a new one, my trade in valuation is important, a log book with one dealer servicing it since new gives value to the car, and is worth far more than the difference if any in cost.

For my last trade in because it was service since new by the dealer I was trading it through I negotiated a higher trade in valuation with my new purchase. There olbviously will be debate about how I know this, but i did, it put me in strong negoatiating position.

Alan

It's good to see some variation to a typical thread about something..... this tread was and like most resembled a bunch of blokes standing around a BBQ drinking warm VB all grunting, groining and agreeing about the same thing.

As Alan has pointed out you spend good money on your 4x4 and you try and look after it but you will not spend $400 a year on getting it serviced by a profession.... I am not talking about the experience you had with this or that shonky business.

And to the rest..... you are only one person who think that they were hard done by but believe me we have seen it a fair few times where the customer comes in and gets on his high horse ranting and raving about something they have no idea about...... had a customer a month or so ago who said he felt hard done by the extravagant price we charged him and the amount of hours.... so we broke it done to every steep and once shown he was more then thankful that we did the job properly and he has booked other work in with us.

As for training..... my guys have already completed a 4 year apprenticeships and if some opened there eyes and read my post CORRECTLY I said " 100 hours minimum a year" see that word MINIMUM..... and as for the construction industry doing constant training..... I am not surprised as some on these site are not the smartest.... might have something to do with why drug and alcohol screening got introduced..... I know first hand what some of these guy are like...... I have to fix plant that they break and attend to call outs because the operator forgot to flick a switch.... or can't read. Some of the site inductions we have to endure are quite a laugh with what they tell you about, things a 4 year old in preschool would know....



Bantam.....
"AS for the OBD2....ya dont need to be a dealer to plug one of those in.....I'm not even in the business and I have an OBD2 reader."

Never said anything about OBD2 but seeing you mentioned it OBD was set up for emission monitoring only and is very basic, there is another thing called enhanced OBD that most of your cheap so called scan tools don't do as it is vehicle specific..... the other thing is not every REAL scan tool is identical, we use 4 different scan tools. For fault finding we look at the real time data stream more then looking at fault codes...... fault codes don't always pin point the problem and there is a good chance of getting phantom codes showing up.

"Unless the manufacturer has been underhanded an installed a proprietary diagnostic specificalt to prevent others from servicing their gear. "

There are still thing dealers can only do as they are the only ones who have the proprietary data available to them, Ford are one of the worst for this. One of the industry mobs I am a member of are fighting and campaigning to the government to make this information available to all as in the USA.... we have been trying for 3 years to get it passed in legislation.



mountainman.....
I think that's a urban myth re current fuel quality and detuning of engines and as for stuff failing here in Australia from poor fuel, you need to look at some of the overseas forums.

So you spoke to the manufacturer of the part that failed..... sure it wasn't a sales guy or service guy from a dealership..... you have done well to speak directly to the person in charge of a multi billion company and the get their views.... you need a job in investigating journalism.

And you touched on a important thing re who takes the blame..... your right, if one of my guys cause something to fail we have this thing called $20,000,000 liability and product insurance that we can fall back onto... a luxury most DIYers don't have.

And as for the boss telling him to do it..... that makes the boss very stupid and the boiler maker even more stupider for doing something that he had grounds to believe was wrong.

100 hours is still only 2 hours a week......hardly a large amount of training for tradesman skills maintenance in this day and age......and how much of that is natoionally acredited and not just product familiarisation and corporate cultutre.

It still does not change the fact that the majority of in warranty routine service involves very little appart from changing the oil and filters.....any owner can look at their service schedule and see what is suposed to be done.

$200 bucks is still a bit steep for 5 litres of generic oil, a filter and 1 hour of an apprentice's labour, most of which is consumed by a tick and flick.


And this service schedule will be designed arround a 10 year vehicle lifespan.

cheers

What part of "minimum" don't you under stand, most of our training is to do with newly released vehicles and they don't get released every week or month ..... the VE Commodore we did back in 2008 and the FG Falcon in late 2009 and nothing has changed with them, at best we may do a short update training course.

maybe you should ask some mechanics how much training do they do, we had an advanced 3 day training session last year that was open to all mechanics.... on the first day 19 people turned up, on the 2nd day 9 turned up and on the third there was only 7 left (4 from our business and 3 from another).

As soon as you mention $400 per day per person for training most independent workshops back out of it.....sad hey!

And as for trade schools training our future workforce... what a joke, at least at dealer ships they get good training even if it is only changing oil and filters.

Most mechanical people only need to be told and trained once, not every week like some industries.

And according to you we don't have to do much training as all we do is change oil and filters...... there must be so many over qualified mechanics out there.

Most vehicles have a manufacturing run time of around 6 to 8 years where not much changes.With new vehicles there is not much that fails in the first 5 to 7 years of ownership.

We see different in heavy vehicle and earthmoving and find it hard to find got people..... thats why they get paid $35 per hour + vehicle.

What part of 100 hours is not a large traning comitment don't you understand.

Hell that is less time than most people spend on morning smoko.

I'm sure you think that is a large training comitment.

BTW, if you are paying $400 a day for dealer training...they are having a lend of you...I hope the group sizes are small and they are providing slap up lunch, smokos, top shelf mints on the tables and a decent brand of coffee.

It does not change the fact that most "new vehicle servicing" is not clever work and consists of little more than changing oil and filter, checking the radiator and topping up the washer bottle AND in the majority of dealers it is done my apprentices, lube attendants or tradesmans assistants and not fully trained mechanics.

Unlike the past, on modern cars there is nothing to adjust and nothing gets retensioned.

AND

Almost without exception, the expensive services don't happen during the warranty or flat rate service period....the service schedule makes sure of that.

cheers

fixed price servicing is a marketing genius idea.
get more customers in at a low price, yet charge them for the extras that arent covered in the service price. at a premium rate to make up for what should be a standard price.
i got mine serviced at around 230.00, privately.
i know everything will get done, he has missed one or two things but thats where youd find at a more thorough mechanic shop, pre trip inspection service.

What do you mean "charge them for extras that aren't covered in the service".
I have never been charged any extra. Actually the opposite...the last service came to over $100 more on the invoice ...but I still only paid $210.
I am a (so far) a very happy customer of Toyota.
I can't fault the workmanship and quality at all. Also they do little extras for nothing...like after doing some dirt road driving I asked for the air filters to be checked and replaced if they were dirty (not part of the scheduled service). I picked car up and there was no extra cost....said they were able to clean them for me and didn't need replacing yet. They could have easily put new ones and made some money out of it. They chose to clean the old ones at no cost to me.
While there may be some horror stories around I think the minority get over exposure. My experience with Toyota dealers has been a positive one. Happy to continue using them.

Cheers

With fixed prices servicing the dealer gets paid by the manufacturer as well as you token amount...... dealer ships do very well out of fixed priced servicing.

A fixed priced service they charge you $210 for is more like $410..... the other $200 is reimbursed by the manufacture.

Even if you don't get the fixed price service done by them, they still get the $200 from the manufacture.

End of the day you have still paid for it when you purchased the vehicle... it's just hidden in the original buy price.

This was done to encourage new car buyers to return to the selling dealer for servicing and it's up to you if you want to take it up or not....... end of the day you have already paid for it.

The other thing is it made independent repairer less competitive and in most cases the only way independent repairs can be competitive with the dealership and fixed price servicing is to use cheaper parts and cut corners.

There is a lot of funny things in the new car dealership world..... take your vehicle to another dealership for warranty work..... the non selling dealership gets more for the warranty then if it went back to the selling dealer..... it's called a transient claim.

No doubt the dearlers do well out of the flat rate services

6 liters of generic oil at $5 a litre dealer cost $30
A dealer branded oil filter $20 or less dealer cost
water out of the tap for the washer bottle
2 hours labour ( im being generous)for an apprentice or tradesmans assistant $18 an hour pluss allowances say $50

dealer cost $100...they are doing well even without the dealer subsidy

Now to head off the cost argument
I buy top shelf branded diesel spec oil by the 20 litre ( not the 200 litre) and pay less than $5 a litre..walk in off the street

I buy top shelf known brand filters and they cost me less than $20, I talk fast and get counter trade, not the deal an account holder would get.

My wife was in the habit of waiting for her RAV to be "dealer serviced"....thats is how long it took them to turn it round including all the paper work.
And yes she was paying arround the $210.

AND OH yess we pay for these "free" or "Flat rate" services in the purchase price.

cheers

olcoolone - I agree with most of what you say but...

"The other thing is it made independent repairer less competitive and in most cases the only way independent repairs can be competitive with the dealership and fixed price servicing is to use cheaper parts and cut corners. "

Ever bought parts from a BMW dealership? If I did that in my game I'd be thrown in jail...................

full blown commercial diesels are a very different thing to pissy little passenger diesels.

Many of the large trucks have been running very long service intervals for a decades.......but many of them have huge oil filters, dual stage filtration and very large sumps.
some of them even have filtration in the cooling system

There was a thread on another forum, where a bloke baught a brand new excavator....he was interested to note it had a near identical engine to his ute.....but he was bleep because the ute had a piss poor fuel and oil filtration system in comparison the the excavator.......a brand an model of ute that was known to have issues with fuel contamination ruining injectors and being refused warranty claims.

If a full blown commercial vehicle a 5000Km service interval is simply useless, you'd be dumping the oil 3 or 4 times a month with some of these vehicles.

cheers

Gidday

Gee that's a horror story . But what has a warranty claim on a BT50 got to do with Ford?