Auto mechanic dopers: How much would you charge for this?

This guy was driving while suddenly the steering wheel became too heavy. Luckily, some distance away was an auto repair shop.

The mechanic pops the hood and finds the problem immediately: the steering pump belt had slipped. He checked the belt and found it in good condition so he put it back in and tightened it.

The mechanic then gives the bill to the customer: 30 euros

The customer went :mad::mad::mad::mad:
He thought 30 euros was too much for 5-10 minutes of work.

What do you think?

Tell the punter he should consider himself lucky - especially if he is unable to recognize a simple loose accessory drive belt. Commonly available dishonest shops would have found ten times that amount of work needing done. Most shops have a 1hr. minimum for anything, which would have likely been 100 quid or more.

That’s about $37 in US/CDN/AUS.

I’m not a mechanic, but that sounds quite reasonable. I imagine a lot of places here would do it for free though: garner good will and all that.

Thirty euros is a great price from an honest mechanic, most US shops charge about $60 or more per hour 1 hour minimum. Sounds like you should make him your mechanic

CAPT

Sounds reasonable to me. Lots of specialized jobs are like that. You aren’t paying them for a certain amount of sweat and physical labor. You are paying them to know what to work on (and what not to) in the first place.

He should consider himself lucky. kwimby said it best.

Pretty high, but not crazy high. Really many mechanics wouldn’t even charge him for tightening a belt.

He could ask for an itemized bill. I imagine it would go like this:

Fixing steering pump belt: 1 Euro
Knowing where to look: 29 Euro

My MGB’s fan belt broke a while back. I had a spare. AAA towed the car to a shop, and it was covered under my membership. The mechanic didn’t charge me, saying ‘It only took ten minutes.’

Yes, this. Would the driver have been more happy if he took his car to a less competant shop and they fixed it only after bumbling around in confusion for an hour? It was undrivable, and now its driveable, all for a very modest cost and little waste of time. All that for 30 Euro – around $40 – as a customer I’d be thrilled.

For some work, a person gets paid for what he does, not how long it takes him to do it.

In this case, the mechanic charged for fixing the problem.

He could have taken an unsuspecting customer to the cleaners. I would be thankful he was reasonable and honest.

I’d probably charge $30-50 (U.S.), depending on certain variables. $40 doesn’t sound unreasonable. Time spent on the service is all that’s readily observable to the customer, but it’s not the only factor in pricing and doesn’t necessarily reflect the value of the repair, part of which was an expert’s inspection and evaluation.

I would have told him to come back when he needed something serious, and to maybe mention me to his people.

But I’m not a “professional”.

Thanks for the replies.

I don’t know how pricing works in the US, but I forgot to mention that the quoted price was VAT (23%) inclusive. Therefore the auto mechanic would actually pocket 24,39 euros, the rest was VAT.

I’d thank him profusely, ask him if he had any business cards I could give my friends, give him a favorable review on Yelp! and Like his page on Facebook.

Exactly. He did a job he wasn’t required to do and saved the person a hell of a lot of inconvenience. I would have dropped back a carton of beer as well.

The mechanic fixed it quickly and cheaply.

Would you prefer that he claim that the power steering pump is bad, and that he needs 3 days and 500 euros to do the repair ?

I’d give the mechanic a freaking kiss. It’s not how little work was done for the money, it’s that

  1. My car won’t go
  2. I can’t fix it
  3. He fixed it quickly and cheaply

Anything less than an hour’s standard labor charge would be awesome.

Joe

Gary T owns his own shop and I manage a new car service department. Pretty much .3 of an hour is the min charge to bring a car in and look at it (unless we waive the charge, which does happen).
At $110/ hr. that’s about $33 to look at the car. No tax on labor so that is similar to what the OP was charged.
I vote not out of line.

If you ask me, I believe the 30 euros quoted were a reasonable price.

However, I’ve seen ridiculously low prices quoted by garages around here lately, like 20 euros per hour including vat, (16 euros vat excluded).

Obviously, at those rates it is not even possible to pay for the expenses and make a profit. So most of the garages cut corners and do hackjobs.

For example, when a car comes with a blown gasket they won’t measure and resurface the cylinder head and block, flush or replace the radiators, replace the thermostat, replace bolts if aplicable etc.

They simply slap a new gasket for 100-200 euros and the car is good to go!

Chances are that the car will blow the gasket again very soon but the customer is happy because he was not ripped off (or so he thinks) by the other garage that asked for 1000+ for the same job.