Car Repairs and Money Problems

Why is it every time the car goes in for repairs it costs you an arm and a leg?

We have a Ford Territory and with everything that has been on the news about the Ball Joint problems we deiced to take it to a dealership to get them checked out, so while it was there DF asked them to check out a leak from the engine area and they also did a 5-Point safety check, which showed a few other problems that needed repairing.

So we go dealership to pick my car up and it's not ready we dropped it off at 9am yesterday morning! and they told us it would be ready for pick up at 5pm so we were there at 430pm. We were greeted by the service manager who explained why our car wasn't ready and what was found to be wrong with the car as well as pricing!

We decided that we would get the cheaper things done which totals $630 if we were to get everything done it was going to cost us $1500!!

So what I am really asking is would a car dealership do a payment plan as cash is hard to come by at the moment!!!???

To my knowledge they don't do payment plans, but it doesn't hurt to ask.
We had a similar thing happen with our XR. Took it in for something, turned out there were about 6 other things wrong with it! The biggest one being that it needed a new fuel pump ... $1400 :o We ended up selling it and buying the Rav. It was going to cost us an arm & a leg to get everything fixed.
Hope you can work something out.

do you need to take it to a dealer? My dh is a mechanic, and they do log book servicing.... just a thought xx

:hug:

Dp is a mechanic and has his own workshop. Small companies with loyal customers tend to do payment plans (I know DP does as annoying as it is for us, it keeps customers coeming back) but I doubt very much that a dealership would.

FWIW the ford terriotories have terrible problems! The mechanic should have called you before they do any work on the car to let you know before they start doing it.

Also dealerships add about 50% more mark up on parts than small business mechanics do and their labour charges are ridiculous. The other bad thing about going to dealerships is they will replace things on a car that yes while they may be wearing out, you may still be able to get another 5000Km on it.

If you can find a good local mechanic, then go to them. Explain to them what the dealership has said and quoted and get that second opinion.

Hope it all works out :hug:

ETA- the best cars mechanically to buy are toyotas, mitsubishis & mazdas. The Japanese make great cars and the parts are a lot easier and cheaper to get and htey tend to have less things go wrong with them.

I have an Astra and i think we've replaced 90% of the motor in the last 24 months!! Sucks! Cant hurt to ask the dealer!

We told them what to do on the car! the front left sway arm needs replacing, they are doing the ball joint under warranty as per the ford guidelines due to it being a major prob with the '04-'05 territory and something else which i can't remember for the life of me!

we take our car to a little one-man mechanic workshop. i priced a service from the dealership- $500 difference? thats just crazy!

it is totally annoying :(

i can sympathise, i am dreding the bill next week when we take our land cruiser in for teh airconditioning..

we are unfortunate that up here we only have dealerships that can do air con, none of our local mechanics do it. :(

hope they can sort something out for you..

I have never had to pay for my car to be fixed because my dad and brother are mechanics so I just get them to buy the parts and they fix it. I used to do the books for my brothers workshop and I can't believe the amount of money people pay out on their cars!

I know my brother had payment plans at his workshop, it can't hurt to ask if the dealership you use have something like that available.

Whereabouts in Melb are you?

We have a Toyota and Ford I have never had any issues with the Toyota dealership we take our car to, they are always honest and only fix what needs to be fixed.

After having a prob with a local mechanic we took DH's Ford to the ford dealership thinking they would be able to fix the problem BIG MISTAKE. We paid a huge amount of money and had to take the car back 3 times. For the next service we took it to a different Ford dealership and they advised something was wrong with the air-con $1100 to repair, at that point a friend put us on to mobile mechanic in the area and he quoted us alot less to fix the air-con. But when he came out with the part he said their was nothing wrong with the air-con at all??? Ford had basically lied to us and told us don't use the air-con as it will work for a bit but will cut out after a while and cause damage to the car (this was complete BS). Since the mobile mech has looked at the car DH has used the air-con everyday no problems (over 6mths now).

My advice get a 2nd opinion. I have been so disappointed with Ford, I would love to say I would never buy another one, but they are the only ones who make cab chassie ute's on factory LPG.

One of our closest friends in a mechanic, so he fixed our car.

When we first got married he gave us one of the old cars he was traded in, including almost a full year rego for free, and then fixed it like 3 times over the years for us without letting us pay him a cent.

Great guy, i trust him impeciably, and he always tells me 'this is coming up next time, this is slowly happening, but i will keep an eye on it, but you don't need to do anything for now, this is unsafe so i fixed this". etc, and i know that he is telling the truth, nothing to do with money etc, and that he doesn't do anything unnecessarily.

He also the other day fixed my windscreen wipers (he is always like just drop in whenever there is a problem), and listed to a funny noise it was making, and refused to let me pay him, saying it was only 10 mins work.

They are in St Kilda, so if anyone wants a mechanic you can trust, PM me for their details.

It sucks doesn't it! We just got a new car, after having so much trouble with easily getting parts, not to mention they were a huge cost to even begin with. We took our old car to a mechanic who specialised in that model/brand.... and oops they were so worried about the oil leaking from the transfer case.. here's a quote to fix it, $1500.... We never did it, it hadn't given us any problems between then and when we traded the car in almost 2 years later on... not to mention we had never seen any oil on our concrete when they said we should have easily been able to spot it..

I don't trust the dealer that is closest to us to service our new car, so it will be going to someone else who will do log book servicing.

I rang around for my services. Being a Merc engine my car can be very expensive to service. I was quoted $300 LESS by the dealer than most of the mechanics I called, so definitely ring around. Some dealers are good, but there are plenty that aren't.