So which BMW dealer has quoted you £90 per hour? And which Honda dealer charges you £50 an hour?
And which BMW dealer has charged you for 3 hours labour but only did two hours work? Do you have the invoice to show that? And do you have the proof they only did 2 hours work?
My recent 12k + Annual service cost me £340.
I was originally quoted £285 at Bahnstormers and "about £400" at NOG, I asked for a price for 12k+ Annual but excluding FD oil, the dealers knew the age of the bike and could pull up the previous history - i.e. enough info to quote accurately.
My bike was in the Bahnstormer workshop for about 2.5 hours (It was less than 3 hours from pulling up to leaving including "checking in" and paying the bill, and I was there for a good ten minutes before my bike was wheeled into the workshop)
The bike was wheeled in and the sump plug pulled, rocker covers removed (I assume to let valve gear cool off) and left for quite some time, I did not watch and time the job, but on several occasions when I glanced into the workshop the tech who was working on my bike was busy working on another bike.
I had agreed the £285 quote I originally had, if I knew I was gonna get mugged on the day I wcould have video'd the whole bloody job, however if I knew I was gonna get stitched up I would have avoided the place to begin with.
It may be they spent 2 1/4 hours on my bike, but certainly not much more, the parts were under £80 which leaves £260 for no more than 2.25 hours labour this would equate to at least £115 per hour. Even if it was 2.5 hours work on my bike the labour still works out at £104 per hour.
Assuming the NOG techies work at a similar pace and charge the same for parts then they would have got around £320 for no more than 2.50 hours labour, or £128 per hour! NOG claim they charge £77 per hour plus VAT = £92.40
I know this is common in the motor trade, jobs have times attached and if a mechanic does all the jobs in the "book" times he would be 100% efficient, often there are expectations for mechanics to be more efficient (I have a mate in the trade who knows a car dealer where all mechanics are expected to be 125% efficient).
Obviously some guys will be a bit quicker than others and some jobs probably can be done a shade under book time, but others may take longer, also I would assume on a big service doing multiple jobs in one go is faster as there may be common work to more than one job.
The problem often comes where mechanics are struggling to meet expectations, or even worse when bonus is paid on efficiency, this is where the temptation not to change your FD oil / leave the old air / oil filter on the bike etc. comes in, the chap can save 15 - 30 minutes on each service and boost his efficiancy by 20%, this can be £15+ per hour extra for the company (around £600 per engineer per week) and perhaps the guy gets a bonus of a few hundred quid a month by cutting a few corners here and there, the bottom line is we end up paying top prices for substandard work.
I am not saying the work on my bike was substandard, but my bill neither reflected what I was quoted, or the time spent on the job - I would have been happy with either paying their quoted rate for the time spent + the parts, or a fixed price for the service (As I believed I had agreed) but not an extra £60 odd quid that does not stack up either way you add it up.
Blade Honda charge £50 per hour, and I was paying @£60 per hour for my Kawasaki services at On Yer Bike, I only pay £48 per hour for my current car using a trustworthy indie (and often the bill comes out under the quote), on my previous two cars (Seats) the main dealer (complete with large showroom) charged a reasonable £65 - £70 per hour during the time I used them and every service was at the price quoted, they never once surprised me with a bill higher than the quote, and on one occasion when a changed part failed in under a year from the work being done they got me the part and labour sorted under "warranty" for my five year old car.
and it would have been more had he required shims. I think that BMW main dealer services are expensive enough but this puts it into perspective for me.
there attention to detail second to none,one very happy customer after my bike had a 30,000 ml service.