Am i being ripped of for car repair £2000 ZAFIRA 06

My Vectra VXR needed a new gearbox under warranty. It shared its F40 gearbox with most other models in the range (including the 1.9 Diesel) so wasnt special or anything.

It got fixed under warranty (@ 2 years old), but the price on the invoice was an F40 gearbox at £1100. Obviously it was warranty work so no labour included. So the price for parts only they have quoted you is correct.

I can easily believe to refit a brand new gearbox can be £2000 at dealer labour rates of £100 an hour. 6 Hours labour at £100, plus gearbox at £1110 is £1710 + vat on both which is £2009 inc vat. So they are charging a little under £100 an hour, or maybe slightly more and less labour time. You get the idea.

Are you being ripped off ? No, any VXL dealer will charge the same labour rates and part rates (my VXL dealer was charging the same so theres your proof)
Can you get it cheaper ? HELL YES ! Local garages will charge half the labour rate, and be able to source the parts cheaper.

Give autovaux a ring and see how much they can find you a gearbox for.

www.autovaux.co.uk. Get quotes from garages on the ammount of labour they reckon it will need and their labour rates to build you up a picture of total cost. It could easily be half the £2000 the dealer wants doing it this way.

Will you get it under warranty ? not a cat in hells chance. Once the 3 years is up they dont want to know. Your mate can try, but i'll tell you now he'll likley not got anywhere.
 
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MrLOL said:
My Vectra VXR needed a new gearbox under warranty. It shared its F40 gearbox with most other models in the range (including the 1.9 Diesel) so wasnt special or anything.

It got fixed under warranty (@ 2 years old), but the price on the invoice was an F40 gearbox at £1100. Obviously it was warranty work so no labour included. So the price for parts only they have quoted you is correct.

I can easily believe to refit a brand new gearbox can be £2000 at dealer labour rates of £100 an hour. 6 Hours labour at £100, plus gearbox at £1110 is £1710 + vat on both which is £2009 inc vat. So they are charging a little under £100 an hour, or maybe slightly more and less labour time. You get the idea.

Are you being ripped off ? No, any VXL dealer will charge the same labour rates and part rates (my VXL dealer was charging the same so theres your proof)
Can you get it cheaper ? HELL YES ! Local garages will charge half the labour rate, and be able to source the parts cheaper.

Give autovaux a ring and see how much they can find you a gearbox for.

www.autovaux.co.uk. Get quotes from garages on the ammount of labour they reckon it will need and their labour rates to build you up a picture of total cost. It could easily be half the £2000 the dealer wants doing it this way.

Will you get it under warranty ? not a cat in hells chance. Once the 3 years is up they dont want to know. Your mate can try, but i'll tell you now he'll likley not got anywhere.
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Thx for the replies

i know labour rates can be pretty harsh these days and i get 10-15% discount but that will only be £300 off at tops.

he'll call me tommorrow fisrt he's gonna see if vaux head quarters will give him the go ahead to do a strip down of the box to see if it's a defect of any kind in the housing or gearbox. If they don't give him the go ahead it's gonna cost about £200 to do the strip just to see if it needs a new box in the first place like he said worse case is 2k bill i'll re-post tomorrow when i've spoken to him and rang around a few places.
 
Mate, get a gearbox from a car that is being broken for parts.
Ebay for example. He's breaking an 08 plate 1.8. Then get a local backstreet garage to fit it.

If you pay £2000 to get it fixed, i personally would like to kick you in the nuts :D
 
RobRX-7 said:
Mate, get a gearbox from a car that is being broken for parts.
Ebay for example. He's breaking an 08 plate 1.8. Then get a local backstreet garage to fit it.

If you pay £2000 to get it fixed, i personally would like to kick you in the nuts :D
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the only thing that bothers me about that i could spend 500+ getting a used one and it going wrong the next day with no comeback, if it's the wrong type i'm buggered at least with them it's garunteed i'm gonna have a word with the head honcho tomorrow i've been a customer of theirs for 7-8 years so i'm hoping it might pull a few strings.
 
If that includes a clutch kit and concentric slave then its not too bad if your happy paying main dealer labour rates.

guessing its a 1.6 petrol -

4.5h lab - £400 (main dealer rates £200 for a indy)
clutch kit- £106 (valeo RRP)
slave- £102 (valeo RRP)
oil- £10

so 618 plus box and vat

A indy should be able to save you a good few hundred.
 
Whatever you do, definitely take it up with Vauxhall - there's no way it should fail so quickly. Get a written assessment from a reputable indy garage to back up your claim.

There have been quite a few people sucessful in claiming back the cost of DMF replacement on Mondeos from Ford that were 3~4 years old when they failed
 
take it up with vauxhall, a gearbox should not fail after 24k and only 8 months out of warranty. Speak to CAB, re it not being fit for purpose.

Looking at the way the piece is shaped (tapered toward the inside) and that it is marked on the inside, shows it's been struck by something from inside the box. It's not been hit by a speedbump/brick/kerb/ufo etc.
 
As said above this is not right, a gearbox on a low power car like that should not fail after 24K miles! Heck the expected life span of a gearbox is over a decade and over 100K miles, and thats with it being neglected by the average car owner.

The damage to me looks like an internal component of the box has broken, sheared off or come loose in some way and was violently smashing at the side casing, causing the cuts and punching a hole in the side of your box.

Don't bother with a strip down of the gearbox, with that internal damage to the casing something in there is properly broken. Only reason would be to get some proof that it was a manufacturing fault.
 
I personally would be pursuing this with Vauxhall to try and get them to pay for at least some of it (i.e. the parts). Good luck though
 
Might be worth your mechanic friend finding out what part number the gearbox is.

Quite of the few of the gearboxes are shared between models, so you can look for a gearbox from a 1.6 Astra as well as a 1.6 Zafira (for example)

As for it failing too soon. i've been somewhat tained by vauxhall dealers refusing to accept warranty claims, even when the car was under network Q and manufacturers warranty. out of warranty.

Best of luck, suggest you get advice from CAB on how to proceed, hope you have more luck than i did :)
 
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Some progress vaux got back to me a few minutes ago saying as a long standing customer of theirs they are willing to cap the price of the work to £1000 with a 12 month warranty unlimited milage.

So you think it's worth me getting it done by the dealer rather than pay £800 for big sweaty johns auto down the road to do it
 
bigjimmyauk said:
also is it worth me getting the clutch and slave done at the same time for an extra £200 thats for an LUK clutch
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How long do you plan to keep the car for? If its done 24k surely there should be loads of life left in then again look at your gearbox...... still £1k is better than 2k :D
 
i still wouldn't pay 1k, the box shouldnt have failed (unless it has been abused badly)
 
EddScott said:
2nd hand gearbox - £200
New clutch - £100
5 hours fitting at £30per hour - £150

Even £800 is taking the pi55.
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it's just the design of the car even a clutch replacement is £500 everything is contained within the casing and it uses some odd parts and a dual wheel something or other i've rang about 7 garages today all told the same story to even replace the clutch yopu have to strip out the entire box.

my old pug 405 back in 1998 cost £200 for a new clutch modern vaux'z are a different story the cheapest qoute i got today was 1k from a place in leicestershire who would strip the box out replace the defective planetary gear and sump plate

so 1 k for some jock stripping the **** out my gearbox
or 1k for a brand new one :) (yes it is brand new as vaux don't have any exchanges or refurbs available) what makes me laugh tho wether it's a refurb or not it's still 1k just for the box.

FFS just a clutch kit including new slave cylinder is £240 made by LUK and supplied by the most competitive people i could find
 
Well found out the exact problem now after going down today to inspect the problem and sort out whats going on.One of the retaining rods that holds in 2 planetary gears had split and sheared of causing the DIFF to fail and drop into the bottom of the gearbox sump my mate said has there in only a 1cm clearence at the bottom of the sump, on the next rotation the planetary gear that fell off the DIFF got smashed by the main gear forcing it out the bottom has it had nowhere to go. He said he's seen it happen before on some older cars from 5-6 years ago but not on anything as new as mine. So after the work is done i'll be getting vaux involved to try claim back the rest of the money.

So quick rundown vaux have offered to pay 50% towards the cost of the repair capping the price at 1k if it goes over,new gearbox has been ordered as they can't do exchange has mine has a wacking great hole in the bottom. He will be ringing me monday to let me know what my clutch is like if it's pretty worn i'm gonna get one for him to throw on while the new box is being fitted (sourced from a local parts place and not vauxhall).The cheapest INDI garage wanted just under a grand to strip it out replace defective parts and put it back in a new casing or worse case weld the old casing. So thought i might as well for the same price let vaux fit a new box

They will not pay for 100% of the repair yet has they need to look at the old gearbox first.

So if anyone out there is a long standing customer and has a whacking great repair bill it's worth asking if vaux will make a contribution towards the repair.
 
Doesnt Sales of Goods act dictate that the item sold has to last a 'reasonable amount of time' and not just whatever the warranty states.

You should be able to reclaim some, if not all of the costs.

Ant :cool:
 
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