Does £60 quid for a diagnostic seem reasonable? I thought it sounded quite steep, but I haven't had it done before so I don't know.

Depends what they're checking I suppose. Do you know what that includes? All engine related or other things like suspension too?

Its just engine related.

Was the problem resolved?

Skint - dunno - they're doing it this afternoon. Its in becasue the alternator seems to have gone (posted in technical area on my roubles in getting stuck on the middle lane of the M4), but it hasn't been running right for a while (very hesitant/ unresponsive on acceleration) so I wanted to see if any sensors were playing up. I just thought that £60 to test seemed a bit steep.

You're paying an hour's labour, I guess.

Neil

Hadn't realised it takes an hour to run a diagnostic, I thought it was five minutes in front of a computer screen. Guess its not so bad then.

I had the same thing happen to me car cut out after the football on gorgie rd edinburgh it was the alternator at fault you should be able to jump the car but as soon as you let of the revs car will die and wont turn over.
Ask them what taken an hour to do? seems like a rip to me.
It takes 5 mins to check the alternator.

Skint - thats the exact same symptoms as mine. They are only charging £20 diagnostics for that (checking the charging or something). I asked for them to do further tests because the car had been sluggish for a while beforehand, so the £60 is not really related to the alternator problem.

We charge £105+vat (Main Delaer)

But we run the checks and guided fault finding... which is a list of things to check to scrub them off the list of faults as you go thourgh the guide.

ummm... dont you love main dealer prices

Um my point was not that you are necessarily *getting* an hour's labour; just that you're *paying* for an hour...

There's a vast difference between plugging in the tool and reading the error reports, and checking every reading against a checklist with different procedures based on the result, as Nellybear might offer.

Neil

It'll take them 5 minutes but they'll charge you for an hour.