The number nobody publishes
Parts and invoices
Parts are charged at what they cost us plus 20 per cent, and the invoice prints both numbers. Every workshop has a mark-up; almost none says what it is.
Why there is a mark-up at all
Because sourcing a part is work. Somebody has to establish which one it is, find a supplier who has it, get it here, carry the money until you pay, and take it back when it turns out to be the wrong one — which happens, and is nobody's fault. A workshop that charged parts at cost would have to recover that somewhere less visible, and the place it always goes is the labour hour.
So the choice is not between a mark-up and no mark-up. It is between a mark-up you can see and one you cannot.
What is on the invoice
- Every hour, at which of the four rates, and for what
- Every part, what it cost us, and the 20 per cent on top of it as its own line
- Travel, if the job was beyond twenty-five miles, as road time at the workshop rate
- What was measured, attached, because that is the part worth keeping
What is not on it
- A shop supplies percentage. Cable ties, heatshrink, terminals, tape and solder are in the hour.
- An environmental or disposal levy.
- A callout fee on top of the on-site hour.
- A diagnostic charge repeated when the repair follows straight on from the hour that found it.
Parts are at cost plus a published percentage. Parts are charged at what they cost us plus twenty per cent, and the invoice shows both numbers. We take no rebate, commission or bonus from any supplier for fitting one brand rather than another, and no manufacturer is named anywhere on this website.
The one that matters more than the percentage
Nothing comes back to us for fitting a particular brand
No rebate, no volume bonus, no loyalty scheme, no free tooling, nothing. It is the only thing that makes an opinion about which part to fit worth having, and it is the reason no manufacturer is named anywhere on this website — not in the copy, not in the photographs and not in the case studies.
Where a cheaper part is genuinely as good, that is what gets fitted and the invoice shows what it cost. Where it is not, the reason is written down rather than asserted.
If that ever changed, this paragraph would have to come off the site. We would rather keep the paragraph.
Second-hand and reconditioned parts
Sometimes the sensible answer, and sometimes the only one — an obsolete unit for a fourteen-year-old machine is not being made any more by anybody. When a used part is proposed it is said out loud, along with what is not known about it and what happens if it fails. A used part carries the thirty days that any of our work carries, and nothing longer, because nobody can honestly warrant something whose history they do not have.
On a control unit the third option is usually better than either: repairing the one you have keeps its programming, which on an older machine is frequently the difference between working and not.
You can stop at the end of the diagnostic hour. You pay for the hour, you keep the written note of what was measured, and you are free to take the vehicle and that note anywhere else.
$145 a workshop hour · $185 on site · agreed before it starts
Describe the symptom, or just telephone
The symptom check takes about three minutes and gives you a written summary of which circuits would be tested first and why, with the hours and the published rate against each. It is an indicative scope and not a diagnosis — nobody has seen the vehicle — but it is a better opening than a blank contact form. If you would rather skip it, the telephone works.