Shocking bill!

Well it is my own fault really. I've just not had that much spare time since moving to Bristol and I haven't got my workshop or anywhere to work on bikes in comfort so I booked my bike into Fowlers - the big multi-franchise place up the road. Haven't had the valves checked for over 18 months so I opted for a full service - the works, with all the fluids changed, spark plugs, valve check, seals, everything. Though the bike deserved it after 5 years of home maintenance. I also had a leaking left fork so it was a new pair of fork seals - seemed prudent to do both at the same time. And a new back tyre for good measure. They also found the reasons for coolant leak and replaced a worn out radiator cap.

Picked up yesterday and seems they have done a good job. I tend to go over everything to check when work was done by a shop to make sure all is OK and that they dd what they said.

So what was the bill?

£954.00

Breakdown as follows, parts and labour combined approximates:

Service: £400.00
Fork Seals: £220.00
Tyre £170.00
VAT: £200.00

No wonder I will be reverting back to DIY in the future.

What's with the milky looking stuff at the bottom of your coolant expansion tank?

And that right there is why I always did my own services on the 990 including valve clearances. Labour is a piss take!

I was shocked at the labour cost! The parts for all this were a fraction of the total. Most of it was labour, and that was with me stripping everything off the bike so it was ready to work on, no spoilers, mudguards, belly pan or airbox to remove.

So I ended up paying hundreds for work that I'm not really confident in, I forgot what it's like to ride a bike that has other peoples hands all over it, not sure I like it. Much happier knowing I've done everything myself really.

I need my workshop back!

I haven't really made any big deal of this but I have rented my house in Surrey to the guy who owns Hesketh Motorcycles. So all my workshop and out buildings are now where Hesketh bikes are assembled! It looks amazing now, all the floors are resurfaced and repainted, walls re-pointed and painted, amazing lighting, snap-on tool drawers and hydraulic tables everywhere.

It makes it hard to work at the side of the road outside my rented house in Bristol!

Seems to me this is a really good example of the strange way we all value things.

Most of us are OK with paying for material things so the tyre element looks OK but the service costs looks outrageous. The business has to provide a building, equip a workshop, train and pay a skilled mechanic, insure everything, keep records and collect tax for the government etc etc but bollocks to that. Time is invisible so we resent paying for it.

Politician earns 100K he/she is a fat greedy pig - news anchor posing the questions works part time, earns five times as much and has endless secondary income streams and nobody cares. Just odd.

I would flinch at a 1K garage bill that's for sure so I'm not meaning to suggest thats a comfortable experience, I just think this issue of where we attribute value is an interesting one.

That is all......

Mate. I understand what you are saying. As a professional I know the value of what I do - and it's all down to my time and experience, that's all I sell.

But the shock of the bill is more relating to how much I would personally value the time and effort required for me to do this work. I think I could have probably done the full service in about four hours. Forks in about three maybe (because I've not done them before). I'd have spent a whole day having a great time with my bike. Let's say 8 hours. So, my daily rate as a creative director on branding jobs is £125 per hour so I'd be charging £1000 for that work. If I was paying my solicitor to review or write a business contract they'd be charging me £2,400. If I was paying my son to do some junior design work in my studio I'd be feeling generous to pay him £250. It's all relative but I personally think that a guy who can follow the KTM protocol for checking valves and filling up with oil is worth about £15 per hour, maybe £20. (and I just Googled, mechanics wage and see that there are a lot of jobs that pay only £11 per hour). So even if I tripled the mechanics cut my estimate for 8 hours at a fair hourly rate for a garage is £360. Thats more or less half what I got charged for labour by Fowlers.

I'm not trying to underpay for skilled time. But I think that big franchises like Fowlers are taking the piss and it's not worth it for me. They must be taking a massive cut of the cash and the mechanics getting little.

I don't know about elsewhere but it costs about 30% more to employ someone than what you pay them. Add in general shop cost of operating etc. it adds up... Having said that, you should have had an estimate before the job and known ahead of time what the job was likely to cost. Being professionals working on a bike they are supposed to be trained to work on, the jobs should have predetermined service times that should be respected in billing. You having stripped the bike,(no airbox for the valve adjustment), those times should be less. It looks like you may have overpaid

I know who the biggest ripoffs are 200 tax?

I couldn't believe my first 600 mile service was £180 for my 2017 SDR. And each minor service will be the same, the only plus is a major service is at 18k miles. I said to the young chap at the service desk it was a rip off, and he replied how expensive it is to service his Mustang!
He was in his 20's but could afford to own and run a Mustang ffs so how much is the desk gimp being paid?
I always order my tyres online and take the lose wheel to a little independent, who charge £10 normally whilst I wait. And I would buy the odd litre of oil and stuff from the dealer, but am not doing so anymore. I will not pay those inflated prices and order it all online now.

Wow... what a response... I guess it speaks to the maturity and intelligence of this site's users, and/or SD owners worldwide, that this thread didn't become a dealer bashing thread.

Yes, that bill was a little steep but as said it's main dealer costs. Flowers told me the service costs for the 990 are £250 for a minor service £500 for a major (inc VAT).

Rear tyre £170 - what was it?
I've been rear tyre shopping recently and they range from £100 to £140'ish delivered.
Did that cost include fitting?

If you read the first line of this thread I say, "Well it's my own fault really".

I know Fowlers is a big expensive dealer. I know that a full service is listed at £450+ in in their service dept. I knew that the forks would cost a couple of hundred and that I was going to pay full list price for a tyre and an over the top fitting fee.

I know that I chose to not to do all this work myself because I'm too busy and don't have the workshop at the moment.

I'm not really having a go at Fowlers am I?

I'm just sort of posting up that I just paid out nearly a grand for something that I've mostly done myself for the last 20 years and will be going back to doing it myself in future.

Turning into an interesting thread though

Once burned, twice learned....

Yes, going to the dealers stings the wallet, and makes you thing for a bit if you know how to do the service...

But if you have a good dealer that does the work well it's money well spent while you relax with your family and no dirty finger nails for a couple of days