Do garages charge even where they cant find the fault?
 

As per title....I have taken my car to two (shoddy IMHO) independent BMW garages who have been unable to diagnose why my car makes a 'clanking' noise when the footbrake is pressed... Im sure it is a simple cure but it is driving me mad!

I am thinking of going straight to BMW...but will they charge me for their time, even where they cannot find the fault....?

What is your experience of this?

Depends on their policy

If you went in and said "diagnose this problem" and quote me for it, they'll charge.

I think it orginally stems from customers, who take their car in and ask a problem to be diagnosed, and when investigated (which can take hours for odd faults), when the customer is presented with a quote. Some at this point will run away leaving the garage to cover the cost of employee's hours spent on the finding the fault.

Some garages will do a free diagnosis only if you agree to have the rectification work afterwards. But this causes all sorts of hassle with customer trying it on when they don't fancy spending lots of money. So charges made for diagnosis is pretty much the norm nowadays I'm afraid.

It shouldn't be like that in an ideal world. But to stay in business it has to be like that :(

Odds are yes - if they spend time trying to find the problem they have to recover the costs somewhere. Some places will do a discounted rate if they can't help and others wont charge at all, but I would expect any main dealer to charge you their full hourly rate.

Depends on the dealer.I had a paintwork match problem with my BMW and the local dealer spent about 45 minutes discussing it with me for no charge.
The labour rates of main dealers are high,yes,but they are not all the ogres that they are portrayed.

Go and talk to them about it........

I run a garage I always quote 1 hour to diagnose faults mainly to sort out proper customers from time wasters,I will add i tell them if they have the recommended work carried out i will offset the work against the hour already paid.If i didnt run this system you could end up diagnosing cars all day all for free.I hope you find this useful from a garages point of view,I will also add i would not charge a regular customer JASON