Munchen, 23. August 2012 – The service requirement of modern cars decreases through more long maintenance intervals for years. But from a certain age, the repairs and sometimes one starts in effect, to avoid the expensive contract workshop. At most manufacturers, the goodwill ends afterwards for at the latest five years, and also on the used car market, a service fee stamped by the contractual handler is also likely to be removed, but usually only lowly rewarded. As an alternative for inspections and repairs, there are also chains like A besides free workshops.T.U or the Bosch Car Service. In a current workshop test, the ADAC compared these two with Derelangen the manufacturers.
Funf deficiency
The club has tested the workshops with vehicles of the Audi A3 models, BMW 1 Series and Mercedes A-Class as well as Renault Megane and VW Golf 5. Before the examination, the vehicles were diamarized with five deficiency: an adjusted headlamp light, a defective indicator light, a detached exhaust pot, a low cooling agent and a spare wheel with too little tire prere. If the mechanic works on the list specified by the manufacturer, he had to find all the mistakes. This is not a chicane, but simply what the customer is commissioned and ultimately have to pay. The work performance was evaluated in the test with 60 points, the service with a maximum of 40 points. There were dot deduction if significant services were missing or additional work without the previous order were carried out. The latter did not have to pay the customer too.
Rough differences
In the quality, however, were worlds between the free workshop chains and the contract workshops in the test. At Bosch, only ten of the 25 tested companies worked flawlessly. The Bosch Car Service operation in Hamburg has even received one of the worst reviews in the 42 years of the ADAC Workshop Test with 17 out of 100 applications. In the overall result, the tested A.T.U-companies even weaker. Here are 18 of 25 branches. The success rate amounts to A.T.U So only 28 percent. By contrast, 88 percent of the 25 tested contracts have found all errors. Mercedes and Renault cut along with "very good", a Berliner Mercedes operation even reached the full 100 points. Not quite immaculate is the balance of Audi, BMW and VW. VW only a "sufficient", in Munich a "good" – from the respective sample durchgefuhrten five in German cities achieved Audi in Leipzig only a "satisfactory", BMW – also in Leipzig. The incurred flow were all rated "very good", all bugs were found and the service was also voted.
Quality has its price
The better quality of the contracts costs, however, costs a lot of money: In the case of the BMW 1ers, the hour at the BMW handler costs 158 euros, which was most expensive in this test. The Bosch service did not even take the half with 75 euros per hour. And also spare parts and lubricants are significantly more expensive for the handlers. The OL costs for the A-Class in the contract workshop 28 Euro per liter, with Bosch comparatively modest 13 euros. For the Renault Megane, the price per liter differs only three euros.