First Service - A Tales of lies

[mrg9999]

MG ZS EV 2022 model MK2 LR first service - A tale of lies etc.
Booked car service in April 2024 and agreed date was 14th June 2024 and cost for first service was £64 and if I brought it in at 08:15 it would be ready at 11:00.

June 14th comes around, bring it in. Lady says price is £129.
They give me a link to track progress. My partner takes me for a breakfast, and we look around local shops. The tracker hasn't moved. We go for some lunch and the tracker moves 3 out of 4 segments.

2pm comes around and I can see my car parked up near the front. and I return and they say it's ready.
I challenge the price and say I have an email from your chap standing over there quoting £64, and his business card with the price and date on the back.
The lady relents and says OK, it's £64 and charges me that.
Other than a lot of visual checks - brakes, tyre thickness etc, DC charge, AC charge, change washer fluid, I have no idea what they did for 6 hours and £64. They did a sloppy interior vacuum and exterior wash. They say it includes the continuation of the breakdown cover etc. Thus far they haven't supplied an invoice.

How does this price compare with other people?

 

[Gadget Geek]

Was it low mileage by any chance?

 

[peterseddon]

My first service was about £120 and my second about £220. I have no problems with that as the tesla update and the infotainment update were both done for free. The second service they changed the brake fluid and pollen filter, but the rest was just checks. I was listening to Quentin Wilson the other day and he said that when he took his Bentley for a service the bill came to £5,000 so I aint complaining.

 

[Ruzellio]

Clearly we are all being ripped off by our MG dealers. I recently had my MG ZS EV Trophy LR first service at 10,630 miles. They charged me £89.95 as part of my service plan.
Looking at the check list provided the only items added were Filter-Pollen @ £22.20 and Screenwash @ £1:20. Beyond this they check wheels & tyres, Brakes, coolant, electrics, engine/clutch/mirrors/glass and Underside… it was good to know they had checked the Exhaust system & Catalyst and it passed !!!!.

They initially told me 1 hour for the service, on arrival I was told the car would not be ready until the afternoon. This 1st service was late being undertaken as I received no email notification from the dealership, I told them this and they sent email another …which again never came.
When I picked it up my car they had not even cleaned it which frankly is very poor customer service. Looking around the subject it appears MG service plans are through Brown and Gammons Ltd and are administer by eDynamix. Apparently you can transfer the plan for free to another dealer and I’m going to look into this as my dealer in Croydon is frankly awful and I would not recommend them.
It's such a shame that my dealership (which reading this forum is not in isolation as being awful) is so poor because the MG ZS EV is actually really good car, makes me wonder what SAIC would think of MG's UK dealership ?

The MG is not my only EV as I also own a Polestar 2, this has yet to have its first service, lets see if Geely are any better ?

I reflect that clearly UK dealerships are struggling with the transition from ICE to EV and importantly how they are now going to make money from servicing car in the future, (which is a significant part of their income stream).

 

[scoobeesnac]

I tried a while-you-wait first service (given my 1 1/2 hr round trip) thinking that it would be no more than an hours wait - how wrong could I be 3 hours or so later!

Had they not quoted a stupidly low amount online and confirmed the amount at every stage I would have been pretty annoyed. I did notice that they (or the last dealer) had swapped my PM2.5 filter for a regular one that was well used - Probably to make some of their money back ?

Meh.

 

[Grriff]

It's not only MG. When I looked at the service record for our Honda Jazz it was mostly inspections apart from an oil change and the cost was much more than £64! Anything else, such as filter changes, was extra and expensive.