What's the biggest rip-off in the car world?

My worst experience was with a garage who wanted to charge me £50 to read out my check engine light… bought a £3 eBay plug and did it myself…

Gabz

22 Feb 2016

My worst experience was with a garage who wanted to charge me £50 to read out my check engine light… bought a £3 eBay plug and did it myself…

Comments

People with the Nurburgrifnsbds sticker. When they dont know where it is…

Surely it’s the Bentley Bentayga’s optional clock thing…..it costs like $170,000??

i.e ‘do you want a new Porsche 911 Turbo with your Bentley?’

Paying 50$ for a scan isnt a rip off, a good scan tool costs a couple thousands and it needs expensive updates every year, your 5$ code reader is only gonna show the code and they are likely to give you only the generic obd codes missing out on any specific manufacturers code…biggest rip offs are 200-300$ “cold air” intakes that give you a handful of horses at best

I bought a suitable OBD plug to USB for my Alfa and use my laptop to run Multi ECU Scan, which is specific for Fiat/Alfa/Lancia. With the free version you can look up almost everything, get specific errors, reset faults.. I also have the full version (if you Google a bit you are bound to find it at some point) which can also be used to log various parameters such as measured air qty vs requested air qty and that sort of stuff. No, I really don’t need a dealer anymore to read out my ECU, that cable alone saved me €200,- easy!

I’m lucky to find pos buick lesaber where I live.

turbo whistle

Petrol and insurance.
Petrol because it’s absurd as a petrol-extracting country to have fuel more expensive than, say, Austria, and insurance because those knobheads absolutely rip you off, you know they make immense profits but somehow always struggle financially. Oh, not to mention, God forbid, to ever argue with one, I heard several times people getting screwed over by insurance in clever ways.

In reading this I thought I should look into insurance in the UK… I drive a 2002 Volvo S60 2.4T here in Australia (not even the top of the line T-5 mode!) and for fully comprehensive insurance I pay $910 AUD annually. That’s me listed as the registered owner and operator at 21 years old, driving since 17 with no claims in that time. I entered all the same details into a UK insurance calculator, exactly as I entered them here in AUS, the cheapest price I got… £4,730.40 GBP!!!!! How can they get away with this!!! Converted to AUD that is almost $10,000 AUD!!! I only paid $3000 AUD for the car. How can the UK get away with charging 10! Times what they charge in Australia?!?! For a 15 year old Volvo no less!!!! I would be outraged if I lived in the UK!!!!