Hi all
First time posting so hope someone can offer a personal view on this.

My 2010 TD4 hs an EGR fault code and so I approached a local mechanic and we agreed 4 hours for the labour to replace the EGR valve and cooler and the throttle body (labour only as I had both parts to hand)

On arrival the chap was here 30 mins and checked the codes advising I should get a carbon clean before they did any work.

It was not something they offered so I went off to look into that. He said there would be a 'call out fee' to cover his time and I'd get an invoice.

I then (eventually) got an invoice for:

1 x Call Out Fee £35
1 x Diagnotic Fee £60
1 x Labour hour £65
TOTAL £160

I feel they are 'double dipping' on the diagnostic fee and the labour and have told them just that.

They disagree.

Am I being unreasonable in feeling £35 call out plus one of either lthe Labour or the Diagnostics fee is reasonable but not both?

The Consumer Rights Act suggest if price not agreed prior then a reasonable fee is due.

Thoughts guys?

If its any help.
We had a holiday let in skipton, N. Yorks ( 4 bedroom terrace house) and the management company charged us £65 to change a 9v battery in a smoke alarm.
Takes less than a minute.
We sold it earlier this year as the management company was taking the urine.

Basically we felt we were being scammed at every opportunity.

The managment company was originally a good local firm but got bought out, then again bought out and now owned by a mega asset stripping private equity firm - who dont give a flying fig Jules

Think of it as a bargain! For less than the diagnostic fee at a JLR dealer you got a call out, diagnostic and 30 minutes out of an hour.

Buy this and save money post your codes! keep it in the car. Once you have the codes plenty of advice on here and google.

https://www.autelstore.co.uk/wholesale/aut...anner.html

Personally i would say the diagnosis should be incorporated into the labour charge so as i see it.


1 x Call Out Fee £35
1 x Diagnotic Fee £60
1 x Labour hour £65
TOTAL £160

So total £100 because plugging in a diagnostic tool takes no longer than 30seconds.

The labour must before working the diagnostic tool.

Also i thought a call out fee was if nowt was done or could not be done.?

Having discovered that the FL2 has a tendency to hang on to old codes I keep a cheap OBD Reader in my car ready for the occasional random fault that my FL2 throws up and sticks the car in limp mode or similar. I just clear out old/pending codes and continue on my journey fault free.

It gives me peace of mind.

Obviously if a fault came on hard and kept repeating then I would get it fixed, but as my FL2 gets older it is starting to moan a bit but is generally reliable, a bit like myself.

As for your call-out fees, if it was a genuine call-out, and not a routine planned visit, then that extra fee is OK. It is quite expensive to run a emergency call-out service with about 60-70% manpower usage being the aim.

I agree that charging that amount for diagnostic check AND then a one hour fee does seem a lot. FL2 XS SD4 Auto 2010 2012-2017 (21k - 91k miles) (MY2011)
FL2 Metropolis SD4 Auto 2014 2017- (16k - 85k+ miles) (MY2015)
Metro in its 12th Year of (Extended) LR Warranty / Full LR Service History
(Expensive, but Trouble/Worry free - hopefully?)

Last edited by IanMetro on 12th Sep 2025 9:35 am. Edited 2 times in total

Arctic wrote:

Personally i would say the diagnosis should be incorporated into the labour charge so as i see it.


1 x Call Out Fee £35
1 x Diagnotic Fee £60
1 x Labour hour £65
TOTAL £160

So total £100 because plugging in a diagnostic tool takes no longer than 30seconds.

The labour must before working the diagnostic tool.

Also i thought a call out fee was if nowt was done or could not be done.?

I think you're missing the point that the one hour labour might be his travel time, to and from you - someone has to pay it.
That looks a reasonable amount to me.
You try calling out a service engineer for one of the machine tools in my workshop - £500 disappears before they walk through the door.
I'd pay it, and not go back if you're not happy.
Your guy is very unlikely to want to do anything more for you if you underpay him this time.
Would you be happy having wages deducted for a similar situation.
Just my thoughts on the matter.