if you book in for a service dont exspect any diagnostic checking undertaken other than interogating your fault memory and advising if further diagnosis is required, you would not go into woolworths and buy £1.00 worth of pick and mix and exspect them to give you another 20p worth free do you, or go to a solicitor and ask him to deal with a divorse and oh yeah deal with my mortgage deads free of charge while you doing that. everyone will have their own point of view about it!
andymac has decided to go the specialist route, thats good for him i hope all goes well with them. but im sure they wont do things free of charge. my dealer does not charge for washer fluid it is put in free of charge, it does not appear on you bill it is all involved in the cost of labour. oh and for the smart people you cant go in and ask them to drop £1 off the price of your service, if you dont want it. audi do state lbr costs for services, although some dealers try it on a bit. lube service is 0.9lbr, annual and 20k is 1.9lbr, and 40k or any servie with plugs and air filter is 2.2lbr, it is mainly the labour rate that splits the dealers apart. longlife servicing is 2.0lbr and 2.2 if having all filters.
rs4-rs6 etc.. have longer lbr times due to the extended times it takes to change sparkplugs,
Lease companies who are typically tight, do pay 0.2 labour to change bulbs, if you dont like the price that dealers charge then there is normally instructions in the handbook on how to change them.
taking the dash out to change a bulb is most definately not free of charge, i cant believe you think it should be, do you want everything done free of charge, actually dont answer that!!!!
washer fluid is of course part of the service, you have to top it up so it is serviceable! andymac, im not going to start argueing with you as you always have a different opinion to me but you really should read the service schedule in the front of the service book that shows everything that should be checked and when, also ask for a copy of the service sheet after the service is complete, it shows what was checked and what service it had,
Dealers are now refusing to fit items and oils that are supplied by customers, SPURIOUS PARTS is how my manager refers to it, we cannot guarentee the items we fit are in good condition and not tampered with, this makes a great insurance liability problem so we no longer do it, however if you jump and shout loud enough they may use the oil you supply if you can produce proof of purchase and it is in a sealed bottle. They are only protecting them selves as would any of you in their shoes!!!!
Brake fluid is a hydroscopic fluid, that means that over a period of time the fluid absorbs amounts of water and air and lowers the boiling point of the fluid this makes the brakes spongey and less reactive, it is an audi recomendation every two years, lots of people seem to turn down this job but at the end of the day its the brakes on your car the MOST important part of the car, the multitronic gearboxes have got major clutch problems hence the change from six to seven disc clutches audi state that if the gearbox oil is not changed before 40,000 miles then the warranty on the whole gearbox is invalid, in theory brakes would be the same but i have never come accross any implications of brake fluid being the cause of any item failure AS YET! but what you need to think about is the the fluid at the end of the brake pipe nearest the caliper does not change very much and really could do with bleeding out, your decision at the end of the day.
just tell them to put plain water in you washer bottle and sort out the fluid addative for yourself, I DO recommend that you use audi washer fluid though aftr seeing what some other manufacturer fluids can do to your system especially in TT fan washer jets, it simply is not thin enough!
hope that answered some of your questions!
