Audi Service Price Match - have they told the dealers?

[RGBARGEE]

I would always use Audi for a car less than 7 years old. If out of warranty they may still help with any claims if you have a good relationship with the dealer. I avoid paying for services anyway by negotiating one or two as part of the deal. As for comments about buying a Skoda and being an Audi snob I too think that is an insulting and unwarranted statement. Yes anyone can afford to have an Audi even with a small deposit, isn't that great? I tend to pay cash but consider myself lucky rather than a snob. Cheers .. we are now about to have our 15th Audi.

 

[David83S3]

Re-igniting an old thread ....... But I am in talks with 2 local Audi garages on the service price match promise ...... 2016 SQ5 Plus .....2yr major service:

Audi Northampton = £650.88
Local Garage (Using O.E parts) = £276.63

The difference in price is disgusting!! Audi have priced the fuel filter at £111 .....local garage £33 ...using exactly the same parts!!!

Reading the thread above I can see some "Heated chat" on people challenging pricing ..... I don't mind paying what its worth ....but I do not like paying ridiculous prices that are clearly ripping people off. I also enjoy the challenge of getting the best price for things

Its worth trying and pushing the boundaries ..... nothing to lose

 

[AllanG]

Definitely worth trying...let us know how you get on.......I agree that Audi's service pricing is ridiculous, so it's no wonder a lot of us use good independent garages.

 

[fz158]

I tried my best to get this price match service. Audi west london firstly said they wouldnt match an independant but would do another audi dealer. When i got a cheaper quote from another dealer they changed there story to they would only match another sytner group dealer. So they tried everything not to price match.
Jack barclay in wandsworth were the same. Wouldnt return my calls for a price match and had same experience with audi epsom.
When i messaged audi twitter they confirmed jack barclay and epsom dealers did participate in price match itonically.
Its false advertising if you ask me as they put up such a fight even if you do follow the t&cs of the offer!

 

[David83S3]

So here's the story so far ......

Thursday 4pm

Hi Georgia


Sorry I have been in meetings this afternoon. I have just received a quote for the full service from a local garage that I requested use genuine Audi parts and it is lower than your quote. I believe Audi offer a price match on such quotes .... Is this correct?

-----------------------------------
Friday 1pm

Hi Georgia


Happy Friday!


Any news on this please? I would like to get my service booked, whether it be with you or another garage.

-----------------------------------

Friday 1:30pm

Hi David,


Happy Friday to you too!


Apologies - I did send your details to our bookings team to call but they have just advised I need to speak to Northampton Audi to get authorisation of a prise match.


Are you able to send me the full quote you have received? I believe it has to be within a 20 mile radius and Audi Genuine parts.


Speak Soon


-------------------------------------

Friday 2pm


Hi Georgia


Email to garage within a 15mile radius of Northampton Audi attached.


Itemised quote and confirming Audi Genuine Parts to be used.


-----------------------------------

Friday 2:10pm

Hi Again,


So we just need a break down of the quote – IE – proof of parts used, and proof that they are a VAT Registered company.


I have spoken to the aftersales manager and have been advised that the parts we use will cost more than the total price they have quoted you so it is unlikely we will be able to match that.


Let me know if you can get the broken down quote and we can go from there.


Thank You


------------------------------------

Friday 2:30pm

Hi Georgia


The VAT number is: 132****


Can you please send me the part numbers that you intend to use and I will get the garage to confirm that they will use the same part numbers.


Not sure what to say about the comment regarding the inability to price match as it clearly states on the Audi website that Audi will price match if the T&C’s are met on the offer?

------------------------------------

Friday 3:30pm
(From Georgia's boss)

Good afternoon


Please can I have your contact number so I can give you a call and discuss the price match criteria.


------------------------------------

I gave my number and had the chat. Following the chat I wrote this email ....>>>>

Hi Adina


Thank you for calling me to clarify those points. As requested can you please respond to this email confirming the following statement’s to be accurate as Audi Northampton’s answers to my questions during the phone call:

1. You will not provide me with the part numbers for the parts you intend to use on my service as you are not allowed to.
2. You will not honour the service price match promise I have provided a quote for due to it being “too cheap”.

As mentioned I will be taking this up with Audi UK head office as it seems to be false advertising if the garage is going to refuse to honour the offer based on it being too cheap. I cannot see that written anywhere in the T&C’s ?

------------------------------------------

So ......Off to Audi UK i go ..... its so ridiculous! I actually asked her on the phone "Should I get the local garage to increase their price until it suits your offer?" ..... she wasn't impressed with that.... lol

 

[AllanG]

Thanks for the update, David, and hope you get some sense out of Audi UK, but I doubt it!! I really don't understand this sh*t from Audi about not being allowed to divulge part numbers, what are they trying to hide/protect???

 

[David83S3]

Just had another email ......now from her bosses boss it would seem ....

Good afternoon Mr *******,


Firstly we are not trying to be awkward however I’m sure you can appreciate that as a business we cannot complete work on cars at a loss.


The terms and conditions of the price match are, as explained, customers are required to provide us with a written quote from a VAT registered garage stating genuine parts and oil and that the service being quoted for is completed as per the manufacturer guidelines. The garage providing you with the quote should have access to all the necessary information required to produce this quote and should not need to have it provided by us. The garage also must be within a 15 mile radius from us as a dealer.


We do reserve the right to withdraw any offer at any time and this is stated in the T&C’s of the price match policy, however as stated I will happily look at any quote provided and access each case on its on merit.


If you can get the garage to provide the quote and forward it over we can go from there.


Kind regards

Michelle


...... So .... I aim to provide exactly what they have asked for and then see where they go with it!! Watch this space.....

 

[oli356]

Rofl
..... love it

 

[loftylad]

So here's the story so far ......

Thursday 4pm

Hi Georgia


Sorry I have been in meetings this afternoon. I have just received a quote for the full service from a local garage that I requested use genuine Audi parts and it is lower than your quote. I believe Audi offer a price match on such quotes .... Is this correct?

-----------------------------------
Friday 1pm

Hi Georgia


Happy Friday!


Any news on this please? I would like to get my service booked, whether it be with you or another garage.

-----------------------------------

Friday 1:30pm

Hi David,


Happy Friday to you too!


Apologies - I did send your details to our bookings team to call but they have just advised I need to speak to Northampton Audi to get authorisation of a prise match.


Are you able to send me the full quote you have received? I believe it has to be within a 20 mile radius and Audi Genuine parts.


Speak Soon


-------------------------------------

Friday 2pm


Hi Georgia


Email to garage within a 15mile radius of Northampton Audi attached.


Itemised quote and confirming Audi Genuine Parts to be used.


-----------------------------------

Friday 2:10pm

Hi Again,


So we just need a break down of the quote – IE – proof of parts used, and proof that they are a VAT Registered company.


I have spoken to the aftersales manager and have been advised that the parts we use will cost more than the total price they have quoted you so it is unlikely we will be able to match that.


Let me know if you can get the broken down quote and we can go from there.


Thank You


------------------------------------

Friday 2:30pm

Hi Georgia


The VAT number is: 132****


Can you please send me the part numbers that you intend to use and I will get the garage to confirm that they will use the same part numbers.


Not sure what to say about the comment regarding the inability to price match as it clearly states on the Audi website that Audi will price match if the T&C’s are met on the offer?

------------------------------------

Friday 3:30pm
(From Georgia's boss)

Good afternoon


Please can I have your contact number so I can give you a call and discuss the price match criteria.


------------------------------------

I gave my number and had the chat. Following the chat I wrote this email ....>>>>

Hi Adina


Thank you for calling me to clarify those points. As requested can you please respond to this email confirming the following statement’s to be accurate as Audi Northampton’s answers to my questions during the phone call:

1. You will not provide me with the part numbers for the parts you intend to use on my service as you are not allowed to.
2. You will not honour the service price match promise I have provided a quote for due to it being “too cheap”.

As mentioned I will be taking this up with Audi UK head office as it seems to be false advertising if the garage is going to refuse to honour the offer based on it being too cheap. I cannot see that written anywhere in the T&C’s ?

------------------------------------------

So ......Off to Audi UK i go ..... its so ridiculous! I actually asked her on the phone "Should I get the local garage to increase their price until it suits your offer?" ..... she wasn't impressed with that.... lol

LOVE THIS !

I tried this and got fed up in the end and dropped it. I felt really guilty asking the indie to put all the work into the quote, knowing full well that I wouldn’t be using them.

Hope you manage to get Audi into a corner

 

[Ron240]

Watching this thread with great interest and amusement(in the wrong way) at this dealer.

 

[TYb]

The behaviour of some dealers is disgusting, Cheltenham Audi are just as bad, I’m surprised that they don’t have company horses rather than cars, behave like cowboys.

Things like this are really putting me off the brand.

 

[Phutters]

I've thought very hard about playing the price match card in the past too, but I can't bring myself to waste a good independent's time by getting them to run up a quote for work they know full well they won't get.

And I wouldn't dream of asking the peeps I use now to do it. I've spent far too long building up a good relationship with them, one which includes the occasional bag of jam doughnuts from the nearby bakery as thanks for their unstinting help and politeness over the years. I'm not prepared to jeopardise that relationship.

My car is nagging me for its first two year oil change and inspection, which I'll get the blokes at the independent to do. They'll use the correct oil and filter and do everything on the inspection service checklist for the princely sum of £120. I can cope with air and pollen filters myself. It's not rocket science.

Despite having had a pretty good idea of what responses I'd get, out of curiosity I rang around most of the dealerships within an hour and a half's drive and asked for both a price and a breakdown of that price.

Their quotes (without a pollen filter change) ranged from £310 to £415. In fairness, they were all within a few quid of each other for the parts; it was about £130 in total for the oil, an oil filter, a sump plug and £4.60 for screenwasher fluid, ***. You'd expect there to be a hefty mark-up on the oil, and indeed there was.

The remainder of the total price is the labour charge, unsurprisingly. I asked a couple of them what their hourly rate was, knowing it to be well north of a hundred quid an hour.

I wasn't expecting it to be quite as far north as £174 an hour, including VAT. It's quite an eye-opener.

When I told them what prices I'd had elsewhere, and asked them to explain the difference (a hundred and five quid in the worst example), they weren't terribly forthcoming. When I said 'In light of that difference, what's the best price you can do?', the answer was a 10% 'goodwill' discount.

Before anybody gets on my case about being a cheapskate or being told by Audi where to go should something major go wrong when my warranty has just run out, I'm aware of the potential risks. It is, however, a risk I'm prepared to take.

I'm not convinced at all that the lack of a 'proper' Audi service history has much impact on future part-exchange prices either, and never have been.

For every case of somebody being offered a lousy part exchange price as a result of the car not having all its services done within the network, there seem to be a dozen others who say that it makes absolutely bugg*r all difference.

This was certainly the case when I part-exchanged my old ur-allroad for this car a couple of years ago, and the mountain of independent-generated receipts I'd accumulated in the dozen years I'd had it were way, way more than they were expecting.

You pays your money and you takes your choice, and mine is to spend it getting a garage that I trust implicitly to do the work on the car. That they will do this for a little more than a third of what the least expensive dealership charges is a bonus, though it has to be said that by far the biggest proportion of the difference in price is accounted for by Audi's hourly labour rate.

Charge getting on for three times as much per hour as the independent and mark the oil up as much as that, and there you have it.

Putting out-of-warranty goodwill, poncy coffee, free wifi and the dubious merits of a complimentary valet aside for the moment, the bottom line, really, is whether or not I think that a dealership will do a job that's three times better than the one I know 'my' independent will do.

And I don't.

.

 

[Wiles1991]

The dealers are strange, I just had the timing belt and water pump changed on my 63 plate A3 and I had just had the brake fluid change done at Newcastle Audi 2 months prior and noticed the price match jargin on the booklet they handed me with the documents in, I asked if it applied to the timing belt change (which is £650) and they said no, just on a normal service apparently, asked Tyneside Audi which also said the same, I decided to look at an independent specialist and they quoted £460 so decided to go with them, but then I decided to give Wearside Audi a try (7 miles away further from me) and they were willing to not only match it, but beat it at £420 and I still got the free MOT's for life of the car deal and they gave me a free courtesy car in the form of a lovely A3 Sline Black edition with all the bells and whistles... and the stupidest thing is all 3 of them are part of the same dealer group! Lookers Audi, Will always be going to Wearside Audi from now on!

 

[richinsoton]

They were willing to not only match it, but beat it at £420 and I still got the free MOT's for life of the car deal... and the stupidest thing is all 3 of them are part of the same dealer group! Lookers Audi, Will always be going to Wearside Audi from now on!

Nothing stupid about it, perhaps Wearside were close but not quite there with reaching their month end target so doing a few customers cheap deals towards month end was enough to push them over the line. What they've not made off of you in the front end, they've made in bonus for reaching their target in the background.

 

[David83S3]

*UPDATE*

Good Afternoon Michelle


I fully appreciate you cannot run a business at a loss and I would not wish you to do so as I am a keen Audi follower and will never drive any other make of car. I am merely trying to make use of an offer advertised on the Audi website.


Since your email on Friday I have made further enquiries to garages in the local area and have discovered that every single garage I contact tells me the same thing. Every garage I have contacted tells me that they cannot give me the part numbers until they buy the parts. So I decided to go direct to the garages supplier who has stated the below:


Hi David,


We are VWG thus all our parts are OEM not OES.


I am able to get one of my guys to price up the filters for you but as per the VWG process we aren’t able to give part numbers out.


I am sure you can agree that with this VWG process in place (highlighted in Yellow) it would be extremely difficult for me to get a quotation that includes VWG part numbers when the VWG policy is to not give them out.


The only way I can get close to your request is to get the garage to quote and get them to state they will source the parts from the VWG supplier above, who have stated they only supply OEM parts. Would that be sufficient?


It just feels like VWG have made this offer almost impossible to use by its customers, which is bordering on false advertising.



Hoping we can resolve this matter soon

------------------------------------------------


................Will see what comes from this !!

 

[AlS3BE]

To be honest it’s all BS.
last time I tried this the Audi dealer told me that I needed part numbers and my response was you don’t give out part numbers in your quotes so how do you expect a non franchise garage to give that. It’s policy they don’t give you part numbers so to make it difficult for you to achieve price match. Mine wasn’t a run off the mill service either it was a repair that Audi warranty wouldn’t warrant so I was wanting the part number so I could do the fix or get an independent but they just kept saying it’s audi policy to give quotes without part numbers.
Ended up taking to an independent got it fixed and traded it in.
To be fair I would expect a dealership to be more expensive than your independent as they have so much overhead compared to the independent. Latest equipment and software and the Audi tax they pay to be a franchise then there’s the fancy showroom and fancy coffee they give you as well.
Nowadays if I get a decent quote from an independent I will just take it to them to do. Occasionally the dealership has good offers for servicing and they get my business if the price is right. Just feel bad getting small locals working off their a$$ to give me quotes so I can get discounted servicing from the dealer and they get nothing out of it.
The other thing that annoys me is Audi fixed price servicing for cars 3 years+. Same car that’s only 2 years old pays twice as much as the 3 year old one using the same parts and same labour. Had this argument A few years back when I serviced my car and they discounted it to the fixed price. Now they just won’t budge even though I bought numerous cars from them.

 

[David83S3]

05/12/18


Good morning David,


We have not had other customer’s stating they are unable to get a quote from another garage that meets the price match criteria so am unsure why the garage are struggling.


The terms and conditions are set by Audi UK not us as a centre, however we do have the right to refuse if the work required is not viable at the costs quoted.


As I’ve said already if you can get the quote over I will take a look and advise from there.


Thanks

Michelle


......After I got this email I managed to get a garage to confirm part numbers after I sent them the list of part numbers (Which I found online). Still waiting for a reply ...... To be honest i am a tad bored of fighting them now .......however I have this disease that prevents me from letting things go lol ....so I will soldier on

I have an old friend (I had forgotten about) working on a quotation from a VWG (Skoda) garage that will include part numbers and meet all the T&C's ...... Will get that sent to them once I have it and see what response that gets ........

 

[Evil Derboy]

Its a crap offer. It's obviously a headline grabber but almost impossible to actually get the deal. First it's "participating dealers only". Secondly you need to ask a business to take the time out of their busy day to supply you with a list of parts only for you to then go give the business to someone else.

I got two quotes from two different providers and then felt so bad about wasting their time I just left it and asked the dealer for a discount. Got 10% off and ran with it.

My local dealer was fairly clued up on the offer and apparently they send the competing quote to Audi UK who then reimburse an agreed rate over and above the price match quote. They will not pay the dealer with the information requested, so it's Audi UK who are to blame for the stringent criteria, rather than the dealers themselves. The problem seems to be that many of the dealer personnel don't actually know or understand this.

 

[Bells]

Dealer is talking rubbish here, I’ve priced matched with my local dealer (JCT600 group) and never had to have an email from the other garage quoting part numbers, a copy of the quote (on email) with a description of the work and cost has been fine with it written on the email genuine OEM parts would be used etc.

 

[winrya]

I complained at my last service with Audi Shrewsbury (as I had many many issues with them) and the service guy said they just move the goal posts so you can never get a price match and if you do manage to get everything sorted they just say can't work at a loss.

I'm going back to using midland vw in future, great prices, good knowhow and never have to worry they will wash my car and scratch it as they don't offer valeting