My thoughts on Barbagallo

So my girlfriend's mum has been through a hell of a lot in the last few months including divorce, moving out of her beloved home, unemployed (worked for her ex), beating kidney cancer, working for some crappy wage on a casual basis cause theres nothing going. And to top it off, she gets her car serviced at barbagallo (2005 i believe jag x type)
Previous services haven't been too bad, only had them at 10000 and 20000 k.

Car went in today and came back with a $1900 bill. She was originally quoted 600 for general service and to fix an irritating power steering noise, they called saying the rear brakes are totally worn out and they need replacing so she says swap them.
Quick run down of the worst prices:
Set of rear brake disds-$280
Set of rear brake PADS-$370
Labour for fitting rears-$270
magnatec 5w40-$92

Now the car has done 37000k, front brakes have never been replaced and the report says they're at 20% (dont know if thats worn or 20%left). Firstly i wanna know what kinda pads thats using cause thats ridiculous. And my dad and i agree that 37000k's seems like very little for totally worn discs given that they werent even squealing or anything and they were the rears when fronts didnt need replacing. I'm gonna call and ask to inspect the discs but i suspect they'll refuse or they've been binned.

Sorry for the long post i'm just venting, takes her a month to earn the money to pay for her service and something i highly doubt needed doing. but i suppose nothing can be done now...

Don't buy/take a car to barbagallo!!!

An X type Jag uses a lot of the same running gear as Ford Mondeo in the UK. Cheap as chips for parts really so it sounds well overpriced.

I'm not a Jag expert, so perhaps Nudge would be able to confirm this, but those prices certainly sound over the top. Especially $370 for a set of REAR brake pads?

Hmm.. don't forget to add your workshop review here, so others can be warned.

and brake pads more expensive than the discs??? I searched the part number and found the pads on the net for i think around $160

fukn hell . bend over and cop that one ... thats a freaking joke,

Its also illegal... Alf's an arrogant little prick and I'm not surprised in the least his whole organisation is like that.

Find out if that 'disk' price is for machining or replacement, I'd say the former.

There's NO WAY rear pads would be worn enough to require replacement if the fronts didn't. They're substantially smaller but also only take about 20% of the braking friction. I've replaced front pads twice in the time it takes to wear rears down in the past.

Do you know a lawyer? Personally I'd pay $50 to get a lawyer to give the manager a call as her representative and explain he's advised she pay for the $600 service (which is way overpriced, but meh she agreed to it) and the market price for the magnatek unless they can provide evidence of the worn pads and rotors AND prove they came off her car ('cause its easy as hell to produce some worn bits out of the bin). Its illegal for an expert to take advantage of a lay person by over inflating prices and performing unnecessary work. If it WAS necessary they should have adequate evidence to back up their claim.

If they accept the offer then fantastic. If they don't she won't have to pay a cent until they take her to court and WIN, and if she shows the court she was making reasonable offers she'll be far more likely to achieve a favourable settlement.

Also remember that claims this small can only go to the lowest magistrates court, so lawyers fees CANNOT be included except in extraordinary circumstances. So if they sue and they lose, she won't have to pay any extra letting it go to court (although she will incur her own legal fees, but the court MAY allow her to take those costs off the settlement amount, especially if they consider Barbagellos infringed the Trade Practices Act).

The problem you have is if she's already paid the account - you've got SFA chance of getting that back once its been paid, as she's effectively agreed to the 'contract of sale'. There are ways around this but its a much more difficult battle than offering part-payment.

Good luck, I hope it works out well in the end.

Unfortunately i was at work all day while it was in so she didn't let me know until later. She has pretty much no knowledge of cars (my jag is a ford???) and paid the bill and took the car. We're aware that she'll probably not get the money back so the car just isn't going to go there anymore. I'm still going to try and get my hands on the discs but as I said I'm aware they probably dont exist anymore now that she's paid. Will still let them know my thoughts though cause its a joke taking advantage of people like that.
Especially annoying that I could've sourced the parts myself and done what was a very basic service, she just felt too bad letting me do that and also wants to keep service history.

I work for Toyota in Midland... We do fixed price servicing for non Toyota's for $195...

We generally change brake pads when they get down to about 3mm or below...

How quick they wear out is always different depending on someones driving style