[antz.bin]

Long long ago, my sister in law's Hero Duet went in for its first service after running about 300km on the odo. Hero did not recommend oil change as part of first service, just a top-up. This was soon after the great Indian BS4 2 wheeler sale.

After the service, they gave me a bill of 400ml of engine oil (used for top-up).

I promptly wrote Hero Motocorp India an email telling them to replace the entire engine under warranty since it had consumed 400 ml oil out of a total capacity of 800ml in running 300km.

After a couple of frantic calls from the service center, a person came over from there to our house and handed over a cash refund and the updated bill of Rs. Zero (since it was the first service).

[1985Darkkid85]

I think you can ask for the bottle back , if it's extra.

That is why, i have a collection of many dot4 brake fluids at home.

[ranjith_cbz]

Looks like there's no end to the ways and means through which a dealership like to overcharge or steal money from its loyal customers. I don't know but why car dealers across brands have such crooked and unethical mentality to find every loophole to squeeze whatever extra money they can from their customers. Does politicians owning/partnering majority of dealer/service networks across brands has anything to do with it...

Eg:

Overpriced Insurance Premiums
Ambiguous Roadtax and Registration costs
Handling charges
Mandatory overpriced substandaard accessories
Trying to subvert the official booking roster and sell at premium to influential buyers
Selling cars off their hands which doesn't pass PDI
Replacing spares before their intended lifespan
Running unnecessary engine flush, ac disinfectant, teflon/wax/ceramic detailing etc
Overcharging on fluids replacements through overbilling over recommended volumes
Overexcited to declare a car as total loss and flip it
No control on technicians taking serviced cars for a joy ride

The list never ends..

Looks like one has to be very alert and monitor every rupee being charged at de(ste)alership).

[naikameya]

Originally Posted by rjainv

Was this a one off thing?

I don't think so. I could find atleast one more reference of another BHP'ian having pointed this out to Honda and got the refund.

You are right. I just checked the manual of my Gen1 Jazz it shows 3.2L and Honda has been charging me all the while 3.6L. This seems to be a countrywide scam across Honda at least.

Having said that the savings are going to be only 260 (56.28*4units + 18% GST) bucks including taxes. One could leverage it to get better service.

[Chandrahas]

I ride a KTM Duke 250. The bike has Oil service capacity of 1.65 litres, but unless and untill pointed out, I'm always billed for 1.7 or 1.8 litres.
0.10 litres might not seem much but even this comes out to around Rs.75 with the current rate of Rs. 750/l for Motul 7100 10W50.

[hey.rudey]

Originally Posted by rjainv

Conclusion

Unlike all other extra charges like windscreen wiper fluids, underbody/engine coating, AC treatment etc, this is overcharging isn't explicit and easily goes unnoticed!
Earlier service center used to carry plastic cans for engine oils which came in fixed sizes larger than car's engine capacity. Hence there was an excuse to charge for the complete can (and in some cases gave leftover oil as prasad to the customer) as return gift. However today almost every service center buys in barrels and has hoses run till service bays to dispense exactly the amount needed by a particular vehicle ! So no such excuse any more for charging more.

Going by conservative maths, I was charged about Rs 300 more, and I think there would be an avg of 50 cars daily. that translates to almost half crore Rupees additional income in a year for the service center by just overcharging/wrong billing. That is about 5 top end Jazz cars right there !


Comment for fellow bhpians - do check your service bill to see if you were overcharged!
I am in particular interested if anyone else got their car recently serviced at Brigade Honda Yelahanka if you were overcharged or correctly charged !

This happens at my local Honda service centre here in Mumbai as well. Every time I send the car for servicing they tend to invent new problems and give us a call about it, the oil change being the biggest one. Once they called for something that was sorted a day prior to sending the car for service.

If this wasn't enough, they stole my USB pen drive (thankfully it wasn't a costly one) and broke the connector in the process. I am due for a complimentary repair, but they still have not done this inspite of giving them reminders.

One more big red flag is that they chip at my rusted parts every visit. What started as a rash is now proper rust hole on my passenger's side front door. Clearly they are trying every tactic in the book to "make" more money by harassing the customer

[Benoit]

This thread brings me to doubt the oil capacity during my service.

My Altroz XZ diesel has run 31k km,and I have done two full service: at 15k km and 30k km, during which the oil is replaced. The engine oil quantity mentioned in the invoice is 5 liters for both the service(both were done at different service centers). My previous Linea had a capacity of 3.2 liters.

My manual is missing, and i am not able to verify it. Can someone please clarify?

Edit: just checked in pdf manual from tata site. It says 3.5L for petrol cars and 5L for diesel cars.



Seems higher than other diesel cars. What could be the reason?

[Rennjit]

Ouch!! Just out of curiosity i checked service bills of RE Himalayan. 200ml extra above manual stated capacity at company store & 400ml at dealer. Only thing i do at stealership is oil change during warranty period. Now we are getting looted there as well !! Entire automobile service industry is full of such scams.

[sac23]

There is something else that they do and goes unnoticed. Who knows what oil they are putting in? Are you sure it's the synthetic you paid for?
They can fill anything in their barrels and we will never know.
My personal experiences.
Paid 1000/L for Shell Helix Ultra engine oil to Suzuki service from Nexa and ended up getting some crappy oil which lost its viscosity within 2000 km.
I later found out that the 0W20 cannot be formulated in non synthetic oil and the normal Ecstar 0W20 is fully synthetic and it costs 1/3rd. But the service center will tell you it's organic.

Chevrolet service center also did the same to me. They said in the invoice that they filled Total Quartz 7000 as always. Normally this oil would be good even after 4000 km but this time it went bad after less than 2000 km.
That was my wake up call and I decided to change oil from a FNG from now on.

Originally Posted by H_Dogg72

Have been recently charged for 2L of gearbox oil whereas my car should take in only 1.7L.
Haven’t brought it up with VW yet.

I recently changed the gear oil of my Chevrolet Sail. The manual says 1.6L. But the manual download from their website says 1.8L. In the end it took 2L to fill it to the recommended level.

Originally Posted by Chandrahas

I ride a KTM Duke 250. The bike has Oil service capacity of 1.65 litres, but unless and untill pointed out, I'm always billed for 1.7 or 1.8 litres.
0.10 litres might not seem much but even this comes out to around Rs.75 with the current rate of Rs. 750/l for Motul 7100 10W50.

This is a known issue. KTM increased the recommended engine oil capacity to 1.8L.

[KkVaidya]

The Engine oil capacity mentioned in the Owner's Manual is the total capacity with Oil Filter and not the actual quantity to be filled. Actual quantity is a tad lesser then mentioned capacity.
If the manual says 3.6 liters, actual oil that brings the dipstick indicator to top mark, would be around 2.8 to max 3 liters. Exact measurements can be checked if you ask him to drain all the oil into a pan for measurement.

Mahindra, on the other hand, sells it's oil in exact measurements. So if you pour the entire contents of say 4.2 liter can, it will bring the oil level to top mark on the dipstick.

[MT_Hyderabad]

Originally Posted by Benoit

This thread brings me to doubt the oil capacity during my service.

My Altroz XZ diesel has run 31k km,and I have done two full service: at 15k km and 30k km, during which the oil is replaced. The engine oil quantity mentioned in the invoice is 5 liters for both the service(both were done at different service centers). My previous Linea had a capacity of 3.2 liters.

My manual is missing, and i am not able to verify it. Can someone please clarify?

Edit: just checked in pdf manual from tata site. It says 3.5L for petrol cars and 5L for diesel cars.

Attachment 2294475

Seems higher than other diesel cars. What could be the reason?

Now we are treading towards a very different topic: why is the sump volume different for similar sized engines?
It all depends on the engineers who designed the engine. If an engine is designed to withstand 10k kms of oil change interval, they can increase the volume a little bit and move the intervals to 15k kms. Sometimes the engine amount is same but they start recommending a higher grade oil without any increase in the volume. Like a Dicor engine was initially having 10k kms service interval when the recommendation was CH4 oil, but the same engine had 15k km oil change interval when the recommendation was CI4 oil.
There are many other factors that decide oil quantity - like oil filter capability, oil pump capability, engine and vehicle weight etc.
Engine oil on a jet engine(commercial airline) are never changed , they are just top upped after a few trips. Some of us will not sit in an aircraft again if we know that the engine oil in the craft is a few million kilometers old.
There were attempts made by oil companies and oil manufactures in the past to provide million mile oils and oil change free ownership, however they faceplanted after insurance claims and court cases started rising . Basically every vehicle faces a different set of environment and challenges and these sweeping recommendations doesn't hold good for everyone.

[jithin23]

That's why the age old practice of being beside the vehicle is what I always prefer. Gave my car once to avail pick up and drop service and hardly any concerns which I had mentioned were addressed apart from oil change.

Sometimes that half a day effort is better than cribbing for the next 9995 kms.

[Chhanda Das]

Originally Posted by rjainv

If you got your car serviced recently, do check the quantity of engine oil charged to you in the bill and compare it with the engine oil capacity mentioned in the technical specifications of your vehicle. You could have been charged 5-10% more than what your vehicle can actually take!

Although this has never happened to me, I have been observing this recently in the service bills of many of my fellow Creta owners in the owners' groups on Facebook

Originally Posted by GTO

Just wondering why 99% of dealership billing errors are always in favour of their own self. Never ever is a miscalculation favouring a customer.

As the saying goes, never say "never". Shown below is the 2nd service bill of my 1.6 petrol Creta from November 2018 where they charged me for 3.3 litres of engine oil after filling the Hyundai recommended 3.6 litres in my car's engine

I know that they filled 3.6 litres because my son saw it with his own eyes while standing next to the car while it was being serviced. And I confirmed this the next morning by personally checking the oil level on the dipstick. Such an incident is very clearly an exception but it does happen. Here is an image of the bill for INR 1071 for the 2nd service at ten thousand kilometres for my car :-

And the following link shows the recommended quantities of engine oils in all Hyundai cars in India :-

https://www.hyundai.com/in/en/connec...les/engine-oil

[Cresterk]

Heh, what makes this worse is that most of the time it's almost impossible to drain the entirety of oil out of the car anyway. When I started doing my oil changes from the FNG rather than the dealership, I noticed that my i20 could only take in 5l of oil at the max rather than the 5.3l mentioned in the manual, which is in case of a new completely empty car.

[lsjey]

Wow! Every day, humankind comes up with novel ways of making easy money! Just to escape from the drudgery of following up with the SAs, I took HCMP (Honda Care Management Package - AMC). And then I get to know that wheel alignment and balancing is not part of this package during third service. I should also concede that I did not read all the fine print over the AMC contract. The sales people were also reluctant to sell this. But I guess this is still a good deal for me. Anyway, at least I don't have to check how much is billed for another two services.

Thanks a ton for posting this and alerting all of us!

Regards,
lsjey