Dealers don't make any money any more actually selling bikes. So how do they stay in business? Servicing. In those circs, you can't expect it to be super cheap.
Have you ever wondered how many specialist tools you need to service a Ducati, how much the software and PC cost that you have to have to do the latest bikes and be a Ducati dealer ?, how many independent dealers have this equipment and I'm sure that would be bought up in a warranty claim. Comparing a mondeo to a Ducati seems an odd comparison, a Mondeo is not the Ducati of the car world, maybe sir would be better off on a CB500 ?, also scale of economics has to play a part in this, how many cars does a major car dealer service compared to a Ducati dealer and how well trained are their techs compared to a Ducati dealer ?
How much do you lose on the sale of a bike if you have done the servicing yourself and not got the "book Stamped"? I ask because I know once my bike is out of warranty I will be doing all my servicing myself. I don’t trust dealers to service what they say they have serviced. I took my R1 for a service which included oil, filter’s, plugs, bearing checks, fuel pump pressure, sensor checks ...ect all for the princely sum of £680 and a stamp in my book. A few months later My bike started missing at low revs, it took me 4 hours to get the first spark plug out it was that rotten the nut had corroded away, I had to buy a metinch socket so it would grip the flats and not the shoulders of the sparkplug nut. I dread to think of all the crap that fell in the cylinder as I lifted the plug out. But I do know one thing the plugs had never been changed since the bike was registered. Since then I don’t trust dealers at all.
Not sure you could put a figure on it, there is a vast price difference using an independant garage rather than main dealer, i am lucky as they guys i use, their dealership before going bust was at one time a Ducati dealer, so one of the guys is a trained mechanic, lets be honest the only unique thing on them are the belts, and they have been the same over a number of years now. Only problem for a home mech is switching off the service indicator on newer models, i dont see any isues with doing the basic service, but would leave the belt change to a specialist dealer or independant and get a stamp in the book for that, alteast this would give some peace of mind to a buyer.
Everyone, just as a heads up I thought I might tell you some little bits of info that might help you justify main dealer pricing. Now before I start - i'm not comparing us to any other service centre / dealer / independent, i'm only going to talk about our dealership here in Glasgow. And i'm not trying to advertise our shop above any others because all authorised service points will have committed to spend similar amounts. And i'm not going to get into if certain dealers are good / bad / have made mistakes and so on - that's a different conversation. I'm only talking about pricing. Fact is - if you don't invest in the right tool - you can't do the right job! Period!!! You have to accept this when you sign up to be a dealer. FYI I've spent over £160,000 tooling up our workshop since we opened in 2002 to make sure we keep up to date with developments from Ducati (this figure doesn't include hand tools like spanners and screwdrivers etc). It really is an ongoing expense that you just wouldn't believe!! I (in fact all authorised service centres) just recently spent circa £5,000 on Panigale tools prior to being even allowed to stock the bike. We also just bought the latest (brilliant) Bluetooth Ducati diagnostic tool and a laptop to run the whole affair. From memory that was a few thousand quid in total. For just about every model release we have to buy a stock of tools so we can work on your pride and joy as intended by the designers. We had to do the same with the Desmosedici (£4.5K) the 1198 and so on. Also on an ongoing basis we are investing in sending technicians regularly to the factory for update training on new models (this ain't cheap when you consider flights / overtime / loss of earnings!!) These trips sometimes happen more than once a year. Furthermore our technicians (and all other staff too) are constantly getting online training courses devised by the factory to keep them right up to date with the very latest info. It is constant learning and update. Something else to consider - Two of my techs were "Honda Young Technician Of The Year" in the mid 70's and have been trained by almost every manufacturer on the planet in their 40 year experience. One of my techs at only 34 has been in the job since leaving school at 16 and the last of the four was top of his class at college before we plucked him out to train him with best practice a few years back. Why do I mention all this? Because retaining this kind of skilled workforce with such a depth of knowledge doesn't come cheap!! (I assume every dealer will tell you a similar story) But we need this many techs in the summer as we have that level of work and folks want their bikes serviced yesterday but guess what - the techs also need paid in winter and that's difficult when so many riders mothball their bike for 3 - 6 months. This winter slowdown time is factored into every workshop hourly rate in the UK. It has to be!! To support this effort, we have trained parts staff with access to over £400,000 of parts and accessories on the shelf that the technicians rely on to provide daily parts for every service. Of course I understand that owners don't exactly enjoy paying for a service but as long as you remember the above - it might help. This is why we don't normally recognise anything apart from 'proper dealer' service stamps and don't recommend owners go to unauthorised independent service agents. I can pretty much say across the board - they haven't spent and don't spend the money like i've described above (I totally understand why they don't - it's not their livelihood, why would they?). They don't get the regular updates, the recall information, the ongoing training or support, the list goes on! This is why unauthorised independent service agents are usually cheaper. They simply don't have the associated expense. Then lastly is the owner who likes "DIY" servicing - an enormously touchy subject that is a total minefield that i'm going to be very careful with!! What I will say is that I personally have seen potential death traps from riders who DIY their own bike. These guys didn't know any better that they were on the edge of literally killing themselves!! Being able to change a set of plugs and brake pads is a far cry from being able to properly service a bike. A true technician (ie not a fitter as they are now called) takes it very personally when they hear the expression from a customer that serviced their own bike so "they know it's been done right". That little gem belittles these guys chosen professions in the extreme. In our experience, 9 out of 10 of these have glaring problems that could prove enormously dangerous. When you think about what you do on your bike - is it really worth taking any kind of a chance to save a few quid? I'm heavily insured against that (another cost) - are you?? So to everyone reading this - sorry for the long post but it's worth thinking about all of this next time you get a service bill of any magnitude. Hope this helps Mart
Well said Martin, we all take our chances. I know that if bike goes to a dealer it will get so much more then what I can provide to it ever I mean ever. Saying that a bill of 700 GBP for what was to be a normal service does make my credit card go in to exile
Martin, What is the Ducati dealers view on decat and O2 mods? Lets assume that the noise level is acceptable to plod and the can is not marked "NOT FOR ROAD USE". My 22K miles 1200S is a rough old bird going through 3000RPM in any mode and has already been back in the shop (official Ducati dealer in the Southern Shires) without any improvement. Reading the copious compaints on this site and others are we or YOU allowed to improve the mixture / ignition timing to solve this? Also I agree that with the amount of technology on this bike I would always take it to a main authorised dealer....but I'll be keeping a good eye on them (being an engineer...rather than a fitter myself). As a tip to others I always ask a garage to bag all the bits removed (belts, spark plugs, oil filter etc) so I can check my markings on them. It also makes them think a little bit more attention to this customer. Main dealers both in the car and bike market get bad press from the few horror stories we all know. A personal one is a new fireblade sold with five years servicing on finance (my brother, not me) and it was returned book stamped, but with no work done, including the chain we loosened. Needless to say we got a full refund on the 60 months worth of "servicing". Thinking back, it's not the family owned (and passed down Farther-son/daughter) single site dealers that are the problem, but more the "fly by night" large multi-site crews. I think they loose the personal touch. Just my 2pence worth.
"Desmodromic valve actuation has been applied to top-of-the-range production Ducati motorcycles since 1968"
I just love the "google adsense" (sic) that decided to put a MASTERFIT £99 servicing advert under the comment :biggrin:
Great write up Martin and I agree with you - I really can't understand a person that will spend up to 15k on a fantastic piece of engineering and then bitch and whine about having to pay an extra £50 on a service he 'assumed' should cost a lot less?? I had a great chat to an ex mechanic at the dealer I use, Moto-Italia in Lincoln and he said to me the guys that are currently there are all experienced, highly trained technicians and you are more than welcome to actually have a wander around the workshops as they work on your bike. I did this and spoke to Steve as he changed my coolant, fitted my new panniers and did a few other bits and bobs. Did I feel like I got value for money, hell yeah - would I want anyone else other than a ducati trained technician working on my bike - no fucking chance!
Only ever used one Ducati service centre for my bikes and he always hands the parts changed back, there was no need to ask for them. As you say it's a good thing but I wouldn't expect to ask them to keep them I expect it done
Check some of these old service receipts for my old 748, a grand ten years ago...in many respects weve never had it so good! 21.06.2003 21635 Bob Hill Motorcycles (Ducati)- (£570.01) 20.11.2003 24298 Bob Hill Motorcycles (Ducati)- (£1044.76) 20.02.2004 Piston Ring/chain Southern Cross motorcycles (£1518.21) 15.06.2004 24901 Souther Cross motorcycles (£309.53) 23.04.2004 Clutch and Salve Cyl Southern Cross (£203.09) 26.10.2007 26333 Ducati Coventry (£438.94) 05.08.2009 28542 Moto rapido (£446.87) i do appreciate the dealers have overheads, but £80 quid an hour equals £560 a day or £2800 per week, £145,000 in a year. So at those prices a few grand here and there on tooling seems easily recovered, especially as a few manufacturer recalls will help keep the techs busy, ie coolant recall in october! My local dealer advertises £55 plus vat per hour, seems very reasonable.
Martin, I've just read your post and it really does go a long way to explaining why you have to charge the rates you do. My only query would be why don't Ducati ( or any other manufacturer ) pay more towards tooling costs etc? Anything that helped reduce these rates, therefore allowing more folk to use the dealer would surely result in more bikes with full dealer stamped service history. Is it not one of those vicious circles, the higher the cost for services etc the less people will visit. If the rates were cheaper the more would come in. I know it's very difficult for you as the middle man and wish I could come up with a solution.
I'm sure all us business types would love our workforce to be on chargable work 100% of the time :biggrin: If mine were I'd been on the SunSeeker website, not the Ducati forum. I suspect that less than 80% of the day is chargable. 3-4 chargable days per week, if you'll lucky. 45 chargable weeks per year (two weeks of bank holidays, and most people get 4-5 weeks paid leave per year). 8hours x 80% x 4 days x 45 weeks = 1152 hours per year (if you were busy), so that's £92,160. A good engineer has got to be on £30K, you can double that for other direct employee costs, so £32K for everything else ain't that much. For the record the maths above is widely used in business.
Thats me told ! Of course i wouldnt expect them to be 100 percent chargeable but it shows potential earnings, yes realistically the figures are less, i would say an experienced tech would be on more than 30k, but would question the 30k on other costs. Most dealerships have a few technicians and some will earn a lot less than 30k but be charged at the standard flat rate. at the end of the day taking overheads into question they must be making a very healthy profit at those figures, not got a problem with it but they are expensive as are bmw dealers.
It sounds like your dealer has already explained to you that most of the time we can only reset parameters on the mixture thanks to lambda sensors etc. I would have to put you onto one of our techs for the full detailed explanation. However, if you fit the full Termi system I believe there is more we can adjust. If you don't want to go down that route we have had a lot of success with the Leo Vince decat that has the facility to fool the exhaust motor into thinking there is still a noise valve there. (Otherwise you get an error on the dash) This really aids fuelling and gives a lovely sound too. I've heard stories like the one about the Fireblade on many occasions. It's always grim to hear and is clearly the route of the distrust I often encounter from new clients.
This is the million dollar question!! I assume the manufacturers would say that they cannot afford to pay for the global number of dealers tools. I can tell you that whenever we buy tools, both DUK and DMH make a profit margin on that purchase. It's just another one of the ways that the factory make money from us. I don't particularly agree or like it but I don't begrudge it. Again, it's just the nature of the beast. I know that if I had a factory such as theirs, I would try to do the same. But in truth the price for hourly rates or servicing is not based solely on tool costs. There are so many factors that come together for dealers to establish a cost for each job. Heating, lighting, rent, rates, blah, blah, blah - you know the drill.
