This is going to be a long post!
Without getting in to numbers here is the deal about car ownership. There is regular servicing cost and then there are things going wrong with parts, accidents, etc.
The regular servicing cost will be more or less the same across the range. Even if there is 20-30% difference, it is not going to make any difference in absolute cost of service. Is there a lot of difference between avg service cost per year of Rs 25,000 vs Rs 50,000 for a car that costs Rs.50L+? Yeah one is cheaper but you are paying Rs.1.25L extra for a 5-year period. Not a big deal in my opinion. So I would leave out the regular servicing costs altogether when you consider cost of ownership. Of course, assuming that the dealer is not trying to charge you for services that are not required (wheel alignment, scanning, polishing, premature replacement of consumables, etc.)
The so-called pre-paid service packages are neither good nor bad. Having used them, I wouldn't really bother with them next time. The pre-paid packages will protect you from dealer trying to charge you for jobs that are not required because he can only carry out recommended/approved jobs on your car. If you compare the bills of a BMW car with BSI and without you will be able to see what I mean. The bills are really cheap with BSI - they clean and replace the filters!! And BSI doesn't include wheel-alignment, car-washing and bunch of other things. The only good thing about BSI is it covers the longest period (5 yrs) compared to the competition. So will a service pkg save you money? Yes but only by cutting down the jobs required which can be a bad thing if you intend to keep the car for longer than 5 yrs. So that is about the regular servicing. My point is that regular servicing doesn't influence cost of ownership that much with or without service package.
Then comes the unplanned costs - part failures and accidents. This is where things can really differ. Not having a proper warranty coverage or insurance coverage can be a disaster. We had to replace the transmission on our 5-series after an accident and BMW secure covered the entire 8L. Regular insurance doesn't cover engine+transmission failures as they are considered "consequential damage" (whatever it means) so these are the type of things that can really tilt the scales. The same logic can be applied for extended warranty. So cars that offer the maximum duration of warranty and comprehensive insurance will be the cheapest to maintain. BMW offers 5yrs of ext.warranty and others offer 4 years. As per the insurance, I guess you can buy Bajaj-drive-assure like products for up to 5 years of age.
Where does it leave us? It is not as simple as saying one is cheaper to own than the other based on the cost of oil + filter change. I feel regular servicing would be nearly the same for all these cars. A combination of reliability and extended warranty duration will keep your unplanned part failure costs to minimum. Safe driving and good insurance coverage will keep your accidental costs to minimum. In other words, the cars are comparable in service costs, ext.warranty (4 vs 5 yrs) and comprehensive insurance. What differentiates them: reliability and dealership.
Long post and an useless answer: "it depends" :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bluebeem Agree !
Recently went through the trouble of reading each line and paragraph of the BSI deals. The kind of coverage they give is simply amazing !
Over and above the regular "warranty extension" stuff on the parts in the BSI, they provide free roadside assistance to you if you're within a 100 km of any bmw showroom or within 100km of the cities they have listed If you have a Broken down car/fiat tire, they will send a flatbed truck for the car. In case of immobilization A taxi for you and your family and if needed - pay for stay at a nearby hotel for your entire family. All this will be free of charge ! http://www.bmw.in/in/en/owners/servi...e_advanced.pdf
Amazing stuff ! |
You are mixing BSI and BMW Secure. All that assistance stuff comes from BMW Secure and it is not really any different from what you get from a regular Bajaj Drive assure like packages. And it was a lousy deal that I experienced during my 5 series transmission job. They cover just 100Km taxi. They don't compensate you while the car is waiting for parts which as 90% of the time in most EU cars. And lot of such things.
BSI doesn't cover wheel alignment, wheel balancing, rotation, car wash, etc. Mercedes service package covers all this and more. It is the most comprehensive but unfortunately it is only for 3 years and it is tied to the dealer (not transferable across the dealers). With merc you can buy service pkg and warranty separately which is a good flexibility to have. With BMW you can't buy just ext.warranty which sucks because if you use you car sparingly you don't need service pkg.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bluebeem Hey Maky,
Can't give you a percentage as such. But I'll give you an example. Cousin bought a C class few years back. Mercedes promised that the services will cost 18-20k. His first service cost him 25k approx. and subsequently all services have cost him between 35-45k. When this was discussed with the management they maintained that the "service" still costs 18k, the rest of costs were "preventive" part replacements.
A BMW service will cost you between 18-20k and only the major service will cost you 55-60k which happens every 45-50000 Kms depending on your driving style.
The thing to keep in mind is that BMW is the only company that gives you the option of capping this expense at 2.57 lacs for 5 years. BMW is the only company that includes all your service costs also within their extended warranty program. Other brands will make you pay extra for warranty only, plus you'll have to pay for services separately. So with a BSI ultimate for 5 years/60000 Kms you have the guarantee that you will not spend anything more than 2.57 lacs on the car. I can most certainly guarantee that in 5 years you will end up spending that much on that car anyway. This is obviously the best case scenario where you've seen no shutdowns/breakdowns/faults for 5 years.
Take for example, somebody on the forum has started a thread wherein their BMW 520d transmission broke down after hittin a bump on the road. The cost of repair - 7 lacs! He paid 5k - presumably the cost of alignment and balancing. In a merc or Audi, you'd have to pay 7 lacs ! |
Any Bajaj dsrive-assure like insurance would have covered that transmission breakdown. BMW Secure is no special except that you don't have to deal with insurance directly. Only BSI "ultimate" gives ext.warranty, they have cheaper BSI packages. Also as explained in my prev post, prepaid service is neither good nor bad. Ext.warranty is the real useful part of BSI but you can get this only by paying steep price for BSI "ultimate".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Froyo My parents got a 520d this new year eve. Went to the dealer last week to replace engine oil. There's no first service as such because it's condition based service. The service adviser quoted Rs. 33k after reading the key fob. Which included changing engine oil and filter, A/C filter and wheel alignment and balancing. It was about Rs 8k for wheel alignment and Rs 8k for the A/C filter.
Honestly I don't believe wheel alignment was needed. In the west, it is generally done after 30,000 km or when the car pulls in one direction. But the SA was recommending it every 10k km. They also made a mistake of leaving the used A/C filters in the trunk. There wasn't much dust. I could feel a thin layer of soot like substance but it didn't really look like it reached the end of its life. Could've lasted at least another 5k km.
I may not be entirely right about the A/C micro filters but wheel alignment every 10k is excessive. I'm not sure how often do other brands recommend wheel alignment in India. Note that wheel alignment isn't included in any BSI package, neither is the A/C filter.
This doesn't include the cost of cleaning interiors and waxing/polishing that you need to get done regularly. |
This is what I was referring to in my post. Please compare the service bill of any BMW car covered with BSI and you would be amazed how much extra job work was done on your car in comparison.