Cost of changing a bulb ???

I recently got my car serviced from a Toyota dealer, who also replaced the fuel gauge lamp during the service and charged me $3.00 for the bulb and $87.00 for Labor

is it a rip-off ?? do you guys think that is a normal charge for replacing a bulb.

Please share your experience/views.

Thanks

Al

Hey alvin,

In my experience, changing dash bulbs in modern cars has never been an easy task. If you have to start taking apart the dash, you're looking at spending at least an hour or more. Sometimes, much more.

Cheers,

Regular Joe

Sounds like you were charged the flat hourly rate for shop labor.

I don't have a Corolla manual handy, so I'm not sure how long it would take or how tough it is to change the fuel gauge bulb. I know on my Stratus, it's about a 20 minute job and fairly easy to do.

Guest cool_dj

Been there done that: opened the dash board, changed a bulb, put back eveything.

I'm not a mechanic and it took me maybe 20 minutes, taking into account I had to figure out the screws to unscrew, which your mechanix should know already.

My opinion: rip-off.

don't feel too bad,

I once had a nissan sentra(much less reliable

than toyota or honda)

where the Daylight Running Light module

was the culprit, which I did not know anything about:

$65.00 inspection, $aprox 70.00 for labor, $95

canadian $$ for the module.

took them 5 mins(although

they kept the car parked for 1 hr to make

it look difficutl), it would take me 5 mins too if

I had known where it was.

Don't know why these modules are

so marked up. You can get electronic parts

individually for pennies.

Damn!! That's a rip-off!!

I did that myself, and like Cool-DJ said: "I'm not a mechanic, and only took me 20 minutes"

With just $2.99 and a screwdriver I solved the problem.