Of course Mikey, good independents are always going to be busy, of which you are clearly one

Thank you everyone for your replies. In the end, I got the MD down to £1,700 - It is quite a labour intensive job, which makes up most of the cost. Apparently the parts by comparison cost peanuts!

The AA pay the first £500 under their parts and labour recovery insurance, (which I highly recommend), so it's going to cost me £1,200. The technician carrying out the work has 35 years Land Rover service, so all in all, I'm quite happy with the outcome. Car will be ready to collect early next week

Think of it this way, every tech is at work for 8 hours a day, so with ten tech's that's 80 hours a day that can be booked. That's how the diary works, Dealer or Indy. Except - diag. jobs are booked at an initial hour, that may turn into another two or three dependent upon what is found in the first hour, so that's a diag/master tech out of the frame for the initial hour on another two jobs.... Brake pipes are a maint. tech job, so will be quoted and booked worst case as it's a known quantity - especially if it's already been in for a health check or identified on service etc.

It's always better from our PoV to quote worst case where we can and reduce down, at least that way you know the customer is prepared to pay the max. price quoted without pis$ing and moaning due to our lack of ability to overcome physics & chemistry....

That's how it *should* work

But your only 1 broken bolt way from a 3 day ordeal, and then hours and hours behind

True, the more techs & lifts you have, the less impact it has though. We're currently 3 down, but it does give us spare lifts!