the Price of Scooter Repair

The service was a wheel bearing replacement at a motorcycle repair shop. The shop offers various repair and tuning services for all brands of motorcycles. Prices vary depending on parts, but labor costs $65 per hour with a half hour minimum and is billed by the minute thereafter. The price quoted included the cost of a wheel bearing and an hour and a half of service time.

My scooter broke down while I was at the university. A guy helped me push it to a garage he knew. In spite of advertising the ability to repair "all brands" of motorcycles, they had no experience with the idiosyncrasies of the Vespa drive train. If they had, they would probably have just replaced the engine/transaxle/rear wheel unit instead of getting the thing disassembled to the point where they were calling all over town to see if someone had an English translation of the service manual with the page that showed the way a particular part of the transmission went together, which was unfortunately missing from their copy.

It wasn't that bad, though. Once I found out things had gone pear-shaped, I spent the afternoon watching the pretty girls at the coffee shop around the corner and only had to pay for the parts I broke and time they spent fixing the scooter, not the time and parts they used to fix their screw-up. They even bought my coffee and danish.

First, don't buy old Italian motorized transport of any kind unless you plan to look at it more than ride or drive it. Second, don't let an inexperienced mechanic near it if you do buy one. Delicate and fussy on the road makes for delicate and fussy in the service bay. Also, a clean shop doesn't necessarily mean a competent mechanic.