Cost of wiper replacement

Never forget getting my car serviced at the beginning of summer and Automasters changed my wipers and wanted to charge me $50.00 for doing so, and at the beginning of summer. how stupid do they think customers are. At that time you could buy cheap /reliable ones in Kmart. refused to pay for them and requested they put the old ones back on. They also tried to charge me for four spark plugs on a three cylinder vehicle. Although nowadays the cost of wipers in the cheap car stores aren’t that cheap.

I work for an Autobarn franchise and when possible change the wiper blades for customers as part of our customer service. Unfortunately these days a lot of the newer cars have the “beam/blade” wiper assemblies. Some like Subaru and Honda you can just change the rubber however the majority these days require the complete blade assembly to be changed at an average cost of $36 each. Some of the german manufacturers force you to go back to the dealerships because they have modified the hook on the end of the wiper arm so you cant fit aftermarket blades. It is a real ripeoff.

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Yes, I just came across that with the newer Holden Colorados, you can’t replace the inserts only, you have the replace the whole arm which just seems crazy!
Apart from the cost it just seems wasteful and not very environmentally friendly!

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Just had a service at VW on our golf and they telephoned to say we needed wipers replacing @ $70 we politely refused.

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Typical of all dealers not just vw.

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My husband bought fairly expensive windscreen wipers for his jeep,a few weeks later put it in for a service ,on picking it up he realised they had bee replaced for cheap ones ,told owner who said oh sorry I’ll see if they are still there. They were - Shredded!! And yes was still charged for them.

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I test my wipers when I plan on driving somewhere there is rain … they rarely need changing, though after a while the sun welds them to the windshield … I reckon in the town I live in I would drive in the rain maybe once a year …

slightly misleading to say they are $10 today referring years ago

they were $10 years ago, currently at super cheap repco etc they start at $15 ea

very rarely you can get refills for $10 however they only fit a very very small percentage cars,
typically now we need Wiper Blade - Complete kit and two of them

been happening long time.
my mazda and toyota are 10 year old, they both needed replace the whole thing.

the Toyota not technically, however they used a non standard thinkness that you could not buy from third parties only toyota :frowning: .
so just replaced the arms anyway


No, they still start around $10 today
. It wasn’t misleading.

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Purchased new insert for our 14 year old Toyota at Repco. Including the rear window blade it was under $30 for the better quality blades including the backing strip. Noted that while we have RACQ membership and can get a standard discount on the usual RRP, the store sold them at a much better trade price. And yes there are still $10 options in the discount parts stores, mostly just the rubber blade insert which is fine for older cars with a metal backing strip you can reuse.

We took the blade holders off the car and to the counter to be sure the replacements fitted correctly. They fitted the inserts there and then.

Great service from Nambour and a brick bat for RACQ!

p.s. Re new car margins - My ex work had a deal with a particular German Car make to sell new cars of the marque to staff at fleet discounted prices.The savings were massive when compared to the margins mentioned by others previously in this thread/topic. Up to a 20% discount. There is much more to margins than we are ever likely to see revealed. Measuring a margin against turn over is too simplistic. As others have already said you would put money in the bank before going into selling cars if the genuine profit margins were so low. So a margin on turn over is really just a “fake profit Margin”. Where’s Donald?

I don’t know how to explain either how a $2 wiper blade gets to be worth $30, but someone (decades past) once worked out how much a car would cost if you purchased it in all spare parts. It was of the order of ten times from memory. Google did not help here it is that old? However in the 1950’s/60’s you could buy some cars as a kit of parts and put them together at home for a little less than assembled. Lotus is probably the most famous of the makers doing so at that time. Many of the parts used came from the every day production lines of other cars (effectively as spare parts would). They were still cheap enough to make the business profitable and successful. Perhaps not so easy today, although you could save a lot in cost and weight (Pure Lotus) by not having any wipers at all?

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