I had reason recently to claim against a third party warranty. My car is a SAAB 9-3 XWD 2010. I took my car into my local garage for assessment. They diagnosed problem as a failing offside front wheel bearing.

The warranty company approved the claim. However they advised the garage where to buy the bearing and the cost. Furthermore the specified time for the job was quoted as 0.7hour. I was advised that this information is taken from Autodata.

The garage completed the job, however I was advised that the time taken was 2.5 hours. I therefore had to pay the difference i.e. 1.8 hours. There should not have been any unforeseen problems removing the bearing as the same garage replaced all my brake discs a month ago.

I am not familiar with the autodata guidance information but was wondering how realistic is this data given the fact that my local garage has charged almost 4 times the allocated time to complete the job?