1K Car Servicing at Kah Motor

One of the hassles of car ownership is having to get the car serviced at regular intervals. The 1km servicing for my new Honda Stream came up, and so I spent pretty much of my morning today at Kah Motor’s Leng Kee service centre. There are a bunch of other locations to choose from, but people seem to recommend going to Leng Kee. It’s basically the same place as the showroom.

I was early for my 8:30am appointment. It was already at queue number 16. It took about 5 to 10 minutes for a service advisor to attend to me. Not too long a wait. At Borneo Motors, where I serviced by previous Altis, the waiting time was similar. Surprisingly, my 1K km service at Kah Motor was estimated to take 2 to 2.5 hrs. But it actually took almost 3 hrs. Borneo Motors typically gets the simple straight forward servicing of my Altis within 1 hrs. Borneo Motors calls this “Service Express”. It turns out that Kah Motor does have a priority service offering, also guaranteeing 1 hr completion. They charge $10 more though. I think they should just do it within 1 hr for everyone, just like what Borneo Motors does.

The waiting area is part of the showroom. So you can imagine it is big and spacious. Just like Borneo Motors, Kah Motor provides a cappuccino machine and some biscuits. I wish there were newspapers and magazines available. While they had Internet-connected PCs, there wasn’t wireless access available. I brought my notebook to get some work done, and I had to connect up to the Internet using my own 3G connection. (It seems like 3G will almost be the most convenient method to get access to the Internet.)

The 1K km servicing came up to $139.35 ($149.10 after GST). This includes about $100.93 for the Shell Helix Ultra motor oil. I understand that you can get the same oil for about $59 from NTUC. You can bring your own motor oil, Kah Motor will omit the cost for the motor oil. This will be a savings of about $40.

I took up the $40 option to fill my tires with nitrogen gas. I’ve filled nitrogen gas before, so it’s not something new to me. You can read about its advantages from my previous post. Kah Motor also tried to sell their body protection package. I declined as I had already done up my own.

Overall, I tend to prefer my servicing experience at Borneo Motors in Ulu Pandan, where I get to see the service technicians working on my car. It may be fun to look at new cars in Kah Motor showroom for now, but I’m sure the second time onwards it gets less interesting.