Bought a car, Shakensho expires end Jan ’24, took it to the main dealer and asked for the costs of them to obtaining the shakensho for me.
I understand the Shaken for my 3 year old car will be about 40,000 (Insurance 18k, inspection 2k, weight tax 20k). I was intending to drive down to the transport bureau and try and get it myself (I managed to register it myself last month), but thought I would ask.
The dealer asked for 114,000 to provide this facility (on top of the 40k mandatory amount above). Asked to break it down they gave me a piece of paper that says:
* 2 years legal inspection 41,250
* CBS Vehicle inspection 3,300
* Automobile inspection test 33,000
* Automobile inspection service charge 19,800
* Steam cleaning (bottom) 16,500
.. plus any parts or maintenance that the inspection throws up that it needs (of course).
Now as much as I’ve always wanted a steam cleaned bottom, that’s a lot of use of the word “inspection”. When I asked what the differences are between the inspections, they just read the words out again. I asked if it’s the service and they said no, it’s the inspection.
I’m pretty sure I’m getting lost in translation and use of certain words. Can anyone translate this for me please ?
12 comments
It’s very easy to do yourself and in your case as the car is fairly new there shouldn’t be any issues as I take it you have gone through all the regular maintenance/service, right? One tip is to quickly stop at one of the small shops around the inspection site and do a headlight check as these seem to often get slightly off and it only takes a quick test to check and fix cheaply.
We did it just before the summer with our 3 year old Volvo and it was super easy to do ourselves everything, got through early in the morning so hardly any waiting
All the “inspections” outside of the legally required ones for Â¥4man are the dealership checking your car for any faults, things that might be of concern etc. Id assume theyre checking the same things they look for during the actual shaken to make sure your car will pass on the first try
Not sure what they’re checking exactly tho since I did my shaken by myself
what piece of paper?
Basically you are paying the dealer a heap of cash for stuff you could do yourself.
The steam clean may or may not be necessary but they can pay a guy 1400 yen an hour to do the job that takes 10 minutes and charge you 10X his hourly wage.
Dealers are a rip off. Find a local busy car shop and use them if you can’t do it yourself. BUT if you do it yourself and the car is a bit of a dog, the inspection crew can be a pain in the arse to deal with. (I’d recommend the locally run shop)
Is the paper in Japanese or English? It’ll probably be clearer if you provided the image copy.
In any case, I’m pretty sure they’re charging you for the 24ヶ月点検 (2 year inspection) which is like a maintenance checklist (and also non mandatory).
Says “3 Comments” above yet there are none. Why is this?
it is as you understand, the “2 years legal inspection 41,250” is the shaken/tax/insurance and is what you would pay at the inspection center.
everything else is just to the dealer and seems rather high.
I do also recommend the headlight check, one car I took in did fail the headlight test and I went to a nearby place and had the headlights aligned for 1000y and he gave us a couple mini cokes too but i had to take the car back to the center for a headlight test.
There maybe. a ‘test’ shop where you can get a quick check for about 10,000 yen before you take it to get it tested… see if your lights are ok .etc.. there is one in the Kobe center … can you write Kanji ? If not you may want to pick up the documents first and have someone help ..
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> 2 years legal inspection 41,250
Actual cost of shaken.
> CBS Vehicle inspection 3,300
Actual cost of third party inspection.
> Automobile inspection test 33,000
Dealer markup.
> Automobile inspection service charge 19,800
Another dealer markup, because fuck you.
> Steam cleaning (bottom) 16,500
An unnecessary and expensive service because fuck you, and who needs lube?
> .. plus any parts or maintenance that the inspection throws up that it needs (of course).
They’ll lie to you about what parts need replacing, because hey, they found the lube, hope you don’t mind that a bunch of sand got into it.
Take it to Autobacs or Yellow Hat, you can probably negotiate 70k-ish, which is reasonable given that there’s a few man-hours involved.
Or do it yourself – you can get a pre-test at a shop near your shaken facility for 3,000 or so (the CBS item on your estimate)
>I’m pretty sure I’m getting lost in translation and use of certain words. Can anyone translate this for me please ?
There should be 2 pages for the inspection. On page 1 is the required to pass stuff. On page 2 is the we recommend you get this done. To put this in perspective the last time I took my wife’s car in their suggest you do had 5000 yen to refill the windshield wiper reservoirs and 12000 yen to replace the windshield wiper blades. The gallon jug which cost me all of 700yen plus 2 replaced windshield wiper blades were sitting in the passengers seat. All total they wanted another 250,000.
What the car needed to pass inspection – one of the lights on the rear license plate bracket had burned out and the headlamp covers were oxidized. Which cost me a total of about 500 yen since i changed the bulb myself and rubbed the covers down with toothpaste on a paper towel before the actual shaken. With the cost of the shaken and dealer costs/markups it was about 70,000.
I bet he hated that you asked for a breakdown of the price. I did it myself no problem. Lots of walking but I had the Gaijin privilege of getting through at lunch time.
Do not do it at the dealer. It’s a scam. You absolutely and totally can, and should do it yourself. The process is VERY well documented at the rikuji (the DMV equivalent) and they will literally point you to the next window to stamp and write things.
Now that I’ve calmed down:
1) Dealers will ALWAYS be FAR more strict on shaken, because their livelihood depends on it, and they are basically authorised to issue the shakensho on the spot. As a result, they are so unbelievably anal about it, that it makes your blood boil. They will flag things that the rikuji may miss, and they will proactively change things that are completely unnecessary for the shaken. Example – brakes, oil filters, etc etc etc. None of this is _required_ for a shaken – if your car can brake, it will pass, because they do not measure the disc thickness, or the pad thickness. They just check if it works.
2) I said the process is simple, but it does take a while. You will be directed to buy/renew the jibaiseki insurance (liability), you will also pay the vehicle tax, make sure you have cash for everything because I think they’ve started moving to cashless, but might not be in every prefecture yet. You will eventually get a stamp sheet that you will hand to the person as you drive through the testing area; you WILL get it wrong the first time, but try to search for some videos or at least watch the guy ahead of you do it. It’s not rocket science, but it does take a bit of effort to do it right – and I hope you speak Japanese, as otherwise you’ll probably be somewhat lost.
3) Please please do the basic check yourself first. Do your lights work? Do your brakes work? Are you leaking anything anywhere? Those are the things that will fail you. If you have an older car, yes, ripped / torn pieces will possibly create an issue, but a 20 year old car that is clean and drives fine will absoultely pass just fine.
All in all, do not surrender to the dealer shaken scam. You can do it!
Btw, now that I see you have a BMW, “CBS” means their engine scanner E-Sys scantool thing that will list all the faults that your car have thrown (and immediately recommend you extensive repairs to remove those faults, heh). The “steam cleaning” one is gold, though. I love that.