Audi is piloting menu pricing and a single national labour rate across 130 of its authorised repairers to help boost fleet customers.

Lloyds TSB Autolease and Zenith Vehicle Contracts are the first to sign up until December 31, 2008.

After this date Audi plans to extend the scheme to the rest of the contract hire industry.

Andrew Wady, national contract hire and leasing manager at Audi UK, admitted some dealers would be affected by the single national labour rate.

He said: “Dealers will be affected to different degrees, but the increased volume of fleet work that will be coming in will offset any dealers that are operating in higher cost areas.”

Audi met with its national dealer steering group before going ahead with the pilot scheme.

Out of Audi’s 137 authorised repairers, 130 agreed to pilot the scheme.

Wady said: “We’ll be assessing how successfully the pilot is going from now until the end of the year.

“If we find the single labour rate isn’t working for our dealers, we can revise what we’re doing.

“It could be the case that we might introduce four regional rates instead.

“The single rate was purely just for transparency and to make it easier for the leasing companies.

“However, it’s a consultative process and we’ll be working with dealers throughout the pilot.”

Audi dealers will be using Epyx’s 1Link e-commerce technology for the menu pricing, which is based on service times and the single labour rate.

Wady believes the pilot will improved accuracy for the fleets with forecasting service and maintenance budgets.