The back room often has comments about dealers in the UK. In case anyone's interested, here's my recent experience of a Ford main dealer near Chicago.
I had the 30,000 mile service on my Taurus (sort of a Ford Mondeo/Sierra type of vehicle for anyone who's never been here)
I got to work and they phoned me with some stuff which 'needed doing'....
Loose suspension ball joint $362
That would also need wheel alignment $125
Pollen filter $49
Dirty coolant $118
Brakes very low $230
so far I am thinking hmm... maybe that does need doing (except the pollen filter - for $49 I don't mind ingesting a bit of pollen!)
Then "wipers are squeaky - $29". That kind of made me wonder about the other items!
Anyway the transmission fluid, oil change, fuel and air filter change came to $275 inclusive.
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$125 for alignment - must be 4 wheel or suspension geometry alignment otherwise a rip-off.
$118 - "Dirty coolant" - mmm, 1/2 hr labour plus coolant costs (£15 in uk?)
Otherwise prices not unusual from a UK Ford Dealer.
Why is the coolant dirty? In the UK it is a long life coolant that should last 10 years.
Where is the dirt coming from? If it is Oil or rust, then maybe point to bigger problems.
If you don't change the pollen filter, the air flow in the car will be reduced. When I checked mine, it was full of diesel soot, dead insects, leaves and dust rather than pollen!
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$125 for alignment - must be 4 wheel or suspension geometry alignment otherwise a rip-off.
My thoughts exactly! This is just a FWD car
$118 - "Dirty coolant" - mmm 1/2 hr labour plus coolant costs (£15 in uk?)
It looks fine to me... I agree, if it was dirty it would be a sign of some serious trouble!
If you don't change the pollen filter the air flow in the car will be reduced. When I checked mine it was full of diesel soot dead insects leaves and dust rather than pollen!
Interesting... probably be able to buy one and fit it in 5 minutes myself anyway
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Brakes very low $230
That's a bit non-specific - what are they going to do, top them up :-)
In the UK we keep being told it's common practice for the dealer to call and say the front pads (and often disks - rotors in the US - need replacing. I was all set for this when I took wifey's Honda Jazz (Fit) in recently, but they didn't tell me until I picked the car up. So now I'm half annoyed that I'll have to go back and get them done in a separate visit!
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My friend is the gneral manager at a ford dealership in the US. Standars practice is to always try and and get extra work done if at posssible. The tech gets a bonus for extra work the service manager gets a cut and the dealer too.
Its the biggest money maker for dealers of domestics there. If you don't sell extra work you get fired simple as that.
Brakes are a common item as people tend to always get that kind of work done.
Maybe its the same here ii don't know, I rarely go to main dealers.
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My friend is the gneral manager at a ford dealership in the US. Standars practice is to always try and and get extra work done if at posssible. The tech gets a bonus for extra work the service manager gets a cut and the dealer too.
Pretty much exactly the same as the UK. In fact I guess that UK followed US practise (as usual..).
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If you don't sell extra work you get fired simple as that.
If I was aware that a company had behaved like that nothing would induce me to give it my custom.
There has been a lot of griping about main dealers. This is one of the reasons why.
The single-minded obsession with profit to the exclusion of all other motivation is characteristic of capitalism and of certain living species (substituting 'food' for profit) like sharks and cockroaches.
Frankly I would rather buy cars from (and have them serviced by) organisations run for more or less human reasons by humans. Call me eccentric but there it is.
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Lud that?s not eccentric that?s capitalism!
If people decide to buy like you, then the rip off dealers go out of business and the honest guys do well, that?s the free market acting
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