I've never once been dissastisfied with the standard of service or thought that the dealer may have been dishonest with me
It is possible to be swindled by someone whilst trusting and liking them. It's called a confidence trick.
Do you know your own car well enough to know when they are taking you for a ta ta? It's inconceivable that you haven't been jizzed in 44 years.
The main dealer I have used for three years has been unfailingly helpful, and has done a couple of jobs on warranty that I might have expected to pay for. You could proverbially eat your dinner off the floor.
It hasn't stopped them telling me I needed pads at every service from 25,000 miles (declined) and and pads+discs at 50,000. For the 62500 service I took it to an indie friend, with instructions to do anything that needs doing. He assures me that the original pads and discs are still fine.
You are quite right, the people who work there are for the most part ordinary decent folk. But if they are in fear of being 'performance managed' because they haven't sold enough parts and workshop time, then they'll make sure they do it.
Charles Handy was on the wireless late Sunday night. He observed that when you run a business totally focused on profit targets, people get up to all sorts of undesirable behaviour (banks?)
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Do you know your own car well enough to know when they are taking you for a ta ta? It's inconceivable that you haven't been jizzed in 44 years.
My working lifetime in automotive R&D helps me to correctly assess such matters.
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>>My working lifetime in automotive R&D helps me to correctly assess such matters.
Perhaps your expert staus has protected you, or you've chosen your dealers well;-)
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Main dealers are like any other business in any other sector. There are some honest, some dishonest, and some in between. I think it is naive in the extreme to assume that the "official" manufacturer backing provides any form of guarantee of good work or value for money, in the same way that it is crazy to assume they are all con artists. The reality is a mix of the two.
Driving company cars for a while was an eye opener (roughly 350,000 main dealer serviced/repaired miles over 10 years in 5 different cars of four makes). I am mechanically savvy, but the company car isn't mine, I don't pay the bills, and as long as it comes back to me safe to drive, I couldn't care less what they do to it, and whether it needs doing or not. However, I have seen brake pads and discs replaced at service, just a week after I changed a tyre and noted the existing ones still looked almost new. I was told running a car out of fuel had damaged its ECU and was going to be over a grand to repair (they backed down on this). I had an alternator mount break which they denied doing despite it happening a day after a belt change and despite them being the only people to have ever worked on the car from new - the list is endless.
On the other side of that, I've also had straightforward servicing and repairs carried out competently as asked, and the car returned clean and feeling great. I've had carefully worded warranty claims put through to ensure the work wouldn't cost me etc etc. It is a mixed bag. One Ford dealer I used was dreadful, the other, 5 miles down the road and part of the same group was fine. The Renault dealer I used when we had our Scenic was one of the most genuinely caring, helpful and honest business establishments I have dealt with anywhere in my entire life. Note the past tense - they went bust earlier this year.
I tend to think L'escargot has had a degree of luck in his choice of dealer. I would challenge him to use a certain Peugeot dealership I used to be saddled with and think main dealers are all above board and competent.
Edited by DP on 07/07/2009 at 10:15
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Franchised dealers are owned, run, and staffed, by ordinary people who will have similar moral standards to most Backroomers. >>
Therein lies the problem! Moral values of "ordinary people" in the UK have declined beyond comprehension of today's pensioners.
Consumers taking things without paying (such as illegal downloads from the internet), and ripping business off (look up bargain finder sites where the contributors post details of pricing error "bargains" they have found) are just two small examples of this new morality. Similarly, you can find hundreds of examples of businesses ripping off consumers - whether in motoring, financial services, estate agents, builders, gas and electricity "engineers", "lawyers", politicians, and it is even spreading to the medical profession where some GP surgeries are now run to maximise the income for the partners.
I know I have been ripped off at MOTs in the last three years at three new garages I have tried - following the closure of my original trustworthy centre after the owner retired. For one reason or another, I have not felt it worth reporting the garages to VOSA although I know I should have in the interests of fellow motorists.
It has left a bitter taste and a determination never to give business to those three garages. My search for a trustworthy MOT centre will resume at the next renewal time.
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>>Franchised dealers are owned, run, and staffed, by ordinary people who will have similar moral standards to most Backroomers<<
As someone who has worked behind the scenes at a main dealer, all I can say is, ignorance must be bliss!
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Had my old MOT'd at a large Southern dealer. They asked me to bring it back a week later for a recall item, and only then noticed that the front tyres were down to 1.6mm, because I was expecting them to pick them up and replace them at the MOT.
On the bright side, I did get a substantial discount on two new tyres after I pointed this out to them.
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My search for a trustworthy MOT centre will resume at the next renewal time.
We've discussed this before; use a council run one, or perhaps one from a big organisation like BT etc if they have a local workshop.
They will test to a high standard though.
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I've never once been dissastisfied with the standard of service or thought that the dealer >> may have been dishonest with me ~ and I'm known for being picky.
I'm an electrical engineer and have worked in the automotive industry too and all I can say is that you've led a charmed life. It's rare that I've left a dealership and not had to sit in my car for a few minutes to calm down, and at the same time think up a plot of how I'm going to return and firebomb the dealership.
And that's happened even with company lease cars where the lease company is paying the bill!!
It's happened on both my daughters' cars in the last year or so, and I always leave my Mercedes dealership feeling deflated, to say the least (and that's nothing to do with money, the car is on a service contract). Only our Honda dealer leaves me consistently happyish, but even they resist my attempts to minimise the car's service costs.
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..As someone who has worked behind the scenes at a main dealer, all I can say is, ignorance must be bliss!...
Just to put the other side of the coin, I worked for a Renault dealer in London in the 1980s.
The instructions from management were clear, everyone was to be treated properly, and they were.
I thought the demands of some customers were 'entertained' to greater degree than they should have been.
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>>I've never once been dissastisfied with the standard of service....~ and I'm known for being picky.
Is this the same L'escargot who quite recently was to be found sucking the excess oil out of his sump with a length of tube?
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"My search for a trustworthy MOT centre will resume at the next renewal time."
Jbif,
Our Local Authority Transport Department do `private` Mot`s
There`s a viewing area next to the work being carried out and you can talk with the testers and see it all being done.
I usually get into interesting `car` conversations with Taxi drivers waiting...
Best of all it opens at 7.30 am and runs on precise appointments from that point. No waiting around.
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"Is this the same L'escargot who quite recently was to be found sucking the excess oil out of his sump with a length of tube?"
Wasn`t there the situation of the Main dealer not mentioning rust on the sump too a year or so back, until it needed replacing? When earlier notice could have resulted in preventative action - and not a `ker- ching` for the dealerships cash register?
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Trust the motor trade, are you all mad? 40 odd years of motoring have taught me that knowledge beats bull excrement at dealers. I have found a good indy though.
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A fair turnout so far on honesty - or not!
But can we switch to `assessing` at this point in my thread? How WOULD you feel about having a recorded DVD of the service and your interactions?
What would you pay to be handed that DVD of the initial `talk` with reception and then of the car in the bay - parts taken off being held up to the on the wall camera - covering that particular bay.
A record on DVD`s of services would build up ....total transparency of the whole process.
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This thread highlights to me why I buy used cars and spend time and effort fixing them myself even if it means buying specialist tools to do so.
Interesting thread, nice idea but in this world of liability would it be even contemplated?
Steve.
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>>..a recorded DVD of the service and your interactions?>>
A comforting thought, but somewhat impractical.
Apart from the logistics and costs of such an operation, who is going to be responsible for the production of the DVDs, including burning them to disks?
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>>I've never once been dissastisfied with the standard of service.... >> ~ and I'm known for being picky. Is this the same L'escargot who quite recently was to be found sucking the excess oil out of his sump with a length of tube?
I wasn't dissatisfied with that occurrence. As I explained, it was such a minor inconvenience that I didn't consider it to be worth either the time or cost of going back to complain. I'm aware that the time that would be needed for the technician to put in less than the specified amount, allow the oil to settle to enable a reading to be taken on the dipstick, and then top up as required would be prohibitive. I believe in thinking calmly and logically about all matters, instead of getting on my high horse and complaining at the drop of a hat.
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I've never once been dissastisfied with thestandard of service or thought that the dealer may have been dishonest with me ~ and I'm known for being picky. I can't believe it's just because I've been lucky in my choice of dealer.
No, you must have just been very very lucky !
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