I went to a large Main Dealer to have a minor electrical fault rectified. I was give a free safety check, which I had not requested and received a printed report saying that I needed £480 worth of work on my brakes and exhaust, and they had reserved a time for me to have the work done
Took the car into my small local Ford dealer yesterday without an appointment; car up on the lift, taken in to view the "Problems" and told nothing needed doing until the next service/MOT in October.
Given the keys back, no mention of any charge so I gave them £10 for the Coffee fund.
Is this typical or was I picked on as I may appear to be a gullible OAP?
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The bigger the dealer, the bigger the overheads, the more motivation to be 'creative' and keep the bookings tight.
I once took my Sierra in to one of those Autocentres for an exhaust section to be replaced. They did a free brake check at the same time and apparently it needed pads and discs urgently - 8 months later it passed its MOT no issues having done a further 7k.
It is typical of some places, it is down to the culture of targets set by management.
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>> It is typical of some places, it is down to the culture of targets set
>> by management.
Not new either. Over twenty years ago I took my BX into Unipart (now long gone) in Northampton for front tyres.
Tech tells me pads are worn, perhaps only a week or two life remaining. Ask him to show me.
I study pads intently for a few seconds and ask purpose of the still several mm deep groove in middle of pad.......
Silence, then some waffle about dispersing water.
Pads lasted another year.
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Difference of professional opinion? A main dealer might also be wary of stories of letting car out with dangerous faults if cards fell the other way.
Booking it in however is taking the mick.
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True but they couldn't pick up any grief over a car going our with faults which were not part of their brief for the day "Please fix my heated windscreen". It must have been my pebble lens glasses and pink hearing aids that fooled them into thinking i would fall for it!
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It is no different to your bank asking if you want a loan, mortgage, life or house insurance, or would like to invest in their management bonus pot. :-)
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>> True but they couldn't pick up any grief over a car going our with faults
>> which were not part of their brief for the day
Not from reasonable people like you and I. OTOH my mind's eye sees a Mail piece with owner (probably photogenic and female) posing with car. Headline reads Ford Dealer Let Me Drive Away With LETHAL Brakes'.
OTOOH they're just casting for work.
(NB those hands are not mutually exclusive)
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A lot of people slag off "main" dealers, but what exactly is a "main" dealer? The Ford dealer I go to is a family-owned franchised dealer with about a dozen employees and the service I get from them is superb.
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>> A lot of people slag off "main" dealers, but what exactly is a "main" dealer?
>> The Ford dealer I go to is a family-owned franchised dealer with about a dozen
>> employees and the service I get from them is superb.
>>
As is my KIA dealer.
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Agreed, a bit hard to define. In Bracknell a new Honda dealership has been set up. Formerly blank site, now a steel and glass building, 40 new cars in stock, nearly 100 2nd hand, salesmen in suits sitting at desks in the showroom, Office door labelled "Dealer Principal" Clearly Main.
My good local Ford dealer, small show room with about 5 new cars in it and a salesman who doubles up washing the cars, a cashier who also works the petrol pumps (no self-service), a foreman in an boiler suit and 4 good mechanics. A receptionist who takes the phone calls and issues the bills. I think is pretty much the same as the L'esc uses. The key words I think are "Family-Owned".
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The key words I think are "Family-Owned".
Yes, these gems bear no relation whatsoever to chain or multi make franchises.
Good result really for you Melders, if you'd even slightly considered using the large main dealer, their eagerness to create work and presumable assumption of a customers gullibility will have given you a good insight.
These small dealers with long service staff are worth finding in all makes.
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Not all main dealers are the same, even multi-dealer big franchises
My toyota went in for its annual service and MOT at inchcape yesterday. Phone call to say everything was fine. Advised that the front pads were getting a little low, but with my typical mileage they'd probably last until next year. CHarged exactly what they said it would be.
Last edited by: Tigger on Sat 16 Mar 13 at 13:09
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My impression is that the family owned businesses are quite common in rural areas with small to medium sized towns, particularly where I have spent a lot of my life (East of the A1, South of the Humber and North of Cambridge). If you live in a city or conurbation the garages are mainly large dealers and you have to hope the one for your make is a good one. A bit of a generalisation but you get my drift.
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>> My impression is that the family owned businesses are quite common in rural areas with
>> small to medium sized towns, particularly where I have spent a lot of my life
>> (East of the A1, South of the Humber and North of Cambridge). If you live
>> in a city or conurbation the garages are mainly large dealers and you have to
>> hope the one for your make is a good one. A bit of a generalisation
>> but you get my drift.
>>
Quite true Meldew, and a dealer in a rural area is heavily reliant on goodwill and repeat business from regular customers, there being little in the way of passing trade.
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I'm not sure how many exist now, many were culled years ago including the one a mile from here, but Ford used to have "main" and "retail" dealers which were typically the village ones you are talking about.
The retail dealers were supplied with cars, and parts I think, by the associated main dealer who kept part of the discount - so in theory the deal would never be quite as good from the retail as from the main dealer. Practice was sometimes different.
Beaumont Brothers in Meltham was a retail dealer when I lived in Huddersfield, and had a solid customer base. Still there I think.
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It's a racket, because most ordinary punters will always cough up for safety-related stuff.
To cut the dealers a little bit of slack, people do use up brakes at different rates. Half worn won't last to the next service with some people.
When my last CRV went in at 12,500 miles, I was told the pads were OK for now but would need doing at 25,000.
Age and decrepitation have clouded my memory, but that car certainly had no pads before 75,000 (I checked them before every service). By 75,000 it was my local independent who is also a personal friend - I remember discussing then but not whether we changed them. I don't think we did. So it had at most one set, probably none, in 95,000 miles, and the discs were unscored and little worn.
The fact that the independent always takes the wheels off and copper greases the caliper movement probably helps. In my company car days, on main dealer servicing, they all seemed to end up with seized calipers, that's never happened since.
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My wifes car has just been in for its MOT, via a Citroen main dealer. Failed on front coil spring snapped. Passed on brakes pressure test. However when they did their 'free visual checks' they showed me the brakes - 95% worn pads and the disks were barely 3mm thick.
Just goes to show that the MOT is NO guarantee of road worthiness. Needless to say that they did the brakes as well (fixed cost pads and disks for £199) and replaced 2 front drop links for free as they needed to take them off anyway.
My experience = excellent main dealer service that potentially could have saved my wife and daughters life.
And yes I probably should have checked myself (it was an emergency MOT - she thought it ran out in March but it was February) and the car had only done 2500 miles since the last MOT - done at a local family independent renouned for NOT adding extra work to their bills.......
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PeteW, thats quite scary and proves the point that MOTs are not an alternative to inspection or service.
Has anyone competent actually serviced the car in the last few years, those discs presumably and hopefully solid not vented (the mind boggles) didn't get down to 3mm overnight, what else needs immediate attention? has anyone removed the rear drums and had a poke nose?
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Car has now been completely checked over and everything else is sound. No excuse really but this was a distress purchase when my wifes old car was written off, bought quite cheaply through the trade. The fact it had been just serviced (according to the book and visual check of oil and filters), had valid MOT of 5 months and was one owner from new gave me a false sense of security. Plus I had just started a new job and have had little or no time to do the sort of things I perhaps would have done (wheels off checks myself etc) before.
Lesson learnt.
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>> Car has now been completely checked over and everything else is sound.
>>
I'm in much the same boat Pete, during the week my daughter picked up another used Civic 2.0S (similar rush buy) to replace her 140k miler identicar, despite being serviced and MOT'd by the independent dealer i won't be happy till i've given it my once over, i did check it out at the garage and all looked OK to me (apart from about 1mm front disc wear lip) but i want the thing up and all wheels off ASAP.
Trouble is i've got a man flu that isn't shifting and i wasn't going to be doing the business in the falling snow today, SWMBO's wrath is probably a worse fate than double pneumonia.
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>> Trouble is i've got a man flu that isn't shifting and i wasn't going to
>> be doing the business in the falling snow today
That could 'Superman Flu'. Worst strain of flu known to man. :)
Last edited by: Fullchat on Sun 17 Mar 13 at 21:42
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>> That could 'Superman Flu'. Worst strain of flu known to man. :)
>>
Nah its worse than that.
However i'm being pampered and looked after even more than usual (Latins bless 'em the best by a country mile) so got to milk it for a while yet..:-)
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>> the disks were barely 3mm thick.
That's horrendous... hadn't they warped yet and made the brakes judder? Frightening.
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Where I used to live the local ford outfit was a small family owned affair. Awful place, poor customer service, very expensive car sales, and little technical knowledge.
Interestingly I was chatting to a colleague who was having problems with her Punto. Took it to her nearby Fiat dealer who she trusts and had always been helpful to find that they had been bought by the previously mentioned Ford dealership (these two are at opposite ends of a high street)
She was less than impressed, and despite the workshop manager being the same guy the level of service had degraded, if fact the workshop manager told her "its not the same here now"
I found it interesting that a change of ownership, but same staff could have such an impact
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For many people, the "official" status of a franchised dealer lends an air of legitimacy, and therefore they will accept judgements and statements from these places that they wouldn't accept from an independent place.
The lesson I think is that a manufacturer's badge on the sign outside means nothing. It doesn't guarantee competence and fairness any more or less than it guarantees overcharging and unnecessary work being done. These are all individual businesses with individual staff, management and targets, and should be judged as such.
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>> These are all individual businesses with individual staff, management and targets,
>> and should be judged as such.
Agreed.
But there is a theme, and there is a reason for it.
Dealers have to make a big investment now to get or keep a major franchise. Few are owned outright. They need a return on capital employed to pay the financing costs before there's any profit. The profit opportunity on new car sales is limited.
Workshops do have targets for labour hours and parts usage, and these are aligned with bonuses for workshop staff. None of this works in favour of the customer. The more hours they can bill, the less time they spend doing the work, and the more parts they use, the better the reward for them. It's not their business so they don't have to think about balancing that with long term customer loyalty.
The manufacturers know this is a risk which is why they all run customer satisfaction feedback. This doesn't work especially well - counting complaints is a very poor way of measuring customer service quality. The customer who has just paid £500 for new discs and pads that weren't needed may be delighted that the dealer has saved the life of his family and award them 10/10 after being robbed blind.
Dealers do have to be concerned about their ratings so they game this too. That's why they provide free coffee, smarm a lot and and wash your car before asking you to give them a nice rating if you are happy with the service.
Sometimes the incompetence still shines through. One that shall be nameless opens at 8.30. Invariably when I have got there at 8.30, they haven't but another few customers have.
Any fool can work out that people are dropping the car off as soon as they can to get to work, and that being there to book in the early arrivals at 8, reducing the delays and getting people away would be appreciated. It's clear to me from that how much they really care, and what their ability to organise anything in a brewery is.
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"...counting complaints is a very poor way of measuring customer service quality. The customer who has just paid £500 for new discs and pads that weren't needed may...award them 10/10 after being robbed blind."
Which is why counting complaints DOES work - to paraphrase the old saying, it lets the brand know just how much it can squeeze before the pips squeak.
And, as soon as trade falls off, you'll find that - amazingly - a three year old Brand X only needs a change of oil and filter, and a poke about the greasy bits, under a so-called "value service plan" whereas before impending doom awaited those who didn't change every fluid, filter and friction surface in the entire car...
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>>Which is why counting complaints DOES work
I'm not bothered about being right, but I can assure you it doesn't do it at all reliably.
If you think about your own experiences there are examples everywhere. People don't complain even when they are not satisfied.
I was in one of those food pubs once when the part time schoolchild waitress came round and interrupted our conversation, as they do, with "Is i' all awright faw ya?" like they do.
When I smiled and told her politely that it wasn't, and the apple pie and custard I had been so looking forward to had apparently been vulcanised, welded to the plate, and was still at a temperature that could inflict third degree burns, she couldn't speak.
She was struck dumb because nearly everybody, including me, usually just says "yes fine thanks" even if they intend to avoid the place like the plague thereafter. She just trotted off, as it turned out to fetch the manager.
The manager was equally baffled. Her opening gambit was that nobody else had complained. I said I hadn't complained, merely replied to the question, but if she would like to try and chisel the pie off the plate she was welcome to try.
I ended up with a justification to the effect that as the pie was necessarily reheated in a microwave, it was essential that it was heated properly and that unfortunately meant that it sometimes went a bit over. No hint of apology.
Was a complaint recorded? Did anything change? I doubt it.
I don't suppose Bernie Madoff got many complaints while he was losing or spending all his clients' money, and they were happy with what they were hearing.
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>>the disks were barely 3mm thick.................................the car had only done 2500 miles since the last MOT
Who on earth did the last MOT?
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>> >>the disks were barely 3mm thick.................................the car had only done 2500 miles since the last
>> MOT
>>
>> Who on earth did the last MOT?
>>
They don't check the thickness of the discs or pads, so I understand. Just whether the brakes work to a standard or not.
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The thread has been running a week and the balance of opinions seems to me to be, Find a garage you like and trust and then stick with it; main dealer, franchised or indie In my case I have been lucky with a small local Ford franchised dealer. Some people seem to have been less lucky going down this route so one has to do the research.
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>> >> >>the disks were barely 3mm thick.................................the car had only done 2500 miles since the
>> last
>> >> MOT
>> >>
>> >> Who on earth did the last MOT?
>> >>
>>
>> They don't check the thickness of the discs or pads, so I understand. Just whether
>> the brakes work to a standard or not.
>>
Yes, a MOT is a "Is, and works to a set standard at the moment" check, in no way is it a service check.
So if the brakes work to the set standard when tested, they pass.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sun 17 Mar 13 at 13:40
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>> They don't check the thickness of the discs or pads, so I understand. Just whether
>> the brakes work to a standard or not.
I've had an advisory for pad wear.
3mm is dangerously thin and wouldn't have been much thicker 2500 miles ago. I wonder what the recommended minimum is?
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This is true. you may get an advisary if the tester can visually see the discs and pads (ie through alloy wheels etc) but thats it. If it passes (as my wifes did) thats it.
Certainly is frightening though that the MOT standard test can be passed with 95% warn pads and 3mm discs!!!
Even more worrying is the fact that although I drove the car to its MOT (I rarely if ever now drive my wifes car), the brakes felt fine - no judder or softness - and there was no sound from the suspension despite a broken coil spring. Amazing but true.
How many of us could be driving in blissful ignorance of potential disaster?
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>> disks were barely 3mm thick.
If I was told that my car's discs were "barely 3mm thick" I'd want a second opinion/measurement, starting off with my own!
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At that thickness a micrometer would not be necessary. A Mark 1 eyeball is all that is required.
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In 2006 I had a light come on in my Y reg Civic, 5+ yrs old and 80K+ miles.
The garage put the light out but could not say what caused it -£60 was the cost but they presented me with an extensive list of things that "needed looked at"
Disks and pads
2 x tyres
Suspension bushes
AC condensor
Fan resistor
I cannot recall all the bits but said that the tyres, disks, pads and suspension were safety related..........this alone came to £800+
My Indie said nothing needed other than 2 x tyres soon and a 3rd party Honda dealer highlighted 2 x tyres and the rheostat.
The Honda garage had recently moved from a small site to "Glass Palace"
Update
The Glass Palace is still there but 50%+ is given over to Honda Bikes.......I needed a bit for my car so called in last week......on leaving I glanced into the workshop........ 2 cars and 2 bikes and 2 x mechanics were all I could see.
10 years ago the "small outlet" was exceedingly busy (sales and repairs) had at least a 8-10 people working on cars alone..bikes only taken on say 6 years ago.
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I was acquainted with a chap who owned 2 Honda franchise's. Both smallish outfits on the edges of town, but with a good loyal following - a fair few oldies at one who would change car every couple of years - nice business.
Honda approached him and offered him the franchise for a nearby area. He was keen, but told me honda dictated the size of the showroom, and he was convinced you couldn't sell enough motors to justify such a large outfit, so walked away.
18 months later the showroom Honda wanted had been built, and lasted almost a year before going bust........He was somewhat smug!
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The average glass palace workshop deals with relatively new cars which only need routine servicing, this combined with improved reliability and the manufacturers cutting service requirements to keep the fleet managers happy must make for thin workshop profits. It pays to be aware of the condition of the oily and dirty bits (all it requires is a little knowledge, a torch, and an eyeball) before letting anyone with a profit motive loose on your car.
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Very true ON. The service manager where Mrs B's Sharan came from was telling me why they had started pushing cheaper fixed price servicing for cars over 3 yrs.
Basically the average 10K per year punter taking a new car was hitting 18+ months before the first longlife service was due, which was nothing more than a oil change. By the time the second service was due the car may be just outside the 3 year warranty, so punter takes it anywhere as he recalls being charged 250 quid for an oil change at the glass palace. Glass palace lose out on service, MOT and the possible extras like brake fluid change, pads etc that may be becoming due, plus punter is not wondering around the showroom looking at what they could change into.
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>> Glass palace lose out on service, MOT
>> and the possible extras like brake fluid change, pads etc that may be becoming due,
>> plus punter is not wondering around the showroom looking at what they could change into.
>>
I am one of those punters, I put the Ceed into the dealer for the oil change, any recall (campaign) work, and its free MOT. They told me that the brake pads would not last to the next service, I thanked them for this info, which I knew anyway. I bought the pads online from Euro Car Parts, 25% discount, free delivery, and it took me a relaxed hour and a half (including coffee) to change the pads both front and rear, job done properly, brakes cleaned and copper greased, I saved about £100 labour and £50 parts on the job.
Will the dealer survive, probably yes, but KIA are pricing themselves out of their market.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 18 Mar 13 at 20:36
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Can I pop mine round they must be getting a bit thin? :)
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>> Can I pop mine round they must be getting a bit thin? :)
>>
It would not be cost effective, I charge way in excess of glass palace rates for parts and labour, you would be benefiting from my experience and tools from keeping both my and the kids British built (and the odd FIAT) 1970s and 80s rubbish on the road and that comes at huge cost. :-)
Last edited by: Old Navy on Tue 19 Mar 13 at 07:49
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>> >> Can I pop mine round they must be getting a bit thin? :)
>> >>
>>
>> It would not be cost effective, I charge way in excess of glass palace rates
The James McNeill Whistler of Dunfermline eh?
When asked in the course of his libel case against John Ruskin
"The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?"
Whistler replied
"No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime."
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>> Can I pop mine round they must be getting a bit thin? :)
>>
If you're anywhere near Northants you can pop round here, they'll be cleaned and lubed properly, pistons pumped in and out to make sure they're free, maybe even a coat of black Hammerite on the calipers to give it that cared for appearance.
Full tool kit comprising several sizes of hammer incl sledge, eveil levers and all standards of chisels plus the obligatory screwdriver chisel.
As a free bonus offer you will catch the worse case of man flu ever known..;)
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Ford Ka - Typical Main Dealer of was I Unlucky? - Stuu
