In a survey involving 48 cars "73% of services were unsatisfactory . . . 67% failed to pick up faults . . . 23% carried out unnecessary work . . . membership of the garage industry's trade body, the Retail Industry Motor Federation (RMI), offered no guarantee of a good service"
Conclusion: "What a hopeless industry."
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Concurs exactly what I found a few years ago. I toured the length and breadth of the country for a vehicle manufacturer putting cars through main dealers for routine servicing with a small number of additional obvious faults that should have been spotted and rectified. Also used a covert pin hole video camera in my tie to record the comedy of errors experienced in service reception.
Booking the car in was a challenge in itself, sometimes taking up to three phone calls to get through to a service advisor. Lead times for booking in was commonly a week ahead. Quoting an exact price for the basic service was often a tricky conundrum for them.
Example of the faults were:
Finger tight wheel nut
Mis-aligned washer jet
Low tyre pressure
Low coolant level (on Min)
Headlight bulb not working on dipped beam
Out of all the places I went, only the bulb was regularly picked up on. One place missed the low coolant even though a warning light was lit on the dashboard. Another place managed to spill oil on the manifold so at the traffic lights a few minutes after collection, there was oil smoke billowing out from under the bonnet. The wheel nut was never spotted. One outfit didn?t service the car at all because they reckoned it wasn?t due a 40k service because the car had only done 39k. I pointed out the car needed the service as it was over 4 years old but they insisted not to do it.
All this was reported back in a consistent reporting format, with video evidence, to the vehicle manufacturer. In my opinion it hasn?t made any difference whatsoever. Trading Standards have done similar exercises and had similar findings. Consequently I always advise friend and colleagues to stick to independents once their car is out of warranty.
To sum up the franchised dealer network is light years away from where they should be in terms of product knowledge, quality of workmanship, customer service and value for money.
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How much of this poor service is, in your opinion Charles the fault of the bonus system for mechanics?
number_cruncher
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Bonus system for mechanics - It is a factor to a certain degree but overall it is attention to detail through the dealer aftersales process that counts.
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Hi Charles,
The faults you introduced were very basic, and should have been picked up by any mechanic following the service schedule. The coolant light remaining on, and the oil spilled on the manifold should have been picked up on the road test after the service, and rectified.
I think there tends to be too much autonomy given to mechanics in dealers. An effective foreman is too often seen as an extra non or low productive staff member that the workshop can run better without.
A fair number of mechanics are happy to cut corners to keep their bonus payments up, and if there is no one policing them, they tend to get away with it.
number_cruncher
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A fair number of mechanics are happy to cut corners to keep their bonus payments up, and if there is no one policing them, they tend to get away with it.
Isn't there somebody's law (can't think of his name) that says that a person (any person) will do his job as badly as he is allowed to? If this is so, the blame for bad workmanship must be placed on the supervision.
--
L\'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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There's actually the usual Which? embargo on publication of details about the latest edition until tomorrow....:-)
No doubt tomorrow's newspapers will be full of stories on this particularly investigation.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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think it's vicarious liability, if i do my job badly and cause a fault/accident etc my gaffer can be sued for not supervising properly
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An effective foreman is too often seen as an extra non or low productive staff member that the workshop can run better without.
A few years ago, Mike Hammer and his company of business consultants (in preaching their Business Process Re-engineering philosophy) advocated getting rid of as many supervisory posts as possible to reduce salary bills and hence to increase profit levels.
--
L\'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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How scary is the story above?
I recently took my wife's car into the main dealer for it's 12mths (only done a few K miles) service. It was being done FOC to make up for the cock-ups when we picked the car up. Perhaps I'm paranoid, but when I went to pick it up it was parked in the same place I left it, skewed slightly in the same way in the space - I'm convinced they never touched the car.
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Thats a very interesting story charles and probably sums up how most people in the backroom feel about dealer servicing. I know i gave up on them years ago.
Vista1100 - i had a similar-ish experience at a dealer a while back now but i never quite had the confidence/evidence to say anything!
I think the main problem with people being fleeced at garages is that the mechanics know that most folk who walk through the door have absolutely no car or mechanical knowledge whatsoever, so they try to get away with (to us) obvious scams.
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Thats a very interesting story charles and probably sums up how most people in the backroom feel about dealer servicing. I know i gave up on them years ago.
The problem is that many new cars have a 3 year warranty which is only valid if it has approved servicing.
Also most people(the majority?) simply do not have the knowledge to carry out even the most elementary checks - let alone servicing; and why should they? They pay and it is a breach of contract if it is not carried out properly.
A few prosecutions of high profile Main Dealers by Trading Standards, and given lots of publicity, would concentrate minds.
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A few prosecutions of high profile Main Dealers by Trading Standards, and given lots of publicity, would concentrate minds.
I doubt it, for a number of reasons.
However much bad publicity the dealaers get, you will need to go back to them to keep your warranty.
Currently, as you say, to keep your warranty you need to get your car serviced. While it is legally true that you do not need to use a dealer for this, the manufacturer can impose restrictions which mean that few independents will be able to comply with their requirements, and hence be able to service cars for which the manufacturer will honour the warranty. Thus, you will still be in thrall to the dealer.
As mentioned in another post, vehicle electronics are going through a step change in complexity at the moment - mainly with the introduction of CAN bus electronic systems. This will keep all but the largest and best equipped independents out of servicing because they won't be able to afford the necessary kit to work on them.
Most dealers *don't* depend upon customer loyalty. They know they are the only people selling and maintaining brand X motor cars in the area. Most good independents, however, don't spend a bean on advertising, and rely entirely upon reputation and word of mouth recommendations.
Until the block exemption laws really allow fair competition in vehicle sales and repair, this one sided situation will continue.
number_cruncher
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>> A few prosecutions of high profile Main Dealers by Trading Standards, >> and given lots of publicity, would concentrate minds. >> I doubt it, for a number of reasons. However much bad publicity the dealaers get, you will need to go back to them to keep your warranty.
That may be true for existing owners - although there are usually other main dealers.
However the main impact of bad publicity will on sales.
My family and friends would all run Ferraris but we are put off by the poor servicing in the local main dealers! Oh and the lack of a non-turbo diesel in their range.
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Same issue notes that BP have been prosecuted by Croydon trading standards for misleading pricing. Roadside boards refered prominently to BP Ultimate but qouted lower price of regular u/l or diesel.
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Customers booking their car in for a manufacturers recommended service should be careful to check exactly what they're paying for. My employer recently purchased a small fleet of ' Premium' vans with a 3yr 100,000 mile warranty, subject to main dealer servicing. As these vans were subject to our independent 'in house' safety checks, it was soon discovered that they were being returned from servicing with empty screenwasher bottles, blown bulbs, incorrect tyre pressures, various oil leaks etc etc. When questioned, the dealer said that the items in question weren't part of the service that the vehicle had been booked in for. On checking the service schedules - we found that he was right, they'd done no more or less than the specified service. When asked about the faults that should have been repaired under warranty, he told us "we don't LOOK for warranty work, you know - you have to report a fault". We now have an arrangement whereby all servicing and inspection is carried out 'in house', and the dealer, albeit reluctantly, carries out the warranty work.
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