Posted by Mark Banks on June 17, 2009, 10:13 pm Message modified by board administrator June 18, 2009, 11:17 am
Hi all,
I was chatting to Noel from Comma Oils at the Tech day last week and he was surprised when I told him that we seem to be doing a lot more vehicle 1st scheduled services. These include a ’58 reg Seat Leon FR550 Today and a ’08 reg Skoda Fabia 1.9 TDi Yesterday plus among others, several Vauxhalls lately.
Although we do not do lease work we have noticed a lot more demand for first services. Maybe this is due to the closure of several dealerships around or the fact that using Autologic we promote a local alternative to VAG dealers or even the reassurance of Bosch Car Service with the OFT approved code???? I don’t know!
What I wanted to ask was how many of you are also doing more 1st services, how do you find parts and information availability and have any of these services resulted in warranty jobs being complicated by awkward dealers?? Also do you think the pending block exemption / euro 5 regs will affect this demand?
I would be interested to hear from you guys, thanks
Regards
Mark
Re: 1st Services #
Posted by Tom Yates on June 18, 2009, 2:48 pm, in reply to "1st Services #" Tom Yates
Hi Mark
I have noticed more service and also repairs to later cars, it seems more people are using the dealers less, maybe because of the price difference, and like you say dealers closing down, as to the block exemption this end in 2010 so we all need to register on the Right to Repair site www.R2RC.co.uk to give them a bit more pulling power,
Tom
Re: 1st Services #
Posted by Tom Williams on June 22, 2009, 11:12 am, in reply to "Re: 1st Services #" Tom Williams
Hi,
We see the occasional car for its first service but I've always been wary of complicating warranty issues. This not so much a worry about invalidating a warranty, but more about causing inconvenience to the customer with possibility of two garage visits, one to us for the service and another to the dealer to deal with any warranty issues that may arise. There does seem to be a tendency for some makers to upgrade ECU software during a vehicle's early life, which as an independent we can't do.(This is the the reason I haven't traded my BMW motorcycle for a new one) Perhaps also my age is showing, bad memories of vast amounts of first service warranty work being carried out on BLMC vehicles.