Why not the dealer?

Knurled said: I'm curious, why is this?

I guess it comes down to the trust issues others have outlined earlier. I get the distinct feeling some dealers don't do any serious diagnostic work for that fee in the first place. Independent shops don't all operate like this. Sometimes it isn't clear what the problem is, but I guarantee that dealer is going to charge the diagnostic fee and pick some expensive repair to tell you it is. If it doesn't work out or their diagnosis is pure bullE36 M3, no problem for them because they still got paid. Indy shops have strait up told me they couldn't find what was making a noise, or have talked me out of changing parts and didn't charge me a fee for looking at the car. Guess who I go back to.

I do see your point though regarding time and overhead. It's a compelling argument, but there needs to be some kind of line somewhere. I am hostile to the concept because I've only seen it at some dealers, and these are the same dealers I've had other "value" problems with their service.

I will also add, for purposes of the original topic,that I have had similar experiences to what someone posted about $700 Lexus oil changes above. When dealers make their customers feel like chumps for overpaying (while simultaneously not delivering all of what was implied) people try not to repeat those mistakes.

For full disclosure: My wife worked in the service department of a single brand dealership (supposedly premium, from the Teutonic regions of earth). I think it's cute that manufacturers think they can control the experience at dealerships they have very little influence over. Not all dealerships are the same, but this one... I am pretty sure the owner would stoop to any low to make an extra buck. This caused a bunch of stress for my wife since her job was complicated by his insistence of trying various schemes to get credit for doing stuff the manufacturer wanted (and probably paid for) without actually meeting the full obligations. Customer experience clearly suffered... I did not ever utilize that dealership, and would certainly avoid it based on what I saw from the other side. Some of the people who worked there were great, but their souls were being crushed under intense pressure to make $$$ for the business. Seriously, the business priorities were so backwards that I was never sure if the elderly owner was one of the slimiest crooks I'd ever met, or just had dementia.

Meanwhile a local indy wanted to charge me $140 as a diagnostic fee when I called asking for a quote to replace the starter in my M3. They refused to give me a quote and the diagnostic fee wouldn't be put towards the replacement of the starter.

Uh, no thanks.

So it cuts both ways. Obviously its very dependent on the dealer and indy's around you. For me the cost is the same between the two, both are equally trustworthy but the dealer is more convenient due to the free loaner cars...

tuna55 wrote:

cwh wrote: Don't know if I'm the right guy to post this, as the last time I bought a new car from a dealer was in 1975, but my purchase of a 4 year old Hyundai was at the local CarMax. My one experience there was the polar opposite of what most of you have gone through. Took it in for repair of driver's window operator and a broken door handle. I have the extended warranty. They had problems. Replacement handle came in wrong, then the tech broke the other side. I mentioned that the TPM was lit, they replaced two sensors. Tech notice the latch on the console was broken, they replaced it. I asked for an oil change, they did that. Took 8 days altogether, but I had an Enterprise rental, for free. Extremely good communications, service boss's name is Happy. (!!!!) When I went back to pick it up, my total cost was 0.00. They even comp'd me the oil change. Internal invoice was over 1700.00. Was I pleased? Hell yeah. Will I buy next car at CarMax? Uhhh, YES!! So I suggest other dealers to check out how it can be done.

I have not purchased a warranty at Carmax, but based on buying at Carmax versus buying at a dealership, I can believe your experience to be normal. Love that place.

My Carmax warranty experience was horrid.

They were supposed to fix a heater controller in my RX-8 that commonly breaks and causes problems adjusting cabin temp. The guy basically tried to pry the front of the console off with a screwdriver, busting the hell out of my console on every side. Apparently he was unaware of the bolt in the back that loosens the thing.

I get the car back and the service manager leaves a note to contact him if I have concerns. I'm immediately suspicious and witness the damage upon getting in the car and am apoplectic. They end up having to hire a guy to come in and repair the trim, which I agreed to prior to forcing them to replace the whole dash. Ended up the trim repair guy did a good enough job that it wasn't very noticeable anymore enough so that I didn't want to bother risking them swapping the dashboard.

There is something that I've noticed may shape customer perceptions in this thread:

An independent shop is independent. It's clear the shop's ethics, policies, and level of talent represent that shop alone.

A dealership - or a chain shop, for that matter - is likely to be perceived as representing its entire type. If a customer receives bad service at, say, their local Chevy dealer, they may conclude that that dealer's standards are representative of a common standard that Chevrolet may have for all their dealerships.

In reply to WilD:

Thank you for your honesty and frankness. I'll apologize for the tone of my earlier post. I'd been having a Bad Day involving just this very discussion and it is deeply frustrating when some people expect you to work for free for the difficult part, and then ask for a discount on the rest of it. (But the Internet said the problem was X, did you even WATCH the video link I emailed you? And I found the part online for 1/3rd what you're charging.)

So it's a sore spot for me, and I probably could have/should have worded that all better, with a bit less crabass.

I had always owned older used cars and thus never had a reason to use a dealer. Couple years ago I was in a position to buy a new car. Bought a Honda Fit with the intention of trading up from it in a couple years. I've had friends in the automotive service industry and have been behind the scenes plenty and know the service writer game. I figured it couldn't be that bad. I took the Fit in to my local Honda dealer (so local I could walk there in under 5 minutes) for it's first oil change because I had a coupon for $20 full synthetic oil change. The waiting area was pretty dumpy and the service writer tried to fight me on the small print which did state full synthetic. That was strike one. Wait time about 20 minutes longer than estimated. Understandable. Since it's a brand new car I didn't think one would need to check the oil if the car only has 6-7,000 miles on it (had the oil changed at 5,000). I check the oil and it's at least a quart overfilled! That's strike 234567 and I essentially have no recourse. I vowed no more dealership. Then a couple months ago I get the Takata airbag recall for my car. Bring it to a dealer close-ish to my work where it sits for almost 2 months waiting on parts. Meanwhile Honda gave me a free rental car the whole time. Awesome! Well apparently space was tight and I now have 2 new door dings in the form of small chips in the paint. Not awesome.

At least I have a great relationship with an independent shop that is a couple buildings away from my work so having things done there is extremely convenient and I completely trust them. Super solid guys.

$1500 dollars later my air conditioning still doesn't work properly. I could throw up a wall of text . If I wanted parts thrown at I could have done that. Incompetent lazy parts replacers, not technicians.

Alpha,

I don't know if this helps or if I'm typical, but one reason I hate the (admittedly few) dealerships is that I've generally found I get the best results by being a total sociopath. Setting up little traps for dishonest reps to fall into so I can use their lies against them, making threats, color coding the owner's manual. This is the only way I could ever get things done at that damned Mini dealership. Ford Lincoln wasn't as bad about wriggling out of warranty work, but they sure liked to throw parts at vehicles.

Unfortunately, being a hardass sociopath is a stressful thing to do. The only reason I ever go to those dealerships is because several of my family members both have warrantied cars and refuse to go to the dealerships in person. I'm the car guy so ...

That said, I only get called in on disasters so I, almost by definition, don't deal with nice dealerships.

I'm pretty decent at diagnosing my cars and I usually play a little dumb when I look for service shops. Finding an indie shop is partially a matter of waiting for somebody who will honestly explain the "problem I don't understand."

The two indie shops I personally use have combined to get all my business for four years. They don't lie to me. The shop that gets most of my business doesn't lie and is willing to be creative to problem solve.

I built my Daewoo while mostly using that shop's tools. Can't imagine that ever happening at a dealership.

Dealers for me are a mixed bag. Generally I appear to be someone to not toy with, so i seem to get skipped of a lot of the bullE36 M3. Generally it comes down to price. Ive always had good independent shops on deck for when i cant get to a car, or lack the tools. Im actually coming to this point again as i need to replace the front/back brake lines on my corolla, and i dont have the tools right now. Problem is, all my local guys are in minnesota. Doesn't work from where i sit. So i may toss this one to toyota, as theres about 18million 101 corollas running around here and they can probably knock it out quicklike.

Here's my take after 3 weeks in a dealership service dept. Normal people are dumb. My CEL is on, better go to the dealer and pay $130/hour, rather than going to oreilleys etc... With a free scanner and using google. TPS light/flat/low tire, better go to the dealer than a gas station/tire store. The only upside is seeing how many people actually run snow tires.

1kris06 wrote: Normal people are dumb. My CEL is on, better go to the dealer and pay $130/hour, rather than going to oreilleys etc... With a free scanner and using google.

That is one of my favorite dumb things.

A fault code is NOT a diagnosis!

And O'Reillys will tell you that your fuel level sender circuit high code is caused by a bad sending unit, replace that for $500.

And Google won't tell you that the problem is a relaxed contact in the main chassis harness bulkhead connector down under the brake booster where you need 5 foot long 3-jointed arms to access it.

You need to get down and dirty and spend time examining the wiring diagrams and harness/connector location diagrams to develop a plan of attack, then backtrace along the circuit path to find where the break is. THEN repair it.

The extra fun part is when the car comes to US after a DIYer has already been to O'Reilly's and Google, and we find the problem and repair it, but the new sending unit is either faulty because it's a cheap price-point aftermarket POS or it was damaged on installation, do you still have the old one? No? Okay, well, we can get a new one from the dealer for $800. No, we really wouldn't recommend an aftermarket one, we've had a lot of problems with them and we like to do things only once...

I take our Honda to the dealer for oil changes because, as someone else said, It's not worth my time to do it myself when I can have it done for $25. Other than that, if I have to pay for a repair, it's going to an indie shop. From my years as a tech in a dealer, then in an indie shop, I don't trust that the dealer has the customer interests in sight, but neither does the manufacturer. The indie shop I worked at put no emphasis on speed. In fact, they owner kept telling me to slow down, "Boost, you have 2.3 hours to do the job. Relax, take the 2.3. If we need some more time (if I found something additional) we'll get it." That was refreshing. Want to fix the service department? Ditch flat rate. You (the manufacturer) say you want the best techs to do the best job possible? Stop paying them using a structure that forces them to find shortcuts and hustle through the proper diagnostic process. And stop cheating the warranty labor times. I've been involved with time studies for both Ford and Chrysler and it's dishonest, blatantly. When you pay flat rate you get techs that are one of two things:
1 - pissed off and looking to leave/jump around
2 - dishonest techs that would cheat his mom to turn more hours
I'll stop now, going off-topics.
To answer your second question, what would get me to a dealer if things were fixed? Word of mouth. No marketing campaign from a manufacturer/dealer I don't trust will get me in the door. The offer of free maintenance might, but I'd assume they were just playing nice for the free work to loosen my checkbook. If others were telling my about experiences, and they they could still walk straight after leaving would have an impact on me.

1kris06 wrote: Here's my take after 3 weeks in a dealership service dept. Normal people are dumb. My CEL is on, better go to the dealer and pay $130/hour, rather than going to oreilleys etc... With a free scanner and using google. TPS light/flat/low tire, better go to the dealer than a gas station/tire store. The only upside is seeing how many people actually run snow tires.

The flip side to that is the people with the scanners at o'Murrays, AutoZone, etc. don't know jack about what the scanner says. "Oh, this is an O2 code. You need an O2 sensor." They have no idea you have more than one on your car, nor do they realize the O2 code is a symptom, not a directive to replace said part. A technician uses that info to diagnose your car.
That's like going to the doctor because blood is coming out of your ears. Would you want your doctor saying, "you seem to have blood coming out of your ears. I'll stick this piece of bubble gum in there, that'll fix it."

1kris06 wrote: Here's my take after 3 weeks in a dealership service dept. Normal people are normal. My CEL is on, better go to the dealer and pay $130/hour, rather than going to oreilleys etc...

FYP.

People who can actually do that are not common. Even on this board, like Knurled pointed out- many who think they can get away with scanning for free don't get it right.

I'm not a plumber, and while I may know enough about plumbing to do something, I also know that I'm not good at it. So like a normal person, I'll call the plumber. Butt crack and all.

Normal people only DIY a limited set stuff that they actually like.

Anyway, all of the posts illustrate what I pretty much figured, and the actual issue for a corporation to deal with it's franchise dealers is far, far, far deeper and complicated than I think they realize.

I wish I had the option of going to a Plymouth dealer.

alfadriver wrote: Anyway, all of the posts illustrate what I pretty much figured, and the actual issue for a corporation to deal with it's franchise dealers is far, far, far deeper and complicated than I think they realize.

I'd expect any large corporation in a similar situation, whether automotive or not, truly only cares about the quality of their franchise's service department to the point it affects their bottom-line, and largely rightfully so. Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things even a horrible service department has a minimal impact on a manufacturer's sales - if a dealership is that bad customers will choose another dealer for the same brand, or choose another brand. In either case the problem dealer likely won't survive and/or someone else will step in to fill their gap.

I've had pretty good luck with dealers, though I may have gotten lucky. The most recent place (Mazda) the only thing they mentioned extra was a seal (diff? Maybe? Can't remember) that I hadn't noticed was leaking on my RX8. When he pointed it out on the lift it was pretty obviously leaking all over. They didn't protest my non-factory alignment either. The guy brought me back to the car on the alignment rack to show that it wasnt perfect. It was off by 0.1 degrees of my requested front camber alignnment, said he tried a couple times and couldn't get it any closer. I said "close enough". When I took my 323 GTX in for state inspection the tech wanted to talk to me after, not to sell anything, but because he never knew the GTX was a thing and wanted to know more about it. The parts guy at that same dealer was helpful when I was trying to get a few parts for the GTX. Said he used to have the B6t out of one that he wanted to put in a Miata but it got swiped. :/

I think it was Matthews Mazda in Vestal NY. If I still lived there id happily go back to that dealer. I used an independent shop for my van inspections and some of the maintenance, had a good experience there too.

I paid the dealer premium on my wife's G20t back when I lived in Boston. Mainly because it came with a free loaner- a new G37X. Never had a problem with their work either. It generally took a couple extra days, but with a new G37x to race around in I certainly wasn't eager to get a rusty G20 back too quickly.

as much as im dreading it i may have too take the chevy too the dealer because the issue is random its really being a pain too track down. if i do go that route ill let you folks know how my first non recall dealer trip goes!

Why don't manufacturers have their own, in house dealership networks?

It seems to me Honda has more interest in making me happy than Hennessey Honda does.

DaewooOfDeath wrote: Why don't manufacturers have their own, in house dealership networks? It seems to me Honda has more interest in making me happy than Hennessey Honda does.

probably has a lot to do with being a monopoly.

DaewooOfDeath wrote: Why don't manufacturers have their own, in house dealership networks? It seems to me Honda has more interest in making me happy than Hennessey Honda does.

Franchise laws.

And I think a lot of the roots of that are exactly what mad_machine pointed out- no monopoly. Which is odd in these days- given the monopoly in so many other markets in this country.

I'm sure the OEM's would love to have the states look at those rules. But I doubt that will ever happen- when you industry sells well over $500B, the people selling your product have a lot of influence in the states.

alfadriver wrote: I'm sure the OEM's would love to have the states look at those rules. But I doubt that will ever happen- when you industry sells well over $500B, the people selling your product have a lot of influence in the states.

And, since they are the customer of the manufacturer, the dealers get to look incredulous when you want something they don't have. You want a blue car? Well, we have a red one and it has a sunroof? You don't like sunroofs? Why ever not? What? You want to build a car and have it delivered? Maybe we can drive one 500 miles from a dealership that isn't competing with us. You don't want us to drive it, you want it delivered on a truck? No. What if we threw in a $40 floor mat set?

alfadriver wrote: People who can actually do that are not common. Even on this board, like Knurled pointed out- many who think they can get away with scanning for free don't get it right. I'm not a plumber, and while I may know enough about plumbing to do something, I also know that I'm not good at it. So like a normal person, I'll call the plumber. Butt crack and all.

I kind of butted heads with Da Boss last week over this situation. My Volvo needed some rust cleaned up so the new windshield could be installed. He thought I should do it myself and save money. My argument was, I don't have the tools to do it, I don't have the workspace set up yet to do it, I need the car now, and putting all that aside, I've seen the kind of paint repair I can do and it looks like crap and rusts quickly.

I didn't pay the bodyshop $300 to throw money down the drain. I rented their expertise, tools, and experience. And they did a really nice job, too, including painting the roof up to the sunroof area and blending it together. That is way worth $300 to me.

And that is also the kind of value that I try to provide to my own customers. I want them to feel like they got value for their dollar. Unfortunately a lot of people equate "value" with "cheap", and these people will never be happy. Those are the people who chase coupons and price spiffs, which is a real race-to-the-bottom method of bringing people in the door.