Independant vehicle repairers EU legisation
 

Hi all, thought this might be of interest to you guys, apologies if its already been posted elsewhere!!

Simon

The EU commission has decided that independent car repair centres are "A Bad Thing" and intend to ensure that only Main Dealers and Authorised franchised outlets can repair your vehicle from 2010 so,for example Halfords/Nationwide Autocentres/Kwik fit etc. and your local trusted inependent garage will not be able to look after your car(s). Forget the reputations-good or bad-of these outlets. What is important is Your right to choose where You take your car for servicing/repairs is going to be taken away.

http://www.r2rc.co.uk/home/content/view/27/97/

Not an awefull lot of facts in that article but still (it reads a bit too marketing style for me), I hope it doesn't happen though.

seeing as i work in a dealership i hope it does happen,there are some good independents out there but there are more cowboys. Independants dont have the gear or knowledge for todays modern cars.
Why should mnufactures be forced to warranty cars not serviced by thier dealers?

My Dad took his 12mth old Zafira GSI to a proper Vauxhall dealer for its first service, when we wnt to pick it up just as we got there it came screaming into the yard with two young 'service engineers' in it. The brakes were red hot and there was dirt sprayed down the side where it had been wheel spun. I went mental with the guy in charge but he said they were just 'testing' it. The brakes squealed on the way home so we rung them and they said the couldn't see anything on the CCTV from the yard but they would sort the brakes as a good will gesture. Not all main dealers are reputable :mad:.

My local Ford dealer tried to rip me off by telling me that i needed a new airbag control module but i told them no so they said they would do one for half price i said no. This is after i took the car in for something that did not affect the airbag module and they said it was broken. After a stern word with a few of them a couple of minutes later the module fixed itself(fixed itself yea right)

The car was being worked on and i got a phone call asking if they had the go ahead to replace it so i was down there like a shot to sort it out. While i was waiting I could hear them phoning people and telling them that while they were working on there car they found something wrong and did they have the go ahead to fix it. Maybe they were genuine problems but who knows after what they tried with me.

I've not been back since.

Some main dealers are excellent and some independent centers are excellent it's just trying to find them.

Agree with MRD above. A lad at out old track did some work experience with a ford garage in chester and went out to "test a car" he said they screamed the balls off it

The only bit of that, that makes any sense, is the Warranty, otherwise, the rest of it is a complete and utter loads of bollox. You are just as likely, if you don't know what you are doing, to be ripped off at the dealer, as you are at a local garage. I have had run-ins with both main dealers and local, and the local dealer was far easier to sort out.

As for equipment, most if not all new cars have the ubiquitous OBDII diagnostics on board, most garages have the tools to read them, and most reputable garages have the tools to repair the new cars.

Where dealers fall down, is when they change 'dealerships' in the area, like Chrysler have done, closed down their BIG dealership, and gone with a smaller one, so the chances that the mechs have the same knowledge as a longed served dealer, just falls through too.

You have the information, cars are just nuts, bolts, fluids and wires, the difference is, how much £££ per hour you pay, and as far as I am concerned, most garages rip you off, to a point!

At the end of the day it's down to the ethics and the morality of the dealer and they are all different. I accept that a lot of the old school dealers that started off as small family business started off with huge amounts of customer service. They had to do this to survive - and possibly get over the stigma attached to the brand eg, Toyota in the 70's and Skoda in the 80's - and many of them still have this culture flowing through the business.

However, on the flip side there are plenty of big chain dealers out there and the aforementioned smaller dealers who had to "go large" at the behest of their manufacturers (or who have seen management and staff changes through old age) and as soon as they start seeing volume of customers as the primary profit generator rather than generating customer loyalty and hence repeat business, that is where it all goes bums up for the punter.

In the early 70's my neighbour - a well to do bloke - had an Austin 1800 and replaced it yearly with another and another and another gradually upgrading as he went on. This was not because the car was particularly good - it wasn't - but they weren't that bad and the point was the dealer did give a monkeys and always made him feel like he mattered. This all trucked along nicely until BL told the dealer to "upgrade" it's franchise to push their exciting new-era products rather than the older BMC stuff. They expanded the showroom, diluted the customer service and things went down the crapper, much as they did for the manufacturer themselves much a few decades on. He went and bought a new BMW 316 2-door in 1978 and was once again welcomed by a dealer that cared (it was very much a developing marque back then). I dare say that most BMW dealers now are in the same position as my neighbour experienced with British Leyland in 1978, and were he alive he'd probably be looking at a Kia.

The point is all dealers are different and in my own experience they love you until the ink has dried on the purchase order and the cooling off period has expired on the finance, then you are yesterdays news. If you want another car off them thats great but if not no great worry as there'll be another punter along in a minute. How many dealers honestly ring customers 2 months in and check they are happy with their purchase, and keep them "warm" through the lifecycle of the car?

I once took my then new MX5 to a dealer in Mansfield (now closed) for a service as the dealer in Nottingham I bought it from had shut it's doors about 6 months before. About half a mile from the garage I was overtaken by a ballistic Mazda Demio - not what comes to mind when you think of ballistic is it - cutting in and out of traffic on the dual carriageway and bouncing off the limiter at each shift. I'd like to say I was surprised when it pulled in to the service car park of the dealers and a spotty yoof wearing Mazda overalls got out but that would be a lie. I just went in to the service reception and told them that I was cancelling my service as I did not feel confident that they would treat my car in the same manner I would, the service managers response was "it's only a car mate, it won't hurt it".

The whole "warranty" thing is little more than legalised blackmail anyway. As DCM says, a car is just a collection of bits, its the info that has the value and in many cases even that is just good ol' common sense. If I have a choice I'd rather have my car serviced by a non-franchised "independent" who has 20 years experience and a good name in the area rather than a fly-by-night-cheap-as-chips outfit or a main dealer who can plug in a code reader to an OBDII port but hasn't got a clue what tappet clearances are. As long as they use manufacturer parts and specced fluids I'm happy.

I shall spare you the saga that took place when I tried to get a "dealer only" part for my '94 Mini from the just upgraded Godfrey Davis Rover dealer. "Mini? Nah mate".

Just my two penneth.

My brother has had lots of fun being diddled at Mercedes Dealers too, usually on fluids that never needed topping up, but somehow, they would still manage to get a couple of litres of pure gold in there!! Oh, and the time he had to have some accident repair done by them, and they got more paint on the windows, than they did the car.

So to be honest, if you have a mechanic you know and trust, use them, my local one has left the garage he was running, so I no longer use it.

disagree on two points otherwise the independants would not ring us up and say what cope P1089 mean? or there machines give em a code and the wrong description,
ask em to fit a towbar to a new mondeo, they can but they carnt alter the central car configuration so the electronics knows its fitted!

as your local guy to expalin how fords smart charge works or even tell you about the canbus and linbus networks!

Not being funny, but all you would need, is for an 'ex-ford-mechanic' to be working for you, but for the most part, an independant garage can do most if not all the work, for a lower cost, and once you are out of warranty, don't need to use OEM parts.

You could even say, the argument you give, above, is Ford actually trying to make the cars only dealer repair only, thats monopoly isn't it?

that ex ford tech will want a good pay rate though and the way cars are advancing your soon out of touch, i worked for vw a few years back im lost on em now! the year out of ford took some catching up

no monopoly at all for will sell your thier diag machine £5K thier special tools and you can even attend ford courses at thier training centre.

i can't even be bothered to get in to this!

i gave somebody some sound FREE advice earlier then had to spend all day arguing over the validity of it :rolleyes:






the main trouble with cars is everyone thinks that because they can drive one they are experts. quite simply they are not!:rolleyes:


as for statements like "they are all just nuts & bollts....etc"

buy yourself a cheap socket set & see how you go bell-end :lol:

The main point of this is CHOICE !!

As soon as ther is no CHOICE or ALTERNATIVE - things get very very expensive.

I work in a completely different industry - the law says that for our type of products they must be serviced and maintained by the manufacturer or manufacturer certified engineers.

The servicing and training prices are now very expensive because there is no choice.

can you not find a different manufacture, the cars we buy are owned by only a few major companies now!

I wouldn't trust our Ford dealer with a wheelbarrow, I as some of you know taxi for a living and have done for over 20 years, that's a lot of cars and servicing, over a million miles give or take.
I had a 1994 diesel Granada, lost it's fan belt due to a swollen water pipe. AA fixed the pipe, followed me to Ford, as he couldn't source an auxiliary drive belt, and when he saw one, couldn't fit it. I purchased the belt, and tried to buy the 6 inch pipe, to be told my Granda was bulit in Spain with an Italian engine, so the pipe would come from Germany. £11 and 8 days off the road.
I couldn't work the belt out myself,and no manual exists, so sent it to Ford, after 11 days they sent it back with a wrong belt run the wrong way round the pulleys to fit.
Yes that is 11 days to NOT fit a belt.
They assured me it was right, 3 months later, everything run by the belt collapsed, and they had to stand a £1,000 repair bill.
Still couldn't correct the fault, I eventually found a Mechanic at a small garage who did Fords in the 90s, who pointed out the twin adjusters the main agent had no knowledge of, he looked after it from then on, Ford dealers are worse than useless.
This was after 6 months of grief with a petrol Granada which nearly cured itself by stalling when pulling onto a motorway, that was a known fuel pump pressure issue, well an issue known to everyone except Ford it seems
I now use an independent who willingly stays till 8pm to get the taxi mobile if something occurs without warning, and charges £30 for an MOT £35 an hour for labour and has never failed to fix any of our vehicles, Kia Ford Mitsubishi Rover to name a few

That's a bit of a sweeping generalisation. There are many Ford dealers in the UK and Ford sell a lot of cars here, so there will always be some bad dealers and problem cars out there. But in their defence, the 5 or 6 main dealers I've used over the last 11 years have never put a foot wrong on any of my cars.

yup that would be the VM "boat " engine then
there is a special tool to compress the tensioners!! there is a manual if you know where to look!!

Well both cars went through 3 Ford main agents, all the same,
and the Ford had a different tensioner to the Rover or Jeep one, and it was nothing to do with the sprung hydraulic tensioner, there are 2 idler wheels on the front of the engine, both of which are mounted on eccentric cams, they take up the slack on an older belt, or reduce the run length by about 4 inches for a new one, bearing in mind the belt is 3m long or so and runs 7 separate items.Ford had no knowledge of the adjustable idlers, not even Ford technical services had heard of them, and they had no manual for that motor.

i'd be inclined to say that you are more likely to get a cowboy dealership as they fix things that don't need doing just to cover their overheads.
I took my old focus in for a service and was quoted £400+ for new front and rear brake disks. Said no thanks, took it to an independant who said there was over 15000 miles left on the disks so bring it back in 12 months. He did them for £70.

nobody slagged you for the advice on what the fault was, just offered alternatives. We have all been there, when a dealer 'wants' to sell you a unit, when it is just a part you need, and unless you push them, they won't sell you it, or even look at it. Chrysler, Camshaft Position Sensor, it is well known to leak oil as the engine ages, Chrysler are 'happy' to sell the CPS, for £120, but they really don't like to sell you the oil seal for £3.12.

As for going to buy a cheap socket set, I fully apprectiate the need for the correct tools, working in deep maintanance of RAF and RNAS fast jets, I fully appreciate this, but in the end, they are still nuts & bolts, nothing more, nothing less, just like everything else. Just like pulling the Pegasus 103 engine out of a Sea Harrier FA2, or the vectored thrust ducting, radar, avionics, you name it.

The entire point of the thread has been lost.
It is utterly irrelevant wether main dealers are good, bad, rip-off's or good value.
The fact is this - The manufacturer has chosen a particular garage to invest it's time, money, equipment and most importantly reputation on. It is only fair that they should get to choose who gets to keep the warranty valid by servicing it

The manufacturers don't invest a penny, the dealership lays out the cash, then has to overcharge to compensate, the Nissan dealer near Malton gave up because of the costs incurred, does Daihatsu now instead. They insisted on £50k of parts and the same of tools and having one 250Z in the showroom on sale at all times.When i went to Ford direct they washed their hands of it, and said dealers problem.

Can you really see this happening. The amount of public backlash would be enormous. The job losses would run into hundreds of thousands if not more.
If only dealerships serviced cars with manufacturers parts, think of the manufacturing jobs to go in the off the shelf industry. Times this all over europe and you would be talking job losses maybe in the millions.

we had a load of grizzling about this kinda thing a few years ago
try googling "block exemption"
plenty of reading there

the first article here - http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice...-campaign.html

everyone said it would spell the end of the main dealers
well a few years later on & no it hasn't :rolleyes:

cars are Very complex machines nowadays & like it or not your "fred in a shed" type garage or even your emery cloth & plus gas home tinkerer wont have the knowledge or diagnostic equipment to carry out repairs effectively or to any approved standard!
look at it another way, the main dealers spends thousands of pounds a year on up to the minute diagnostic equipment, staff training, special tooling & any of the other hoops the manufacturers make them jump through to represent that franchise!
they have all the totally pointless but unforunatley necessary health & safety measures to comply to which by way of elongatng most simple processes will also add to any costs but on a plus side for the customer every tool they use will be claibrated & certificated to whatever standard is needed. all time consuming & expensive processes!

will Fred in a shed be using a recently calibrated torque wrench set to precise manufacturers figures ?? i doubt it :rolleyes:

as for the brake disc issue, when we service cars there is space on the service sheet for us to write actual brake thicknesses compared to minimum thicknesses as specified by the manufacturer.
these measurements are taken by calibrated tools & are clearly marked for all to see. full transparency, nothing hidden!
if you car needs them, then it needs them.
we dont decide, the figures do!
since we were told a couple of years ago we had to accurately measure discs & write the measurements on the sheets etc i'd say we are changing twice as many as we were before as discs that look OK but would have been reported as "getting a bit thin, replace next pad change" before are now being changed no matter how much meat is on the pads as the figures are there & have to be adhered to! remember we're liable if anything happens after the car leaves the workshop so despite what you think any mechanic with a brain will be wanting the car to go out right ;)

some dealers may not be as good as others but hopefully most will have a conscience & will be trying to do things properly
at my place we do our best for our customers & i'd hope others are the same :)

thats it, see, there are as many bad dealers as there are, small garages.

In the end, I can't afford to pay garage rates, let alone dealer rates, if I can do the job, I do it, as I trust my own engineering skill, if I HAVE to take it to a garage, I take it to somebody I can trust, and I can afford, it is simple, and most people are in that situation.

In fact, the condition of most of the +5 years cars on the road, most people can't afford to keep them in 100% condition, and only get them sorted at MOT time.

Reading most of the replies has anyone actually read what this is about?

The EU actually wants the opposite to this, which is why they introduced the Block Exemption in the first place. The current Block Exemption which will run out in 2010 is the 2002 extension of the original Block Exemption introduced in 1995.

In fact the EU wants to continue with a new Block Exemption, tightening it up further by preventing manufacturers from anti-competitive practices, for example the manufacturers would no longer be able to withhold technical information that should be readily available to the independents, such as:Thanks Mark for the quote :thumbsup:

Here's a thought, if anyone asks what has the EU ever done for us they've stopped us being held to ransom by the main dealers.:thumbsup:

come on play fair, if your going to qoute me, qoute all the relevent info ford will sell you all the gear and train you, just the independants dont spend the money like dealers do, hence they dont know the product but can charge a lower rate.

That may be true for some but me and my buisness partners have spent over twenty five grand on diag gear ( vw merc and BMW plus snap on Modas ) to name a few plus we are all ATA regestered master technicians ( all ex main dealer techs) who got fed up of getting crap pay £11 per hour when they charged me out at £135 per hour ! And the workman ship of some techs at the dealer was appaling, my 5 year old would do a better job. !!!

yup but ur a specialist independent, not fred in his shed

hmm ok then, when i did the training on the vw and last read the manual, you used the special tool to set the tensioner to the corect posistion then set the eccentrics to take up the slack, that way the tensioner is in its ideal posistion for new or old belt
Buy hey what the fook would someone who worked on fords for over 20 years know?

Should read vm, replying on my phone!

discs can look ok but bet below min thickness

Spot on with how to tension it, just as my back street garage did it, unfortunately nobody at Ford Technical services or 3 main dealers knew that, or had the tool.
So if you worked where I took it, maybe it wouldn't have cost £1000s in off road and repair bills, I wish I had known there was one Ford garage with a brain in Yorkshire.

....

Everyone is slagging main dealers off and ive not had a great ammount of experiance with main dealers other than our local volvo garage as the volvo has been back there about 70 times since new. Anyway i have two bad stories of small garages one is local to oswestry. The brake pads on the volvo needed replacing so we went to the volvo dealership and they quoted us some stupid ammount of money and they couldnt fit us in at the time as part of the workshop was destroyed after a car caught fire with an electrical fault. So we shopped about and the local garage gave us a cheaper quote and could fit us in. So we took the car in the morning they did the job and we had it returned. While driving it it made a bit of a funny noise and they didnt feel right. So we looked at it and it just didnt seem right. Took it back they said its fine nothing wrong with it. So then took it to the volvo dealership where we found out they had fitted the wrong rear brake brake pads. There where to versions with very slight diffrences. At first they refused to refund us but after the threat of the solisitor they refunded us.

The second was with our old car a vectra. We had a crash where someone pulled out infront of us. Destroying most of the front passenger side of the car. So went though the usual procedure it went for repair to a auterised repair center for the car insurance. And the car came back. With the wrong size wheel on the front passenger side. It was visably smaller. When they pulled up outside the house i looked out and at the age of 11 i could see the wheel was far smaller than the others without even comparing it to one of the others. So IMO if a "reputable" garage cant even get the size of the wheel right what else can they get wrong.

But to be fair there are some good garages out there a local garage kept me nans F reg fiesta running strong for many years. There not all bad just some.

I dont want to see this new rule to come in it will cripple our ecconamy even more and there will be more un safe vehicles on the road.

A

Hey Ash, you better be nice about some of your local dealers :lol:

MRD, the Zafira GSi was discontinued about 4 years ago??? Do you mean a VXR?

As for closing indepedants it would have a massive effect on manufactrer's OEM & non gen because people just couldnt afford to service their vehicles. Which would result in more MOT failres & generally less safe cars on the road. Just look at the car insurance. Young lads cant insure there cars so they are running around with out it, thats costing other a fortune. There needs to be better monitoring for main & indie dealers.

Havent used a certain dealership in a while. Lee ill post my view tommorow evening.

A

Just dont forget your getting an MOT at staff rate before you rate them! :woot:

I would just like to say that the service and staff at arthers of oswestry are second to none.:p:p

A

:thumbsup::thumbsup:Your welcome Ash!!!! lol