Wednesday, 19 January 2011 17:00

Main Dealer or Independent Garage?

In the past, car makers imposed conditions that their new cars must be serviced by a franchised (main) dealer to protect the warranty.

But this is no longer allowed. The revised EC Cars Block Exemption Regulation came into force in 2003, outlawing this practice and enabling independent garages to compete on a more equal footing.

It included a requirement for manufacturers to make servicing procedures and parts available to independent garages, as well as to their own dealers. So, theoretically, the car servicing industry should be more competitive than ever.

However, many consumers still believe they must go to a franchised dealer or risk invalidating their warranty.

Car makers can specify that you must get the car serviced to a standard in line with their recommendations, but this can be done by any suitably qualified service provider.

OFT garage schemes

Ideally, you'd choose a garage that's working to sound quality standards. But this would require garages to be approved to recognised standards.

The OFT garage scheme to approve codes of practice that meet acceptable criteria offers this chance.

Bosch: the first OFT-approved garage scheme

Bosch produces many car parts and also has a network of around 450 Bosch Car Service garages spread across the UK. These are independents that operate to Bosch's code of practice. In July 2007, Bosch was granted OFT approval for its code – the first of its kind.

As you might hope, Bosch Service garages came out best in our undercover garage servicing investigation. The fifteen garages we tested fixed 64% of the faults on our doctored cars.

That compares with 60% of faults fixed by Motor Codes garages and 39% fixed by garages belonging to the Good Garage Scheme.

Independent garages that weren't affiliated to any code of conduct fixed 43% of the faults we introduced.

 

Source: http://www.which.co.uk