Word of mouth is also good.
I suffered a very disappointing lack of service from my local BMW dealer regarding the failure of the dual mass flywheel on my Cooper D at about 40K miles (which I had a moan about on this forum). The local Ford dealership on the other hand have been really great in how they've dealt with two problems I've experienced with my Transit van.
As you can imagine, I don't hold back in pointing out to any of my customers which of the local dealerships look after you well when the subject of car buying surfaces in the pub. What's more, being of Irish ancestry I'm well capable of bearing a grudge for a LONG time (my dad still won't allow the Observer newspaper in the house because of something they wrote about the captain of his ship in the Suez fiasco in 1956).
