Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Car Service....

An interesting experience today when I took my wife's Mazda to the dealership for a regular service.
We received an email with a 3-minute video showing her car, (number plate clearly on display) on the hoist undergoing the service complete with commentary.
"Good morning, My name is Jason and I will be completing the service on your car" .
Jason then proceeded to go through the main items on camera that included brakes, suspension, oil filter etc with particular reference to tyre wear

Interesting innovation but it did mean a new set of tyres......

My Mrs has had the same with her Hyundai dealer. She always moans that she rather have a tenner off the bill......

Ditto a VW main agents. The far cheaper local guy either sends me a photo or lets me look with the car on the lift if there is an issue.

Same with our local Mini Franchise.

You could hear a few ripe comments in the background re another car which was sort of funny.

Then he wanted to charge me £200+ for a new battery.

I asked and they said a video showing a problem had a far better chance of the customer saying "go ahead" than a phone call so it was worth it. It appears people trust their own eyes more than a service advisor.

my Audi dealership does the same but last time I got the video after
I had picked the car up. rather defeats the object if something is wrong!

Same experience with our Mini although it only happened the once.

Actually £200 fitted for battery is not too bad. The large stop/start AGM which I sourced and fitted still cost over £140 cheapest!

Our local "guvvy job" guy does servicing now for a pittance and even has access to the tablet thingy that's adds in fresh service history to onboard system.

Our Audi dealership do the same and on the latest video the technician clearly says that brake wear is minimal and the pads have at least 80% remaining, not altogether surprising since the car has only done 16k miles. However the service reception sent a document in which they said that the car needed new front and rear discs and pads due to wear and that they would fit them for circa £1200! I strongly suspect that they thought that they were dealing with a female, non-technical owner since the car is registered in my wife's name. I declined their offer and resolved to watch them like a hawk in future. The dealership is part of the Lookers chain.

£200 for a battery, I would have gladly taken that, however having tied myself into a Porsche extended Warranty, my replacement battery fitted and coded into the system cost me approximately twice that amount.

During the necessary 111 point inspection to be able to buy into the Porsche warranty system, there was found to be a 10mm outer rim of corrosion spotted on the inner face of the front discs, only 5mm of that swept by the pads, fortunately not deemed as a failure in terms of acceptance on to the warranty and a long way away from any chance of the corrosion being an MOT issue, the quote for replacement was somewhat over £1K... Which I imagine covers replacing the 20% worn pads with new and replacement caliper holding bolts as a matter of course when fitting replacement discs to a 991..?

As I purchased my 991 during Covid as a distance sale from a non-Porsche Sytner dealership down South and my local Porsche dealership is also Sytner, such were the discussions with both thee sales and service that I made them aware that I had a "reasonable" experience and insider understanding of motor trade practice, in a bid to avoid the more usual expectations and which I think worked up to a point.

My good lady`s Evoque went into LR for a replacement wheel rotation (ABS) sensor, the backs of the front discs were quite rusty to the extent that I expected them to advise replacement... Nothing highlighted... Though at the time they were pleading difficulties relative to Covid related short staffing issues, thus I expect turn around was the priority for customers with disabled LR`s and my good lady`s car had been off the road for three weeks as the result of this one sensor failure issue....!

For sure back street garages seem unlikely to have the overheads of high street operations, and can also well outperform manufacturers agents all too often in terms of customer care. Apparently on a mid to high end sports car in some cases the trade in value between full official customer service history and that of an independent specialist may be valued at no more than circa £500 by a marque expert trader.... As ever with pre owned vehicles the three most important factors seem to be condition, condition and condition...?

It seems to be universal. I wonder how long it will be before Morgan dealers will have to do it?

Our local Mercedes dealer tried it on over front pads and discs, the car is at 25,000 miles and was registered in Feb 2017. At the last service I was advised to have new pads and discs, as there was less than an estimated 5,000 mile life left.
I suggested they check the usage of the car and also the % of the pad and disc left. They had the decency to apologise and admitted based on history there was probably be another 5 years life left....!!

It does help once the service advisor realises that the person they are talking to has a depth of knowledge and experience: some years ago I was asked why I paid to have work done when it seemed that I could do the work. I told the lad that I used to do it out of necessity and never really enjoyed it, so I was happy to pay someone to do it now that I was earning enough!

I have my mandated annual MB service with the local dealer, video included. They reported pre MOT that it would fail as cuts in the tread on three of the tyres, two which needed replacement. So sourced the 2 replacements as always via Blackcircles and turned up at my local tyre dealership, used them for over 30 years. As they carry out MOTs as well asked them their opinion pre-fitting and they said the tyres were not MOT failures. So returned them and refunded £500!