In My Humble Opinion
I have said this many times before and I’ll say it again: a stamped service history book is meaningless without paper proof. This was highlighted by two recent tales of automotive woe, both relating to car servicing.
I’m sure a good number of you, especially professional mechanics or garage proprietors, will be aware of Euro Block Exemption when it comes to automotive servicing. For those who don’t, it means that car manufacturers can’t invalidate your warranty for not using a franchised dealer, provided the garage follows the maker’s service schedule to the letter, uses Original Equipment parts and is VAT registered. It’s legislation that’s been with us in its current form since October 2005. Sounds good, doesn’t it? After all, we all like a good deal when it comes to parting with money. However, avoiding main dealer costs can come back to bite you on the rump when it comes to trading the car in for something new.
I was recently chewing the fat with a salesman I used to work with in a Vauxhall dealership. He now works with Land Rover and had just been in a dispute with a regular customer and it looked likely he had lost the customer for good.
The customer in question was in the process of trading up to the current Discovery from his three-yearold Discovery 4. The test-drive was met with universal praise: his wife adored it, so did the kids – even the dog. Speaking as a former booted-and-suited peddler of new tin, the aforementioned scenario usually guarantees the happy family are almost certainly going to roll off your forecourt in a shiny new car. Where the wheels fell off the deal was during the used car manager’s appraisal of the customer’s part-exchange vehicle.
The vast gulf between the showroom’s offer and the customer’s estimate of the vehicle’s value was due to one very simple reason: the three services that the Discovery 4 had been treated to had been undertaken by a non-franchised garage. Even though all the correct Land Rover practices had been scrupulously followed, using OE parts supplied by the main dealer, it meant the car couldn’t be sold on via the supplying dealer’s ‘approved-used’ car scheme. The big issue was the matter of it having no official main dealer service history, making it worth considerably less on the forecourt.
It all ended up with a very unhappy customer who opted to run his current car till it drops, vowing never to cross the showroom threshold again. My former work colleague did a fag packet calculation and worked out that, by circumnavigating the official Land Rover service desk, the customer had saved a healthy £450, but lost himself around £4000-£5000 when it came to part-exchanging. What he gained on the swings, he lost on the roundabout.
The other story involves an acquaintance who drives an Audi A6 estate. He’d done the same thing as the Discovery owner when it came to servicing and the Germanic reliability factor meant the car had never been back to the supplying dealer for so much as a replacement light bulb. That was until his garage spotted the start of a coolant leak from the water pump. The garage rightly said that this should be covered by the maker’s warranty, so a phone call was made to the newlyexpanded Audi dealership.
The car was booked in and the aftersales department asked for the service history to be left in the car – a normal dealer workshop practice. The dealer subsequently phoned the owner at work to request authorisation for renewing the water pump and coolant at a tidy £700. Despite the warranty, the dealership argued that the service data was not fully documented. The Audi owner sought legal advice, only to be told that he hadn’t a leg to stand on.
Main dealers cottoned on the potential loss of service department revenue a long time ago. When I was selling new cars, one of my offers was to factor the price of a discounted service contract into the figures for a new car deal. Similarly, current PCP deals offer a fixed monthly price for everything, including routine items – it’s a total no-brainer and avoids future complications. All you have to do is top up the washer bottle, add a drop of fuel and blow some air in the tyres. The problem is that too many people want something for nothing and think that any add-ons suggested by the salesperson are nothing more than a ruse to extract more money.
Euro Block Exemption is generally a good thing and, if you run a less expensive vehicle, makes little difference to secondhand values. Where you have to be careful is making sure you have the paperwork detailing every item that’s been replaced, adjusted, tweaked or checked as, given half a chance, the manufacturer will always take advantage of the most negligible of reasons to not give money away if they don’t have to. Would you, if it was your business?
Who knows what will happen with Euro Block Exemption after October 31, 2019 – if indeed Brexit even happens on that date.
‘By circumnavigating the Land Rover service desk, the customer had saved a healthy £450, but lost himself around £4000-£5000 when it came to part-exchanging’