Auto Service News

There was a time that in order to keep your warranty of a new car you could only get it serviced from the main dealer and in the case of certain German cars, this could be expensive. I fact many car owners had no choice but to pay what the dealership wanted in order to keep any warranty in place. Things are not quiet the same now since the European government got involved and stated that servicing cars can be done by other reputable garages. So over the last few years we have found ourselves servicing cars that would have gone to dealerships, making us happy and the customer, who is of course saving money by using our services.

A lot of cars are not actually owned by the drivers but leased instead. Often these lease contracts insist of certain mechanical serving to occur at certain periods during that cars life, otherwise fines or excess payments can asked for at the end of the lease period. We find ourselves servicing these cars in higher volumes than ever before, which can bring in company car owners and small business work, which we are happy to oblige with. The problems we have had with this is that newer cars have technology that requires ourselves to invest in certain equipment we did not need before. There is often a complicated way of order parts also through the dealerships, as even though we can service we have to be very careful with the quality of parts we put on these cars. Not that it matters that much to the lease companies, who normally have these cars sold before the end of the contract to retailers. I have considered using a lease car for my work, but in truth I am always dirty and there is always some sort of transport available in the garage, so it would only be for days off that I would like a nice car. But days off are too rare to justify a new car and anyway, the salvage project we do, turn out some nice cars, albeit a few years old.