Independant vehicle repairers EU legisation

[DCM]

Originally Posted by showtime

i can't even be bothered to get in to this!

i gave somebody some sound FREE advice earlier then had to spend all day arguing over the validity of it






the main trouble with cars is everyone thinks that because they can drive one they are experts. quite simply they are not!


as for statements like "they are all just nuts & bollts....etc"

buy yourself a cheap socket set & see how you go bell-end

nobody slagged you for the advice on what the fault was, just offered alternatives. We have all been there, when a dealer 'wants' to sell you a unit, when it is just a part you need, and unless you push them, they won't sell you it, or even look at it. Chrysler, Camshaft Position Sensor, it is well known to leak oil as the engine ages, Chrysler are 'happy' to sell the CPS, for £120, but they really don't like to sell you the oil seal for £3.12.

As for going to buy a cheap socket set, I fully apprectiate the need for the correct tools, working in deep maintanance of RAF and RNAS fast jets, I fully appreciate this, but in the end, they are still nuts & bolts, nothing more, nothing less, just like everything else. Just like pulling the Pegasus 103 engine out of a Sea Harrier FA2, or the vectored thrust ducting, radar, avionics, you name it.

[Col]

The entire point of the thread has been lost.
It is utterly irrelevant wether main dealers are good, bad, rip-off's or good value.
The fact is this - The manufacturer has chosen a particular garage to invest it's time, money, equipment and most importantly reputation on. It is only fair that they should get to choose who gets to keep the warranty valid by servicing it

[purpletimbo]

The manufacturers don't invest a penny, the dealership lays out the cash, then has to overcharge to compensate, the Nissan dealer near Malton gave up because of the costs incurred, does Daihatsu now instead. They insisted on £50k of parts and the same of tools and having one 250Z in the showroom on sale at all times.When i went to Ford direct they washed their hands of it, and said dealers problem.

[bodgit]

Can you really see this happening. The amount of public backlash would be enormous. The job losses would run into hundreds of thousands if not more.
If only dealerships serviced cars with manufacturers parts, think of the manufacturing jobs to go in the off the shelf industry. Times this all over europe and you would be talking job losses maybe in the millions.

[showtime]

we had a load of grizzling about this kinda thing a few years ago
try googling "block exemption"
plenty of reading there

the first article here - http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice...-campaign.html

everyone said it would spell the end of the main dealers
well a few years later on & no it hasn't

cars are Very complex machines nowadays & like it or not your "fred in a shed" type garage or even your emery cloth & plus gas home tinkerer wont have the knowledge or diagnostic equipment to carry out repairs effectively or to any approved standard!
look at it another way, the main dealers spends thousands of pounds a year on up to the minute diagnostic equipment, staff training, special tooling & any of the other hoops the manufacturers make them jump through to represent that franchise!
they have all the totally pointless but unforunatley necessary health & safety measures to comply to which by way of elongatng most simple processes will also add to any costs but on a plus side for the customer every tool they use will be claibrated & certificated to whatever standard is needed. all time consuming & expensive processes!

will Fred in a shed be using a recently calibrated torque wrench set to precise manufacturers figures ?? i doubt it

as for the brake disc issue, when we service cars there is space on the service sheet for us to write actual brake thicknesses compared to minimum thicknesses as specified by the manufacturer.
these measurements are taken by calibrated tools & are clearly marked for all to see. full transparency, nothing hidden!
if you car needs them, then it needs them.
we dont decide, the figures do!
since we were told a couple of years ago we had to accurately measure discs & write the measurements on the sheets etc i'd say we are changing twice as many as we were before as discs that look OK but would have been reported as "getting a bit thin, replace next pad change" before are now being changed no matter how much meat is on the pads as the figures are there & have to be adhered to! remember we're liable if anything happens after the car leaves the workshop so despite what you think any mechanic with a brain will be wanting the car to go out right

some dealers may not be as good as others but hopefully most will have a conscience & will be trying to do things properly
at my place we do our best for our customers & i'd hope others are the same

[DCM]

thats it, see, there are as many bad dealers as there are, small garages.

In the end, I can't afford to pay garage rates, let alone dealer rates, if I can do the job, I do it, as I trust my own engineering skill, if I HAVE to take it to a garage, I take it to somebody I can trust, and I can afford, it is simple, and most people are in that situation.

In fact, the condition of most of the +5 years cars on the road, most people can't afford to keep them in 100% condition, and only get them sorted at MOT time.

[terry.sc]

Reading most of the replies has anyone actually read what this is about?

Originally Posted by notlawnomis

The EU commission has decided that independent car repair centres are "A Bad Thing" and intend to ensure that only Main Dealers and Authorised franchised outlets can repair your vehicle from 2010 so,for example Halfords/Nationwide Autocentres/Kwik fit etc. and your local trusted inependent garage will not be able to look after your car(s).

The EU actually wants the opposite to this, which is why they introduced the Block Exemption in the first place. The current Block Exemption which will run out in 2010 is the 2002 extension of the original Block Exemption introduced in 1995.

In fact the EU wants to continue with a new Block Exemption, tightening it up further by preventing manufacturers from anti-competitive practices, for example the manufacturers would no longer be able to withhold technical information that should be readily available to the independents, such as:

ask em to fit a towbar to a new mondeo, they can but they carnt alter the central car configuration so the electronics knows its fitted!

as your local guy to expalin how fords smart charge works or even tell you about the canbus and linbus networks!

Thanks Mark for the quote

Here's a thought, if anyone asks what has the EU ever done for us they've stopped us being held to ransom by the main dealers.

[mark christopher]

Originally Posted by terry.sc

Reading most of the replies has anyone actually read what this is about?



The EU actually wants the opposite to this, which is why they introduced the Block Exemption in the first place. The current Block Exemption which will run out in 2010 is the 2002 extension of the original Block Exemption introduced in 1995.

In fact the EU wants to continue with a new Block Exemption, tightening it up further by preventing manufacturers from anti-competitive practices, for example the manufacturers would no longer be able to withhold technical information that should be readily available to the independents, such as:Thanks Mark for the quote

Here's a thought, if anyone asks what has the EU ever done for us they've stopped us being held to ransom by the main dealers.

Originally Posted by mark christopher

that ex ford tech will want a good pay rate though and the way cars are advancing your soon out of touch, i worked for vw a few years back im lost on em now! the year out of ford took some catching up

no monopoly at all for will sell your thier diag machine £5K thier special tools and you can even attend ford courses at thier training centre.

come on play fair, if your going to qoute me, qoute all the relevent info ford will sell you all the gear and train you, just the independants dont spend the money like dealers do, hence they dont know the product but can charge a lower rate.

[phil c]

Originally Posted by mark christopher

come on play fair, if your going to qoute me, qoute all the relevent info ford will sell you all the gear and train you, just the independants dont spend the money like dealers do, hence they dont know the product but can charge a lower rate.

That may be true for some but me and my buisness partners have spent over twenty five grand on diag gear ( vw merc and BMW plus snap on Modas ) to name a few plus we are all ATA regestered master technicians ( all ex main dealer techs) who got fed up of getting crap pay £11 per hour when they charged me out at £135 per hour ! And the workman ship of some techs at the dealer was appaling, my 5 year old would do a better job. !!!

[mark christopher]

Originally Posted by phil c

That may be true for some but me and my buisness partners have spent over twenty five grand on diag gear ( vw merc and BMW plus snap on Modas ) to name a few plus we are all ATA regestered master technicians ( all ex main dealer techs) who got fed up of getting crap pay £11 per hour when they charged me out at £135 per hour ! And the workman ship of some techs at the dealer was appaling, my 5 year old would do a better job. !!!

yup but ur a specialist independent, not fred in his shed

[mark christopher]

Originally Posted by purpletimbo

Well both cars went through 3 Ford main agents, all the same,
and the Ford had a different tensioner to the Rover or Jeep one, and it was nothing to do with the sprung hydraulic tensioner, there are 2 idler wheels on the front of the engine, both of which are mounted on eccentric cams, they take up the slack on an older belt, or reduce the run length by about 4 inches for a new one, bearing in mind the belt is 3m long or so and runs 7 separate items.Ford had no knowledge of the adjustable idlers, not even Ford technical services had heard of them, and they had no manual for that motor.

hmm ok then, when i did the training on the vw and last read the manual, you used the special tool to set the tensioner to the corect posistion then set the eccentrics to take up the slack, that way the tensioner is in its ideal posistion for new or old belt
Buy hey what the fook would someone who worked on fords for over 20 years know?

Should read vm, replying on my phone!

[mark christopher]

Originally Posted by jim76

i'd be inclined to say that you are more likely to get a cowboy dealership as they fix things that don't need doing just to cover their overheads.
I took my old focus in for a service and was quoted £400+ for new front and rear brake disks. Said no thanks, took it to an independant who said there was over 15000 miles left on the disks so bring it back in 12 months. He did them for £70.

discs can look ok but bet below min thickness

[purpletimbo]

Spot on with how to tension it, just as my back street garage did it, unfortunately nobody at Ford Technical services or 3 main dealers knew that, or had the tool.
So if you worked where I took it, maybe it wouldn't have cost £1000s in off road and repair bills, I wish I had known there was one Ford garage with a brain in Yorkshire.

[Mini-JT]

....

[ashleyb4]

Everyone is slagging main dealers off and ive not had a great ammount of experiance with main dealers other than our local volvo garage as the volvo has been back there about 70 times since new. Anyway i have two bad stories of small garages one is local to oswestry. The brake pads on the volvo needed replacing so we went to the volvo dealership and they quoted us some stupid ammount of money and they couldnt fit us in at the time as part of the workshop was destroyed after a car caught fire with an electrical fault. So we shopped about and the local garage gave us a cheaper quote and could fit us in. So we took the car in the morning they did the job and we had it returned. While driving it it made a bit of a funny noise and they didnt feel right. So we looked at it and it just didnt seem right. Took it back they said its fine nothing wrong with it. So then took it to the volvo dealership where we found out they had fitted the wrong rear brake brake pads. There where to versions with very slight diffrences. At first they refused to refund us but after the threat of the solisitor they refunded us.

The second was with our old car a vectra. We had a crash where someone pulled out infront of us. Destroying most of the front passenger side of the car. So went though the usual procedure it went for repair to a auterised repair center for the car insurance. And the car came back. With the wrong size wheel on the front passenger side. It was visably smaller. When they pulled up outside the house i looked out and at the age of 11 i could see the wheel was far smaller than the others without even comparing it to one of the others. So IMO if a "reputable" garage cant even get the size of the wheel right what else can they get wrong.

But to be fair there are some good garages out there a local garage kept me nans F reg fiesta running strong for many years. There not all bad just some.

I dont want to see this new rule to come in it will cripple our ecconamy even more and there will be more un safe vehicles on the road.

A

[Dep]

Hey Ash, you better be nice about some of your local dealers

MRD, the Zafira GSi was discontinued about 4 years ago??? Do you mean a VXR?

As for closing indepedants it would have a massive effect on manufactrer's OEM & non gen because people just couldnt afford to service their vehicles. Which would result in more MOT failres & generally less safe cars on the road. Just look at the car insurance. Young lads cant insure there cars so they are running around with out it, thats costing other a fortune. There needs to be better monitoring for main & indie dealers.

[ashleyb4]

Havent used a certain dealership in a while. Lee ill post my view tommorow evening.

A

[Dep]

Just dont forget your getting an MOT at staff rate before you rate them!

[ashleyb4]

I would just like to say that the service and staff at arthers of oswestry are second to none.

A

[Dep]

Your welcome Ash!!!! lol