Service my car at the dealer or a regular mechanic?

I bought a new car last year and I’m coming around to the time to start the “regularly scheduled servicing.” I paid the dealer to do the 7,500 mile checkup. The 15,000 checkup is getting close and I wonder if anyone thinks it is worth the extra to have it done at the dealer.

This isn’t my first new car, more like number 5, and I’ve never bothered with the dealer once I drove off the lot. But these days, cars are more complicated and I do have the money to pay full price, IF it’s worth it. I just can’t get over the prices a dealer charges for simple things like oil changes. They are like 50-100% higher than a place like Jiffy-Lub for what appears to be the same service. It just isn’t “official” service, whatever that is.

I’m not talking about warranties, just whether the service at a dealer is worth it. Am I missing something extra that dealers do that Joe Mechanic doesn’t?

What type of car is it and how good is your dealer’s service department? I was surprised to learn when I got my new Toyota that their dealer service is cheaper than just about anyone else for everything I have needed so far including oil changes. It was Jiffy-Lube that ripped my off a couple of times before I found that out. Even the scheduled interval service was perfectly reasonable at the dealer. I had BMW’s before that however and that was a completely different story with their dealer service prices.

On my cars, I have generally had them serviced at the dealership as long as the car was still under warranty, just so that there would be no possibility of any question in the event warranty repairs were needed. After the warranty period, I go to Jiffy Lube or one of the less expensive places.

In all fairness, though, I’ve never had any problems getting warranty repairs, and no service rep has ever even questioned whether I’ve had scheduled maintenance done.

In my experience, dealer mechanics are trained to upsell you on every possible thing and are not to be trusted. (Source, personal experience + ex-husband was a service advisor at two high-end dealerships; he got mega bonuses for everything he sold and rubbed his hands with glee over all the non-essential service he sold.)

An indie shop well-versed in your particular vehicle would be my pick.

It’s not so much a matter of dealership versus independent shop as a matter of a competent honorable repair facility. Some dealerships offer good service at reasonable prices and don’t necessarily push extra items. Other dealerships fall short on one or more of those aspects. The same can be said of independent shops.

Higher grade independent shops are typically well-equipped and trained to provide service on modern cars. They may not be able to do everything a dealership is capable of, but often they can do the overwhelming majority of what most people need.

In your case, you may be best served by a good independent shop, or perhaps a different dealer for your make.

Do it yourself! :wink:

Depends on whether you have a mechanic you trust. I do, and I went to the dealer for the first two oil changes I had vouchers for, but no others. However the mechanic is also in walking distance, unlike the dealer, cheaper, and much easier to get an appointment with. We have three cars, all different makes, so he has good reason to keep us happy.

Dealer might be best until you are no longer on warranty. Dealerships can bend the rules for those kinds of clients.

But as our own Rick sez- stay away from Jiffy Lube, etc. Find a trusted local mech.

Try Yelp.

If you use an independent, it is possible to find one that specializes in your make of vehicle. I know of several Toyota specialist shops and a couple Volvo shops.

One advantage is that the mechanic gets to know your car. At a big dealer it will be rare for the same wrench to touch you car twice.

Dealers and indies are currently circling around a couple of issues. Most new cars require special diagnostic hardware and equipment, and this stuff is difficult for indies to get, or crazy expensive. Depending on how big/well-financed your indie is, they may not have the latest equipment and can’t perform some dealer services that require accessing the car’s CPU like programming automatic door locking, window raising, lighting options etc.

This is a HUGE cash cow for most dealers, as they charge a minimum billable hours per visit and something like this takes 10 minutes.

Typically, I stick with the dealer while under warranty and switch to doing my own work for regular maintenance, and see an indie I trust for the big jobs. In a couple of cases, I was stuck. I’ve owned a Fiat 500 and Smart Fortwo and neither’s been around enough for a strong indie network to form yet (I had a place that didn’t want to put snow tires on the Fiat last winter). I also had a Porsche 928 and all the Porsche shops were like “Uh, why don’t you just drive your 911 instead?” :rolleyes:

Wow, I didn’t even know people paid for those check ups. I’ve always got those thrown in as freebies when I bought a new truck.

When I took my new car to the indie for the first major service (30k miles) on my Toyota a couple of years ago, he told me to take it to the dealer. This is my fourth new car and I have always taken my cars to indies. This was the first time he has told me he couldn’t do it. I’m coming up to the 60k and I expect he will tell me the same thing.

I noticed something about the dealer that I never saw before. All the service advisers look like they came from a modeling agency. Guys and gals. A friend of mine who owned a Pontiac-Oldsmobile-Buick dealership told me that this is something new. Apparently guys are unwilling to appear cheap to Bright Young Things so the upselling is pretty good.

Weird. I’d worry more about looking dumb, as some of those extra services are idiotic. And I’m not paying for extra services from people who can’t remember the simple instruction “Don’t Wash My Car” which the admittedly attractive people at the BMW dealership freaking could not manage. :mad:

I usually take my car to the indies for stuff like oil changes, tires, battery and other regular maintenance. But for big repairs I go to the dealer.

I’ve found that the dealers can usually pinpoint a problem right away and get it taken care before the end of the day. They also tend to be fairly trustworthy. I’ve had a few instances where the indies either can’t find the problem, or they try to blame it on something that even I, who is not mechanically inclined, know is not the cause.

Obviously it’s mostly going to depend on what specific garage you go to.

That said, my personal theory is that with a regular mechanic shop, their main business is servicing cars - that’s how they make their money. But if you’re lucky, a dealership might regard their service department as a side business and will offer you lower prices in the hopes of winning you over as a future customer for a car sale - which is where they make their money.

Dealesrhips make most of their money via the service department, not sales.

Except for the fact you have that backward, you are correct. It’s called absorption. As in how much of the dealerships fixed expenses does the service and parts department absorb. A really well run service dept will absorb almost all of the fixed expenses, leaving what little the sales department makes as profit.
The old saying in the car business is that sales sells the first one, the service department sells numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5.
At my dealership I will change your oil for about $15 less than iffy lube (and I still get complaints that we are too expensive!) we use quality oil, factory parts and all of my guys are factory trained. Go to iffy lube you get a guy that was delivering pizzas last week, who knows what oil, and the the cheapest filter money can buy.
Please don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against independent shops, guys like Gary T run some great shops. I’ve run an independent shop for my friend. My hardon is against places like iffy lube that rip people off, and don’t know what they are doing.

My days of doing my own service are long over. On my first car (1974!) it was possible for me to rewire the whole thing and rebuild a lot of the parts. Now I’m old and probably couldn’t even reach the oil filter, if I knew where it was. So that’s out.

It’s the up selling I worry about. My wife is the type to always take her car to the official dealer service, where the floors are always clean and they have cookies in the waiting room. Until it became completely obvious they were suggesting expensive repairs that weren’t needed. They always charged way more than I thought was necessary too but what do I know? Cars have changed a lot since the last time I crawled under one.

So I’m thinking I’ll do the 15,000 miles service (Subaru Outback) because it isn’t that much and I’ll see what other mechanics there are around for the future. Most of that 15,000 mile service is “check” this or that so I don’t see why it costs so much. I’m assuming they hook it up to an offical Subaru computer these days and it tells them more than an old school check up would.

I routinely have my annual inspection and periodic oil changes at my dealer but only because it’s free for the life of the vehicle. The dealer’s incentive to offer this free service is simply to get me back in as this allows them to find non-covered repairs and present me with an estimate. I like this free service and repair suggestions because it provides me with the option of taking my vehicle to a reputable and far less expensive repair shop to determine if the suggested repair is necessary and get an estimate.

Ah, Subaru. I brought my Impreza to Canadian Tire once for an oil change. I happened to be looking through the observation window when the pimply-faced mechanic opened the hood, gaped, and gestured for another young colleague to come and look. Apparently he had never seen a flat four. (This was a very ordinary Impreza TS, nothing added, and not particularly clean.)

From then on, I tried to stick to either dealers or a garage that specialised in Subarus.