someone said mechanics are always men
Based on Years of reading car magazines I would say Ferraris.
In some places this is known as a “wall job”.
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Yeah I go way out of my way to take my car to a guy who has, on multiple occasions, discovered that the expensive repair I thought my car needed wasn’t actually what was wrong. Last time, I thought there was a leak in the fuel line. Turned out my gas cap wasn’t sealing and that’s where the strong smell of gas was coming from. He could have replaced the fuel lines and I’d have been none the wiser. Instead he charged me $12 for a gas cap and apologized that he only had the “expensive” one in stock.
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The real crime here is the Vanilla Frosty. What kind of person gets a Vanilla Frosty? Now we know.
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Because doing so can void the warranty as I discovered when I got an oil change on my Subaru with a third party. Went into the Subaru dealer about a month later for a an transmission problem. Transmission needed to be replaced. The dealer said he didn’t have to cover it because someone else worked on the car; Subaru backed him up even though the oil change had nothing to do with the transmission.
All the other issues aside, standard trans service is just replacing fluid and a filter change. It is entirely conceivable that it was done in only 11 minutes.
Mine keeps giving me oil change coupons for about what I would get elsewhere, and I figure it’s more likely they’ll do it right.
I would refer the dealer to the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975.
tl;dr The dealer claiming a third party oil change automatically voids your car’s warranty is tripe.
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I thought of this, but the video says the owner got a 30% corporate fleet discount, which only makes sense if the service wasn’t warrantied. I’m sure the dealership hikes up the service price and then “discounts” it something nearer what an independent repair shop would charge.
Perhaps, but a dealership has a particularly perverse incentive to poorly service your vehicle. Any auto shop can be crooked, but a dealership is incentivized to do so whereas an independent shop has only it’s reputation to protect.
You’d think they’d rather have a raise than a temperamental German auto that throws an electronic fit if you don’t feed it overpriced manufacturer-only parts. Different strokes I guess.
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I wound’t go as far as to say honest, but less perversely incentivized. See my reply to realgeek above.
I’ve dealt with bad independent mechanics, but I’ve also dealt with extremely honest mechanics, none of whom worked at dealerships. Auto dealerships are some of the scummiest institutions Apate ever devised.
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Pretty much only collector cars appreciate in value. Everything else goes off the cliff as soon as it’s driven off a lot. Another reason never to buy a new vehicle and to avoid dealerships like the plague they are.
Except that any vehicle you trade it in for will be above Bluebook, negating your gains on average while locking you in. To each their own, but I would never buy a vehicle from a dealership.
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Easier said than done. I briefly considered replacing my vintage Volvo with a newer one until I determined that all I’d be able to do on it is change the oil. The ECM on new luxury cars is basically hardware DRM. It’s disgusting.
One more reason to avoid dealerships, IMO. Also, as @MadLibrarian points out, if you were in the US, the dealership and Subaru lied to you. Why would you trust them with anything else if they won’t even tell you the truth about something so basic?
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From the article on citynews.ca that Grahamers20021 posted: “He [Daniel Sheikhan] says that when he first took the video into the dealership, management asked him if his intention was for someone to lose their jobs. He said it wasn’t.”
People should be losing their jobs over this–including people in management.
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I don’t buy used computers and I don’t buy used cars. I’m not dealing with other people’s bad decisions.
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While I always insist on an inspection by a mechanic of my choice, I look at a used vehicle as one that’s stood the test of time. Computers become obsolete too fast to be comparable, IMHO. Anyway, never bought a new vehicle, but YMMV…literally.
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Even then it’s a gamble. And of course every mile put on it reduces value, but if you let it sit it also loses value unless you meticulously maintain it. You end up with people buying these amazing and rare cars and just selfishly storing them in their climate controlled warehouses never to be driven. (Unless you’re the rare collector like Jay Leno who actually drives their cars.)
It’s a goddamn travesty.
For the most part, buying a car as an investment is a terrible idea.
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This seems like a clear violation of the Magnuson-Moss Act. I’m sure the FTC would love to hear about this.
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It’s not a warranty thing, it’s about preserving the value in the eyes of second parties. Documented proof that you had the work done at a dealership is better than something from some random third party. It’s somewhat paranoid, but important when talking about vehicles that fall apart alarmingly fast when not well maintained.
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