by Mike Mccarthy

Created on: March 06, 2009

Does your car dealership look after you? Are you receiving good service and being treated honestly? A car dealership is a business, and, should be using good business ethics.

This means that as a customer, you should be receiving best advice, and value for money. However, you should never forget that as a business, your car dealership expects to show a profit too. There is nothing wrong with that, the dealership has the usual business expenses to meet and possibly shareholders to which they are responsible. This does not mean however, that you the customer, should be expected to suffer over charging and incorrect advice that leads to a bigger bill than expected.

If your vehicle is going into the dealership to have some work carried out on it, make sure you get a written estimate beforehand. The estimate should cover the costs of any parts involved, the estimated labour charge and the cost of any service items such as oil etc. It should also indicate if the estimate is inclusive or exclusive of any taxes.

Once you have this estimate, you can then go for a second opinion. This can be at an independant repairers, although bear in mind they may seem cheaper as they probably have a lower overhead. Parts though should come out about the same. If the parts pricing is significantly lower, it may be that the parts quoted are not manufacturers reccomended ones. Again, this may not be a problem, its a choice you have to make. You can also call round and get prices on the parts, to see how the dealership quotation stacks up. The point here is, you now have a choice, have the work done at the dealership, or have it done somewhere else, your decision though is now an informed one.

Once you have decided to have the work carried out at the dealership, there are several things you need to do to make sure all goes smoothly.

Firstly, make it very clear, possibly having this written on the worksheet, that the dealer is to phone you before carrying out any additional work over and above what had been agreed. Also, if you do agree to more work, if they replace parts, insist on seeing the old ones. It's an old trick within the motor trade, to either replace things that do not need it to bump the bill up, or, to leave things off the original estimate, to keep the estimate lower, and then add more work once they get the car into the workshop.

When you deliver the car to the dealership to have the work carried out, insist that someone from the dealership goes round the car with you, and notes

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