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 any damage on your car, scratches, dents, damage to the windscreen etc. include damage to wheels and tyres here too. This again should be on the worksheet. This helps to protect you if your car is damaged when you go to collect it after the work has been completed. If you don't do this, and your vehicle is damaged while in the dealership's care, they can deny all knowledge and responsibility.
Make a note of your milage. Although dealerships will deny this, on occasion they will use your car as a runabout while it is in their care. Certainly, it will undergo a test drive, but that is all. The real danger here is that much later, you receive reminders for non paid parking tickets, or worse, the police come after you because your car was involved in an accident, while not in your care. You will need as much proof as possible that the car was in the care of the dealership while an incident occurred as possible, to prove your case.
When you go to collect your car, after the work on it has been carried out, ask to go out for a test drive accompanied by one of the dealership staff. Any immediate problems with the work carried out should be apparent, and you can then get them to finish the job off properly with no additional charge.
Inspect your car, make sure it has no additional damage and the milage is as you expect it to be.
In most cases, customers of car dealerships have a satisfactory experience at the very least, but, by using the points above, you can help to make sure that your experience is not a troubled one.