Survey: What Do You Think About Your Repair Guy?
Car owners are more satisfied with independent shops for maintenance; by the editors of Consumer Reports
Note: Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertiser on MSN.com
Car owners were more satisfied with independent shops for maintenance than dealerships, according to the latest annual auto survey by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. The survey found that owners of all makes were equally satisfied with the timeliness and courtesy of the maintenance service at the dealership, where the majority turned for this routine work.
However, Jaguar, Lexus, Acura, Porsche, Infiniti, Volvo, and Mercedes-Benz owners were the least satisfied with the price they paid for maintenance service at the dealership.
Satisfaction with maintenance at service chains (e.g., Jiffy Lube, Midas) was also measured. Overall, there were minimal differences among the individual chains. Although highly satisfied with maintenance at chains, those who went to independent shops and dealerships for maintenance were more satisfied.
Independent shops in general had an incremental advantage over dealerships for maintenance in overall score and price. In contrast, independent shops have a more clear advantage in repairs.
The findings on maintenance service are based on more than 81,000 reports on service visits to independent mechanics and 211,000 service visits to new car dealerships.
Below, we feature the top 10 brands for dealership-service satisfaction.
Behind the survey: The data was collected from more than 168,000 vehicles that were serviced, including repairs, from the Consumer Reports National Research Center’s 2011 Annual Questionnaire. The reader score represents overall satisfaction with the shop used for the repair. A score of 100 would mean all respondents were completely satisfied; 80 means they were very satisfied, on average; 60 means they were fairly satisfied.
See our full report on repair and maintenance satisfaction.
Read more at Consumer Reports:
Maintenance costs are well worth the money. It's REPAIR COSTS that are a drag.
So, let me get this straight, frosty, you're saying it's okay to be gouged for maintenance by Toyota, Lexus, Honda and Acura to avoid repair costs? What's the difference, a lot of money is unnecessarily being sucked out of your wallet. Besides, what Toyota, Lexus, Honda and Acura owners call "routine maintenance" actually would be called major repairs on other brands. They're just disguising the truth. Have you ever seen a Toyota, Lexus, Honda or Acura dealer without a full service department? Me neither. Doesn't matter whether you're there spending outrageous amounts of money on "routine maintenance" or reasonably priced repairs elsewhere, the money is still gone.
I have been a mechanic on everything from mach 2+ fighters to nitro powered model engines, There is a reason sometimes for the prices. A diagnostic is usually one hour at the current shop rate EVEN IF IT ONLY TAKES 15min. The reason is how it is broken down and the guy doing the job. Example: If you car has a check engine light on you need to know what is wrong right? so you bring it to someone like me and I bring out my scanner that cost me money to check the code, I find nothing wrong,reset the light and off you go. Here is what you just paid for, The service writers time, the repair order, the rack/bay time, MY KNOWLEDGE, and the maintenance on my tools and the building.
It is not gouging. Everyone needs to feed their family right? If I give away diagnostics all day and only one person has me fix the issue, how do I stay in business?
I will give everyone here a BIG secret to avoiding high repair costs, DO THE REQUIRED MAINTENANCE AT THE INTERVALS RECOMMENDED, FIX THE ISSUE WHEN IT HAPPENS, and LEAVE THE RACE EQUIPMENT AND STUPID OVERSIZE WHEELS ALONE. There is an old saying "The more you modify the more it breaks." Follow these guides and your repair bills are cut in half and you will end up with TONS of miles on a car or truck or motorcycle.
Strange, I have owned many domestics as well as Toyotas and my maintenance costs have never been any higher owning a Toyota, plus none of my Toyotas have ever seen the inside of a repair bay making them much cheaper to own than any of my domestics.
I hear people like you make these claims but the vast majority of people that I know own imports and I never here them say things like that, plus they always buy another import when it comes time to get a new vehicle, which certainly wouldn't make sense if they were "gouging them in the wallet".
It is not gouging. Everyone needs to feed their family right? If I give away diagnostics all day and only one person has me fix the issue, how do I stay in business?
Then why can independent garages do it for far less than dealerships? Sounds like the dealerships are either gouging or have a broken business model that requires them to charge more to generate the same amount of profit. Which is it?
Of course then there are the story tellers out there that like to make up stuff about how often their import needed fixing. These stories usually begin with "Once upon a time" and end saying they "Lived happily ever after after they got rid of it and bought a domestic vehicle". These are called comedies and are quite entertaining actually.
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