Corner Garage vs. Dealer Service Department
Edmunds.com
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It's a hassle, but you really do have to maintain your car properly if you want it to run well. But where should you take your car for service? There's always the dealership service department but you know it'll probably cost you an arm and a leg. There's also Joe's Garage — right down the street, but can you trust them to do the job right? Corner Garage vs. Dealer Service Department
Corner Garage vs. Dealer Service Department article on Edmunds.com
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Being a first time car owner myself, it is great to find articles -much like these- available online.
Thank you
"woodywagons" response which tries to discredit the article because he/she thinks it was biased towards one segment of the trade demonstrates just as little true experience as the article itself did. For one thing, as a small shop owner I carry as much insurance as the dealer does and the comparisons don't end there. We find and alert our customers when a recall is needed and if they aren't waiting for their car have many time been able to have that dealt with prior to returning the car to the customer. We usually do give customers a ride to work or back home and we had a loaner car until one particular customer ruined it for everyone. As a small independent mom and pop shop that was a big expense for us to offer that.
So now back to the article. Anyone can write something that amounts to a set of generalizations based on rough perceptions. There were some accurate points as in I started out as a dealer technician and eventually worked my way to owning my own shop. But just because I did that in agreement with the article that doesn't mean that's how it happened for the shop across the street. Their legacy goes back three generations and started out in the corner gas station with no dealer time at all. Yes the article left room to support both career tracks but it did little else to reveal the trade and what you would have encountered in a career as a technician and especially as a small business operator.
For one thing we offered a nationwide warranty just like the dealers can, that was through our association with one of the major parts chains. The article made it sound like you would only get O.E. parts at the dealerships, that's not correct. Many dealers source repair parts from the national chains. Companies like NAPA, CARQUEST, etcetera acquire replacement parts from the very vendors that the O.E. licenses to manufacturer their components. All you have to do is take a few extra seconds to scan the available choices and you'll see when the "actual O.E. part" is called out. In a lot of cases the major chain sources the part straight from the dealer network supplier and as an independent business we have to do our homework because it may be less expensive for us to go straight to the dealer and get the part then it is to buy it from an aftermarket source.
The article mentioned specialization and that is an entire subject all to itself. With specializing as done in a dealership today a technician doesn't only learn that manufacturer he/she may do engine work but never touch a transmission. Another may do transmission work while never doing any engine work. Electronics and computer controls while overlapping many of the specialties may have another technician ultimately specialize in just that work and so on. This has the advantage of being much more knowledgeable and experienced within their specialty at the cost of gaining no knowledge and experience that would be necessary to one day make the career step of owning their own shop as a lot of the boomer generation had the chance to do.
Tools and software subscriptions, one of the greatest changes in the last decade for shops. Not all that long ago a single scan tool did everything that we really needed. Then came OBDII and flash reprogramming and all of the robotics that are built into the vehicles and a technician couldn't do the whole job anymore with an aftermarket scan tool. For many small shops the choice was to send the car back to the dealership and they chose to not make that investment in tools and training. But yet there were some independents who not only had aftermarket tooling they also stepped up and purchased the same factory tools that the dealers were using and the software subscriptions on top of that. Once the shops started down this path the dealers had a significant advantage cost wise since the dealer really only needed to support the manufacturer that they sell as new vehicles. An aftermarket shop was forced to start to specialize more or attempt to support dozens of manufacturers with all of their different systems, software licenses and tooling. When you add all of that up there are now portions of the work were top independents can easily be more expensive than the dealers might be. The trouble comes down to getting the consumer to see the genuine value in what the shop is providing which can never be measured by the price tag alone.
Well that's a glimpse of just how much the article missed the mark, there is no way the writer could have known any of this without having worked in the trade over the last few decades while trying to stay at the top of the craft. The same goes with many of the responses that will come along. There are likely to be anecdotal stories from any individual perspective that will concentrate on one or several alleged events from which someone will try to paint the whole picture of the trade as they see it. My own experience doesn't paint the picture for the entire trade either, the only thing it does is advises the reader that they cannot judge anything about the trade based on what they once held as an accurate perception.