EU Law Block Exemption for vehicles

Little_Mo_70

Thanks so much for all for your responses. :T Lots of good points raised.

The camper is 21 months old and our dealer who sold it doesn't do servicing.

Having spent ages - again - trawling the net I have, at last, found a franchised garage offering very reasonable rates and they also advertise what they do for £139 inc.vat and oil change and all the checks so I don't think I could better that.

Thanks again

Mo x

Trebor16

Hintza wrote: »

The other thing being that you will have zero goodwill if something major gives 2 weeks past the end of the warranty period.

At the en of the a you pays your money and takes your chance, but anything however slight that allows the manufacturer to reject the claim could be used against the claimant.

Hintza, you are correct in raising the goodwill issue as a manufacturer is more likely to provide goodwill on a vehicle serviced within the network to one that has not. The overall question is how much will be saved by using an independent garage and whether the saving makes it worthwhile.

Trebor16

Little_Mo_70 wrote: »

Thanks so much for all for your responses. :T Lots of good points raised.

The camper is 21 months old and our dealer who sold it doesn't do servicing.

Having spent ages - again - trawling the net I have, at last, found a franchised garage offering very reasonable rates and they also advertise what they do for £139 inc.vat and oil change and all the checks so I don't think I could better that.

Thanks again

Mo x

Thanks for the update Mo. Is £139 a big saving on what you were originally quoted?

red_eye

Little_Mo_70 wrote: »

Does anyone know anything about the existence of 'Block Exemption' introduced by EU which says that you can take your vehicle to a non-franchised garage for services without invalidating the guarantee and, in effect, get the same service for a lower price. I have found a local garage who have good reputation, use proper parts etc but are not 'franchised'.

I've surfed the web and found lots about it inc.on OFT site but I wanted to e-mail a recognised body to get something in writing if it were possible. OFT doesn't advise and the Gov.site they re-direct you to doesn't seem to cover it? Perhaps I should contact EU direct?

Has anyone had experience of using the Block Exemption please?

google IMI there one of the main bodys

GolfBravo

Road_Hog wrote: »

No it won't be.

The manufacturer is quite within its rights to reject any warranty and there is a good chance that they may do so. This is a risk you balance against the reward of a cheaper service.

Yes, you are right. A manufacturer can reject any warranty work. But they can reject warranty work regardless whether the car is serviced by an independent mechanic or a franchised dealer. More on that below.

colino wrote: »

Has anyone any real experience of landing a claim against a manufacturer after using an indie during the warranty period? How easy must it be for a manufacturer to reject a claim as OEM parts provenance can not be proved.

Majority of rejected warranty horror stories are based on warranty work rejected/not authorised by a franchised dealer, and not by a manufacturer. My guesstimate is that 90% of rejected work is actually rejected by warranty clerks at dealerships, and manufacturers don't know anything about it - rejected warranty boosts dealers' bottom line significantly.

Remember that car warranty is provided by the vehicle manufacturer/importer/distributor (some manufacturers even setup a separate wholly owned insurance company purely for warranty claims, eg. General Motors) and not by the dealer.

So when your car warranty repairs get "rejected" ask who's rejecting it, your dealer or manufacturer. If it is the dealer, ring the manufacturer straight away and speak to the regional service manager who's in charge of the warranty monthly budgets and targets - they hate getting customer phone calls and will do everything possible to get you off their back.

And roughly this is how it works (sorry for the long essay):
A OAP couple drive their beloved 2yo Jaguar X-type with only 30K miles on the clock down the M25 - this is a true story BTW. Suddenly the transfer box disintegrates (a frequent and well documented failure of not-fit-for purpose Jag/Ford transfer box) for no apparent reason, and it ends up all over the road, broken metal parts and oil everywhere. The car is immobilised, so they call roadside assistance. Roadside assistance bloke offers to take their car to the nearest Jag garage for free, but the couple decide to pay to take the car to their local Jag dealer. They think "our local garage is so great, they charge us only £800 for a service, they should fix our beloved Jag".

The car is then at the Jag dealership and the service manager tells them the good news: "it's the transfer box, it will take 48 hours to get it sorted. A brand new genuine Jag transfer box (made by German ZF Friedrichshafen in Nottingham) is on its way". And the bad news: "BTW this repair is not covered by the manufacturer's warranty because of wear and tear. The total cost is £4200".

So while the OAPs are having a heart attack they ring me for advice (just under 10y experience of working for 2 global car manufacturers including aftersales). I tell them it's BS, and not to authorise the £4200 work since it is definitely not wear and tear - transfer boxes are engineered to last 300K, not 30K miles. So they go back to the service manager and tell him how it is. He then says that the failure is probably due to abuse, but then makes them a "goodwill" offer to split the bill in half. The OAPs get really !!!!ed off and ring Jaguar UK, who then follow this up with the dealer.

Jaguar UK promptly authorises the warranty work and parts, and the car is fixed the next day.

So why did the dealer reject the warranty work? Well, the service manager had a dilemma of whether to charge the OAPs for parts and labour (at full retail prices) and make a £1000 profit, or whether to contact Jaguar UK to authorise the warranty work and parts (discounted labour charge and wholesale priced parts) to make £100 profit. Don't forget it can cost them anything from £2000 a day just to open the garage door in the morning - this is why franchised dealers charge more and will try every trick in the book to "reject" warranty work.

A manufacturer can't reject car warranty simply because an independent mechanic used a non-genuine brake pads, unless they can prove that the failure was caused by an out of spec non-genuine part. They simply don't have the time and resources to investigate and then reject for eg. £500 broken windscreen wipers warranty claim. That £500 is a lot to you, but it's only about 0.1% of a monthly warranty budget for a major manufacturer.

The law is very clear about warranties, and it favours the consumer. It is extremely unlikely that you would ever need to take a manufacturer to court because of rejected warranty claim - it's usually the franchised dealers who are PITA.

Road_Hog

GolfBravo wrote: »

Majority of rejected warranty horror stories are based on warranty work rejected/not authorised by a franchised dealer, and not by a manufacturer. My guesstimate is that 90% of rejected work is actually rejected by warranty clerks at dealerships

You are wrong there. I don't need to guesstimate it, I had 20 years with a car manufacturer, half of which was as an area manager.

GolfBravo wrote: »

Remember that car warranty is provided by the vehicle manufacturer/importer/distributor (some manufacturers even setup a separate wholly owned insurance company purely for warranty claims, eg. General Motors) and not by the dealer.

But your contract is with the dealership, not the manufacturer.

GolfBravo wrote: »

So when your car warranty repairs get "rejected" ask who's rejecting it, your dealer or manufacturer. If it is the dealer, ring the manufacturer straight away and speak to the regional service manager who's in charge of the warranty monthly budgets and targets - they hate getting customer phone calls and will do everything possible to get you off their back.

No they won't. Although I was an area sales manager, because I worked in a different division to car sales (the company manufactured many other things), I wore the area service manager cap, the area parts manager cap, the area after sales cap etc.

I can assure you (and yes I regularly mixed and spoke to the car boys) that ringing up area/regional managers does not get a free warranty service/replacement.

What I would do, is first ring the dealer and get his opinion. I would weigh his opinion on dealings with him, past experience on service issues, quality of his service department and staff, past decisions and generally what I though of the dealership.

I would then get back to the customer and ask them a number of questions and if one of those questions (I would have know already from the dealership) made apparent that it transpired that the vehicle had been serviced outside of the network, then goodwill would almost fall to zero and certainly any warranty would seriously be questioned.

I was always quite pro the customer, I think it's better to have someone go away happy singing the praises of the manufacturer, rather telling everyone how much he hates them. But that doesn't mean you get freebies, service outside the dealer network (where the manufacturer has no control of standards) and you take a risk.

GolfBravo wrote: »

And roughly this is how it works (sorry for the long essay):

Snipped a load of rubbish.

Thanks for your anecdote, but I do hope people don't follow your advice. Yes, there is the odd dealership that prefers to reject warranty, to take more profitable work by charging the customer for it, but it's few and far between.

And if you do want to bypass the dealer and go straight to the manufacturer, do you want to do that with a full main dealer service book or with an independent?

If you want goodwill or a 50/50 decision to go your way, then think about it.

After your warranty is finished or has so many exclusions it is worthless, then by all means go independent garage. Now that I no longer have a company car, I never bother with main dealers after three years*, but in the first three years, they get my business.

* Although, I would add a caveat that some manufacturers have a fixed reduced price service for older cars that are worthwhile. But I service my own.

banger9365

nice reading ,

GolfBravo

Road_Hog wrote: »

And if you do want to bypass the dealer and go straight to the manufacturer, do you want to do that with a full main dealer service book or with an independent?
/.../
But that doesn't mean you get freebies, service outside the dealer network (where the manufacturer has no control of standards) and you take a risk.
/.../
But your contract is with the dealership, not the manufacturer.

No. Stop right there. I'm not advising anyone to bypass the dealer and go straight to the manufacturer. And I certainly don't expect anyone to receive any freebies from the manufacturer. Car dealer is definitely your first point of contact.

However, if you feel/know that your dealer's decision to reject a warranty claim is unfair (e.g. due to unrelated "non-genuine" service parts used), by all means go to another dealer or contact the manufacturer. I hear warranty horror stories all the time: windscreen wiper motor "not covered" on a 6-month Renault Trafic (£650 bill), Jaguar transfer box not covered due to 30K miles wear and tear (£4200), faulty Citroen drop links after 4K miles (£200), fading Ford badges on a 6-month old car (£90), etc. I'm afraid some dealers definitely have a default "no" answer for most customer warranty queries - they just can't be bothered with the paperwork, and find it much easier and more profitable to quickly swipe their customers' credit cards. And they are definitely not few and far between.

From my experience I know that both a dealer and manufacturer are definitely going to notice the non-franchise service history, but they can't just dismiss it. Some will try to get out of their warranty obligations because of it, but manufacturers certainly know that they have extensive legal obligations and do take a very close look before rejecting any warranty claims. And as part of their legal obligations they must also grant all independent repairers access to technical information: part finders/lists, service bulletins, repair manuals, etc. They are certainly not free, but they are available to anyone.

Car dealers want to profit from your fears and make you believe that by taking your car to an independent garage for a simple service you automatically lose your warranty. No, you don't. Your car warranty is not conditional on having the oil changed only in authorised garages. And this is the law, regardless of what the warranty blurb in your owners handbook suggests.

So you really have to weight things out - if your local franchised garage charges £139 for a service, it's a no brainer obviously. But if they charge £495 for a glorified oil change, car wash and one of their apprentices taking it for a test drive, then don't be afraid to start looking at other alternatives.

Little_Mo_70

GolfBravo wrote: »

No. Stop right there. I'm not advising anyone to bypass the dealer and go straight to the manufacturer. And I certainly don't expect anyone to receive any freebies from the manufacturer. Car dealer is definitely your first point of contact.

However, if you feel/know that your dealer's decision to reject a warranty claim is unfair (e.g. due to unrelated "non-genuine" service parts used), by all means go to another dealer or contact the manufacturer. I hear warranty horror stories all the time: windscreen wiper motor "not covered" on a 6-month Renault Trafic (£650 bill), Jaguar transfer box not covered due to 30K miles wear and tear (£4200), faulty Citroen drop links after 4K miles (£200), fading Ford badges on a 6-month old car (£90), etc. I'm afraid some dealers definitely have a default "no" answer for most customer warranty queries - they just can't be bothered with the paperwork, and find it much easier and more profitable to quickly swipe their customers' credit cards. And they are definitely not few and far between.

From my experience I know that both a dealer and manufacturer are definitely going to notice the non-franchise service history, but they can't just dismiss it. Some will try to get out of their warranty obligations because of it, but manufacturers certainly know that they have extensive legal obligations and do take a very close look before rejecting any warranty claims. And as part of their legal obligations they must also grant all independent repairers access to technical information: part finders/lists, service bulletins, repair manuals, etc. They are certainly not free, but they are available to anyone.

Car dealers want to profit from your fears and make you believe that by taking your car to an independent garage for a simple service you automatically lose your warranty. No, you don't. Your car warranty is not conditional on having the oil changed only in authorised garages. And this is the law, regardless of what the warranty blurb in your owners handbook suggests.

So you really have to weight things out - if your local franchised garage charges £139 for a service, it's a no brainer obviously. But if they charge £495 for a glorified oil change, car wash and one of their apprentices taking it for a test drive, then don't be afraid to start looking at other alternatives.

Bit of a dilema then, as mentioned, our dealer from whom we purchased from new the camper is small concern and does not service vehicles. Noticed that, unfortunately, the franchised garage I have found does m/h services from £139 for non warrenty vehicles only. I have mailed them for a quote for ours anyway and explained 2k mileage etc and asked 'a service is a service' why the exclusion?

Full blown service with normal franchised from £500 upwards and I fear that it may be as you say GB, that this might just be for glorified oil/filter change and bit of check being that the mileage is so low.

Just a point of note, the warranty with our camper is 2 years but there is an extended 2 years special insurance warrenty for a further 2 years for engine which we are tied to and this is what we would be covered by.
Prob.not that it makes any difference, a warrenty is a warrenty.

GolfBravo

Little_Mo_70 wrote: »

Full blown service with normal franchised from £500 upwards and I fear that it may be as you say GB, that this might just be for glorified oil/filter change and bit of check being that the mileage is so low.

Your camper's maintenance and guarantee guide will list all standard/general and age operations required for the 2yr service.
The 2yr service would most likely include oil and oil/diesel/air/pollen filter change. So that's £50-£60 in parts. Then you have your typical visual checks of brakes, dampers, drive belt, play in hubs, etc. 40 minutes max. And maybe a brake fluid change on top of that.

Is it worth £500+ ?