Car from dealer not maintained. Any

photome

Ibrahim5 said:

Just because a garage has electronically added a record for a service doesn't mean that they have actually done one. LOL.

Just because the owner says I have been servicing my vehicle every year myself, doesn’t mean they have

Herzlos

It's worth noting that Ibrahim5 appears periodically to complain about how all car dealers are scammers and never do the work billed for, so he's so much better for doing it all himself.  I'm not sure it'd done anything except derailing threads.

Ibrahim5

If you take your car to a garage unless you fit it with webcams you ain't got a clue if they have done anything. Do it yourself and you know what's been done. I service my cars to a much higher standard than any garage could ever do.

force_ten1

Ibrahim5 said:

If you take your car to a garage unless you fit it with webcams you ain't got a clue if they have done anything. Do it yourself and you know what's been done. I service my cars to a much higher standard than any garage could ever do.

https://metro.co.uk/2025/01/15/dashcam-captures-garage-worker-weeing-mercedes-a-car-wash-22364895/#

and you never know what you will capture on your dash cam   

photome

Ibrahim5 said:

If you take your car to a garage unless you fit it with webcams you ain't got a clue if they have done anything. Do it yourself and you know what's been done. I service my cars to a much higher standard than any garage could ever do.

Maybe so but most people can’t or don’t want to, and just because you say you have done it doesn’t mean you have when it’s time to sell. 

How many usernames have you had 

Ibrahim5

Why would I ever want to sell? My cars are too well looked after to sell them.

paul_c123

Ibrahim5 said:

If you take your car to a garage unless you fit it with webcams you ain't got a clue if they have done anything. Do it yourself and you know what's been done. I service my cars to a much higher standard than any garage could ever do.

Do you have formal qualifications? And dealer-level software which includes the service schedule details?

WellKnownSid

paul_c123 said:

Ibrahim5 said:

If you take your car to a garage unless you fit it with webcams you ain't got a clue if they have done anything. Do it yourself and you know what's been done. I service my cars to a much higher standard than any garage could ever do.

Do you have formal qualifications? And dealer-level software which includes the service schedule details?

To be fair, servicing is servicing - it's just a standard IMI tick sheet for most dealerships.

Main dealers will put their cheapest people on servicing and brakes because it's good economic sense, usually the apprentices.

Those "service schedule details" will be decided by corporate HQ who will be looking to minimise costs to the leasing firms who buy half the cars, thus extending oil changes etc etc, as long as the car doesn't explode within the warranty period.

paul_c123

WellKnownSid said:

paul_c123 said:

Ibrahim5 said:

If you take your car to a garage unless you fit it with webcams you ain't got a clue if they have done anything. Do it yourself and you know what's been done. I service my cars to a much higher standard than any garage could ever do.

Do you have formal qualifications? And dealer-level software which includes the service schedule details?

To be fair, servicing is servicing - it's just a standard IMI tick sheet for most dealerships.

Main dealers will put their cheapest people on servicing and brakes because it's good economic sense, usually the apprentices.

Those "service schedule details" will be decided by corporate HQ who will be looking to minimise costs to the leasing firms who buy half the cars, thus extending oil changes etc etc, as long as the car doesn't explode within the warranty period.

Servicing isn't JUST servicing. I've repaired plenty of cars with full non-main-dealer service history, and the root cause of the issue is something to do with a service item being done wrong, or omitted, or the wrong spec of oil/coolant/whatever being used, or a cheap part fitted.

Put simply, there's a scale of "how good" servicing is, from main dealer to well-reputed specialist to decent local garage to terrible local garage. Then we have the home mechanics who on the one hand, love their cars, but on the other hand, simply don't possess the right tools, information or knowledge to do a job properly on the car.

And this is reflected in secondhand values. Look at nearly new cars and you'll see that main dealer service history commands a premium over non-main-dealer.

Sure, I hear you, servicing is - can be - simple, and the dealers are getting paid richly for cash-cow work. But its all part of the "aftersales" system.

Kim_13

Mildly_Miffed said:

MerlinV90 said:

Aside this, I apologise. I forgot to add in that the advert stated the car came with a “full service history” which is clearly not correct.

What does that phrase even mean?

It could be a history of all the service work the car has ever had done.

Why do you assume that the vendor of this car is going to have chased up on every stamp? He's bought the car at auction, and turned it round.

But we're still back to caveat emptor. "The ad says full history - can I have a look at that paperwork?"

If you're only going by the service book, then remember that it's entirely possible that there were other invoices that have been binned because they had personally identifying information from previous owners, which is illegal under GDPR. Yes, they could be anonymised with a black marker, but this is a frequent occurrence.

A history of all service work the car has ever had done might be accepted if it were a private sale, as the seller is not expected to be an expert. As the car was bought from a dealer, FSH would mean a service per year or just over, as not everyone gets their car serviced on the same date each year; they take a slot they can get at approximately the right time - just as a car might have an MOT after little more than 11 months and then go slightly over a year without being tested again. At a push, there might be a service or two missing if the car was low mileage - but when both the mileage (10,000?) and the time period (1 year) service intervals have been missed without a service, it can in no way be described as having a full service history. I’m guessing it’s done more than 10,000 or whatever the mileage interval is since its last purported service in 2013?

If there were other invoices, then the dealer could have removed any identifying information or written the dates, service location, mileage and work done into the service book before securely destroying them. Given they sold a car with only a month’s MOT on it (the standard is it has a fresh MOT done if there is less than 6 months remaining), I think it’s safe to say this particular dealer wouldn’t have given a hoot for GDPR and would have furnished such invoices had they existed.

The dealer isn’t responsible for the services that are in the book having been faked, however. Likely whoever had the car from new faked them so that they could sell it in 2013 with a full service history. [Or they were recorded under a private plate as per one of the other replies.] If the dealer had faked them, then he’d have faked them up to 2024.

Perhaps the dealer knew about the brake issue - if they can get a fresh MOT and doing so will cost less than it will add to the value, why wouldn’t they? So maybe they decided they’d get more money by leaving it and finding someone who didn’t look up the car’s history before they bought it.  But depending on the cause of the fail, it might be that it was caused from the time the car was laid up. Until the recently there was a low mileage old car in the family that had never failed an MOT. I later found it listed for sale, the ad stating it would come with a fresh MOT with no advisories which I thought a bit presumptuous - unless you have a don’t write down any advisories arrangement with a MOT tester or you are one, how can you be 100% sure that a car won’t get any? I looked up the reg and low and behold it had been put through and failed. The cause of the fail was a rear brake binding excessively with an advisory for a perished tyre. Looking at the mileage on the dealer’s photos and the location, it had done more miles on a trailer since it was sold than it had on the road. 

If you’re going to pursue anything, the FSH claim is best in relation to lack of services for 2014-2024 - but as she’s spent money on the car rejecting it now wouldn’t make sense. I tend to agree that if you did manage to prove anything else, they’d shut up shop rather than pay. A dealer offering no warranty whatsoever should be a red flag in future. 

The vehicle tax site will tell you when the MOT expires, and verify anything you’re told about the cost of tax. A family friend bought a car he was told was £30 tax. Had it been a higher trim level or a manual it would have been, but this car was actually in the tax band above - £160 currently instead of £35! You can also check the MOT history so you know if there’s anything that’s likely to need attention.