You pay your money and make your choice. Here's my experience for what it's worth.

I bought new in 2010. The main dealer mislead and outright lied to me throughout the entire process. So much so that I took the service business to another of the group's dealerships for the first three years. Experience there was reasonable but the servicing costs and in particular the third year service was astronomical. It took significant effort on my part to get the original dealer to make some recompense by paying for my first service and for a tank of diesel. No apology from anyone in person.

I moved house a few years back to a new area. I thought I'd give the local main dealer one last chance. They damaged the car, which was left to me to discover. It had to go back to them the damage to be made good and resprayed.

A year or so later I had a fault with the aircon. Out of warranty, I went to Volvo UK, who made a goodwill 50% contribution to the work which had to be done at a main dealer. The fault was subject to a 'fix free if defective' note to dealers, but the window for that had just ended. The dealer did the work, but when pressed was adamant that Volvo UK wouldn't budge further on the discount. I called Volvo again and they immediately agreed to take another £50 off the bill. The Service Manager wouldn't talk to me when I picked the car up.

Since then I've found a reliable local garage (two in fact) who I trust to do work on my car at a reasonable price and to be honest and straightforward in any fault diagnosis. And this has been my experience not only with my Volvo, but with the one other car I owned from new.

Large car sales groups have no incentive at all in my view to do anything other than charge through the nose for all the services they provide. My local main dealer charges over £100 an hour labour, twice that of my local garage.

As the years pass and cars depreciate in value, there comes a point where the maintenance costs become equivalent to the car value. If you can get the work done by someone you trust (ask locally for recommendations), you might find that the work you need can be done at a greatly reduced cost and with the peace of mind that in my experience at least, the small garage is more inclined to help you out at short notice and when things go wrong.

All I'll say is that what I can do myself, I do. Other faults will be a mixture of main dealer or good independent, but for Annual Service, it's main dealer every time! It's a no brainer and here's Why-

I have had a basic service done for £215. Oil and filter change and cabin filter. Software downloads and a health check as well as Volvo Assistance European breakdown cover.

Individually that adds up to
£60 worth of oil
£10 oil filter
£25 cabin filter.
Software downloads reportedly £100ish if bought separately.
Equivalent RAC European breakdown cover - £190
Having a trained mechanic inspect your car - ????

So it's £215 for Volvo to do it or £385 to do it myself. 🤔

Do Volvo still release software updates for 9 year old cars? If so, would there be one every year? Genuine question, as I've just bought a 2010 V50, and I'm wondering if there's any software updates that it could potentially get.

Breakdown cover is included in my car insurance. I've never had a policy that didn't have it as standard, but that's in Ireland.

£60 worth of oil. Ok fair enough it wouldn't cost much less to buy your own premium oil, but at least you'd know exactly what you're getting.

£10 oil filter. Again it wouldn't cost much less to buy the OEM equivalent. Can't really argue with that one.

£25 cabin filter. Same as the oil filter. Worth having a decent one, and Volvo provide decent quality cabin filters.

£100 for software downloads is crazy on an out of warranty car, and I would hazard a guess that they aren't even necessary.

£190 for European breakdown cover? It's only £84 from the AA at the minute.

Having a qualified mechanic look over your car might provide a nice warm fuzzy feeling, but it doesn't mean that your car is problem free.

Volvos' labour rates are often £100+ per hour, so why are they giving such a considerable discount? Surely it isn't because they are charging for things that you aren't actually getting? I know first hand that main dealers tend to stick strictly to service schedules. If your car is due a service, but it is 5000 miles short of the official oil/fuel/cabin/air filter change interval, those items are unlikely to be changed. Not all dealers will exercise common sense when it comes to servicing. If it isn't due to be changed, they won't change it, even if they know the item will likely need to be changed before the next annual service is due.

It is your choice, but you're paying over the odds for convenience.

Probably a bit grumpy of me to do this but to add another angle:

[quote]
Individually that adds up to
£60 worth of oil - they buy in massive drums, probably more like £15.00
£10 oil filter - same, perhaps £5.00
£25 cabin filter - IF they bother to fit it - cost £12.00
Software downloads reportedly £100ish if bought separately - I've had 2 of these done and they were VERY sheepish over what they'd been able to "update" other than them saying the "technician" transferred files between car/computer - no report was offered, no copies of anything to show for what I'd paid for. Some manufacturers download data from OUR cars for research and feedback R&D etc....
Equivalent RAC European breakdown cover - £190 - have you studied the T&C's if you actually needed to call them out and get recovered HOME?
Having a trained mechanic inspect your car - sorry but lol, no-one cares about the car, they care about making money.

Brand-new Volvo? fine use the main dealer for 3 years then get the hell out of there.

I'd much rather buy a used car with a huge stack of receipts and record keeping than a 'stamped' book any day.

Skoda don’t even give you a stamp in the book anymore! All electronic now. For the next service on that I’ll the dealer do it for the stamp as it’s only 3 and a half years old so any big faults I’d have half a chance of goodwill because it’s always been serviced at Skoda.

If you are fortunate to know a good independent garage then use that. The one I use will use all genuine parts if I ask them to with no quibbles.

If you don't know a non-dealer garage you can trust, ask around, get a recommendation. In terms of servicing, the receipts for the genuine parts fitted by a VAT registered garage is more important than the stamp in the book (as we all know the stamp on its own means very little).

A good garage will know what needs doing, or can certainly find out, after all they would like the work, if they are not willing to do some research, maybe that garage isn't the one to use.

I will just share my experience:
- 2x4l kegs of oil: 48eur (Castrol Volvo spec) from Amazon.co.uk
- oil filter and oil replacement labour at my indie shop - 45eur
- cabin filter: 13eur from Ebay + 20mins of acrobatics myself
- breakdown cover: included in car insurance
- software download: for 13 years old car? come on...

I will take this over 215GBP any day.
but again - its personal preferences so no judgements here.

The handbook for Volvo Assistance is here - https://www.volvocars.com/uk/own/mai...lvo-assistance I've choosen 3 items and lets see how your breakdown recovery compares. Remember that this could mean a 7 seat XC90 towing a caravan through Europe. Not something we're all going to do but it's nice to have more cover than needed.

Yup, you car is still covered. See here - https://www.volvocars.com/uk/own/mai...ervice-promise

Personally as I have Bluetooth connectivity to my phone, making sure it will still pair with the latest phones is worthwhile. As to how much is changed, you could always ask but I imagine most dealers act like us when it comes to phone upgrades, you simply click accept without burrowing through the entire detail of what's changed. Some things you will notice, others you wont.