[Lincolnite]

Originally Posted by Ignatz

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.

Could you advise the two garages in Lincoln you’d use again please.

Thanks