do you guys use the dealers after the first free service?

[PaulLR3]

I do my own oil changes, filters, wipers and seasonal tire changeovers. I have a great relationship with my dealer service department and they do the rest. They are about 20% more than a local incompetent indy and it's worth it to me. The local indy couldn't even do a brake job on our LR3 without ruining the parking brake shoes.

I spent about $8000 on dealer maintenance and repairs on our LR3 over 100K miles. They always fixed things right the first time and free loaner cars are convenient. Here's something an indy wouldn't do...the dealer put $1200 worth of mice damage repair though as free warranty work on our brand new LR4.

But of course, your experience with your dealer may be entirely different.

 

[catman]

Our local dealer is pretty good as well. For specific individual services they are about only 10-15% more than a great local indy shop. In and out in one day, I never asked for a loaner but they have a bunch and will supposedly come as far as 2 hours away to pickup a vehicle for service as well (I am not sure if that is only if you bought it from them or not).

The main difference between our local indy and the dealer is with bundled services. Say a 75k or 105k service. The dealer allocates x amount of time for each aspect of the service and then charges for that as a package price (such as $879.45 for the complete service) before you even show up. They will not break it apart and skip small bits of it (like rotating tires) or reduce the cost if they save time.

The indy shop can do all the same checks, door lube, replace a bulb type things in minutes and not charge much of anything for it. So in those cases it can add up to hundreds of dollars less.

Like many here, we use both the dealer and indy shop depending on circumstances. I feel lucky to have great dealer based on some comments on here!