Car servicing in Germany at independent garages

This article is dated as shown. Laws, fees and prices have changed since then. Check the figures before you rely on them.

We continue the topic we started in the previous article …

The situation with independent garages

When choosing an independent garage, check the servicing requirements in the vehicle documents and keep proof of the work carried out. Statutory liability for defects and a voluntary warranty are two different legal bases. The decision on a specific repair depends on the warranty terms and on whether the fault is linked to the servicing; a general promise that the warranty will be preserved is not enough.

The market of independent garages is quite large and a review of it deserves a full article of its own. The biggest independent service chain in Germany at the moment is A.T.U (Auto-Teile-Unger, Unger car parts), which has an extensive network of branches, lets you find out the cost of replacing consumables for most models directly on its website and book a service appointment.

So, can you save money, and should you?

You have probably noticed in our videos that we very often service our cars ourselves. Why do we do this? In our view, for cars with high mileage (from 100,000 kilometres) and older than 5-7 years, a completed service has no significant effect on the price when selling. The actual technical condition matters far more. Besides, we do the replacements ourselves, so the savings are very substantial.

BUT, for our clients we always try to select cars with a full service history and prefer those cars that were serviced by official dealers. We also always recommend that our clients have their cars serviced by official dealers.

At the same time, it is obvious that this is not always economically justified. Our recommendations on possible savings when servicing a car:

• Servicing by an official dealer may matter for the car's history and for the terms of a specific support programme. Kulanz is a voluntary decision, not a guaranteed right to free repairs after the warranty has expired.
• If you have bought a fairly new car (1-3 years old) and plan to run it for a long time (more than 5 years), you can save a great deal by having it serviced at independent garages. In any case, we recommend choosing proven garages that provide official proof of repairs and servicing.
• If your car is 10 years old or more, servicing such cars at official dealers will not be cheap, especially when major repairs are needed. At independent garages the savings will be considerable, but finding reliable independent garages for serious repairs will not be so easy.

From our videos you know that we have “tested” for ourselves servicing at official dealers, replacing consumables on our own and expensive repairs of used executive cars. During inspections we have also come across both new cars without documented servicing and 20-year-old cars whose owners had them serviced and repaired exclusively at official dealers all those years.

To sum up, we would like to note that having a car serviced by an official dealer is a kind of “indicator of attitude” of car owners towards their cars, and above all it shows that they did not skimp on servicing. That, in turn, always has a positive effect on the later sale of the car and its price.