Nationwide car servicing tesco vouchers & their service in general?

Don't post to quite so many groups and you'll find people are more amenable to help...

Nationwide Autocentre (formerly Lex servicing), Rugby, have been servicing my car for the last 18 months or so in when I decided that the local Vauxhall garage wouldn't be getting any more of my hard-earned. I can only speak for the Rugby branch, but they have been excellent and well-priced. And I get no end of Tesco points by using them as well!

Prices are posted in the office and they may be open to haggling over larger items (I needed an alternator a little while ago and they responded to my 'is there any way to bring the price down' question in sterling fashion). As it happens, one of the mechanics in my local one used to work at the Vauxhall garage as well and is honest enough to let me know what will last and what won't!

Jon

I can't speak for Nationwide's servicing, but I recently asked them to price match (as per their website) 4 tyres for me, which would mean around £100 saving on the 4 tyres. They did it without question.

Plus the fact that they're the first tyre company to actually balance my wheels correctly in about 4 years (and I drive about 30,000 a year, so I goto a lot of tyre places) makes me think that at the very least, the center I went to (Bletchley), they know what they're doing.

-- Andy Jenkins UK Broadband Usergroup :

I had my nissan done a few weeks back on the tesco offer. I am totally satisfied. They did everything on the sheet - phoned me about an hour after I dropped the car off to tell me that I needed 3 new tyres. That the brake discs at the front would probably need changing next service (in 10k miles time) but were ok for this one. And that I should have the brake fluid and cooland changed at the next service but other than that everything was fine.

They quoted me for tyres at 40 a pop fitted for "budgets". I phone and checked at the usual other places and they were all more expensive. Gave nationwide the goahead - and when I got back they had fitted the same tyres as the car had originally (brand new Dunlop SP Sport 200's) as they couldn't get the budget ones. Same price!

Car felt and drove like new. They offered me the parts they took off for inspection. Also commented that the distributor cap was a little charred but that was normal on a car of this age (11 years) when it looked like it was the original.

On the whole, well chuffed, and will go back again.

This was the Cambridge branch.

Cheers Dan.

It probably depends which branch you take it to and the mood they are in on the day!

Anecdotes, eh..

Last time I went to a National I had to wait for ages, the coffee was disgusting, the guy did a little handbrake turn as he drove my car into the bay (I was doing them myself all the time so I didn't complain.. but what a liberty! :-) and I wasn't confident they had done what they said they had done at the end of it. The nail in the coffin was when they tried to blag that the discs needed changing, but I saw their figures.. there was probably a years life left in them.

OTOH my experience with a main VW dealer was so good that I decided to stick with them even though it costs quite a lot more. They did change the oil, brake oil, filters, everything on the list - I checked. The car came out riding slicker than it went in, was valeted, and the engineers were clearly adept and familiar with my particular vehicle. I was called to ask if I was satisfied, and basically they bent over backwards to make sure that I was.

-- S i g n a l @ l i n e o n e . n e t

I don't think you HAVE to get manufacturer servicing to maintain warranty anymore (EU ruling or something similar)

-- Regards

Hays

T610 Housings in stock now!!

I used to use the Rutherglen branch (current car needs manufacturer servicing to maintain warranty), and was relatively happy with them - they're not as good as when they were Lex, but different manager as well. If I'm still in the area once my car gets past it's warranty period they'll be getting it for it's services.

Hey that's what I was told when I bought the car. Mind you, the 1st two services were included in the package.

The EU now says that all new cars must be warranted for two years. As long as your garage follows the official manufacturer service schedule and uses genuine manufacturer parts for servicing, your warranty will still be valid.

However, you have to be scrupulous about this or they'll worm their way out of honouring a warranty claim - put on a non-manufacturer oil filter etc. and you void the warranty instantly.

However, most cars in the UK are sold with 3 years warranty, this is the two year mandatory warranty topped up by a further year's dealer warranty. This additional year's dealer warranty requires dealer servicing or it's not valid.

To be honest, dealer servicing on cars up to three years old is not that expensive and having it serviced elsewhere is unlikely to save you much money.

A dealer history up to three years will guarantee your warranty stays valid and also encourage the manufacturer to offer goodwill payments towards failures not covered by the warranty; it also helps protect the value of your car because the next buyer will probably want to see a dealer history.

After three years dealer servicing can work out very expensive and I wouldn't recommend it, but going elsewhere for servicing before then can be a false economy.

That's block exemption - and depends on whether the warranty is with the manufacturer or a third party. For instance - Mitsubishi don't exist in the UK - there are mitsubishi dealers - but none get the cars from Mitsubishi - they come from the Colt Car Company who are the official importers.

Their warranty is insurance backed rather than manufacturer - so you have to abide by the insurers which say you have to have franchised dealers....

Bugger.

Cheers Dan.

They cost me a lot of money on my car. They did a head gasket and within weeks the head had cracked, they claimed it was nothing to do with them and no more than coincidence. I wrote to their MD a Mr Thomas Dunn, and after two letters he had still failed to reply. They can probably change a tyre and do your brakes, but more than that they're useless. Oh and they replaced a starter motor on my car and the new part failed in a week!!

Dodgy :-(

Who are you talking about.. National or VW?

-- S i g n a l @ l i n e o n e . n e t

Correct, as long as you spend enough at Tesco to qualify for Premium status or whatever they call it these days - basically you get twice as much value out of the Clubcard vouchers they send, is what it means.

I've been getting my cars serviced at my local (Northampton Far Cotton) Nationwide / Lex on these deals for some time and it's a stonking bargain. I'm very happy with my local branch, no messing, always found them fair for MoTs too.

x-no-archive: yes

thats probably a v basic service - no doubt will find a lot wrong with your motor, to bump up the final price!

(no such thing as a free clutch...!)

I've used this particular outlet, (through a couple of franchise changes), on and off since the mid-80s, and they have never let me down, always been willing to just replace what I want (exhaust wise for instance) and always been priced keenly. For some reason whoever owns it, they have a decent bunch of lads who listen and care.

They publish their service schedule and I've no reason to disbelieve that they follow it - indeed they offer your full money back if you find they've missed any point. It's as full as any comparable (£100-ish franchise type affair) service that I've ever come across.

Well our advice would be not to bother we used our local branch for a clutch replacement and the bloddy gear box was leaking oil, dispite several returns to fix this problem, we had to take our car to a small local guy who fixed the leak in less than 10 mins and told us he would have replacd the clutch for 1/2 as much.

Cliff N Cherie

I too had cause to use Nationwide recently (Greenwich, London branch) and found them to give excellent service throughout.

Had to have two tyres replaced.

They offered to see if they could fix them first. But the damage was too high.

They didn't have replacements instock but ordered them in for the next day and did not ask for any deposit like certain other tyre centres.

The pricing was the cheapest I could find anywhere by a good margin. And i am usually scrupulous at finding the best deal if I can. Most other tyre dealers wanted money up front as it had to be ordered in all cases.

All staff were, pleasant, courteous and professional throughout. This was in the Christmas period (27th Dec) where you'd reckon they'd be a little grumpy for having to work. But they were fantastic.

Recommended for tyres definitely. Might try the servicing next and see how they do.

ANDY

As others have stated, I think it very much depends on your particular local branch and which fitter you get.

It does seem a bit unfair on Nationwide to blame them for charging the price they quoted and you agreed to, just because you didn't phone the small local guy first. Bear in mind it's very easy for him to make a "I would have done it for half that price" type statement after the event, to do the competition down when there's no question of him having to eat those words...