Over at AskPatty.com Amy Mattinat has a great post explaining why you don’t have to service at your dealer. While I’ve built my career working in dealerships, I’ll be the first to tell you that there are some great independants out there. Amy is correct in pointing out that often a top dealership tech will leave and open his own specialty shop. These are the guys who you should be looking for, the shop that specializes in your brand of car. They are going to be the ones who are most likely to have the computer equipment needed for your modern car and the knowledge to use it correctly.

One thing I wanted to touch on is the use of aftermarket parts. One of the great things about the aftermarket is the incredible selection that is available. A good jobber may have brake pads at 4 different price points for any given car. Chances are that they will have 2 pads that are cheaper than the OE pad and one that is more expensive. Is there a difference? You bet there is. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who take their car away from the dealer based on price, only to return to complain that the brakes they had done cheaper elsewhere are noisy. Which of the above pads do you think they used? Sure, the cheaper pads are still safe, but they may not last as long and they’ll almost always make more noise.

Engine related parts, such as oil filters and ignition parts are built by a supplier to the OE manufacturer’s specs. Then, those parts are warranted by the OE manufacturer. The aftermarket parts may even come from the same production line, but depending on their intended price point they may not have been built to exactly the same specs. They will almost certainly not be covered by the same warranty as the OE product would have been.

Many years ago, when I worked for one of the traditional domestics, a customer’s van was towed in with a blown engine. The van had under 50,000 km on it and had received regular oil changes at the dealer, until the most recent one. The oil had been changed less than 1,000 km before by a major Canadian automotive retail chain & had one of it’s branded filters. Investigation found that the paper from the filter had disintegrated and had been sucked up against the oil pump screen, stopping the flow of oil through the engine. The oil starved engine spun a connecting rod bearing and threw a rod through the side of the block. Ironically, the major chain brand filter had been manufactured by the same company as built the OE filters at the time. The difference was in the warranty. Of course the vehicle maufacturer refused to cover the engine repair for obvious reasons. The retailer that did the oil change offered up a new filter! The retail chain’s customer relations department stated that the extent of their liability to the consumer was to replace the faulty filter, not to repair any resultant damage. After a legal battle that took close to a year, the retailer was ordered to install a used engine in the customer’s van. After a year, he got a used engine! Had the failed filter been branded as OE and had been installed at a dealer, the repair would have been covered under warranty and he would have had his van back in a couple of days.

This story is and extreme case, but it is a true story. This stuff does happen. That extra little bit of security is something to think about when having an independant install aftermarket parts on your car.