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A comment on Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price. Parent comment

Re:Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegoti... by wumpus on Thursday June 02, 2022 @09:20PM (#31603038)
One commonly said counterpoint is that having independent dealers means you get better warranty service. Here's how it works.

I had a Subaru, and Subaru had a problem for a decade+ that their head gaskets were tissue paper and frequently failed. So I had one free replacement mid-warranty.

I went in just after the warranty expired for a normal service and lo and behold, the head gasket was bad again. The dealer replaced it for free. What happened? They defrauded Subaru.

So sure, there's an advantage. Not only will a dealer happily be aggressive at any warranty repair, they'll even commit fraud doing it.

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Re:Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegoti... by imroot on Friday June 03, 2022 @12:17AM (#31604235)
Dealers have almost wide latitude about submitting and getting paid for "good will" warranty claims, as long as they don't abuse it.

Sometimes manufactures will direct dealers to fix things that are long out of warranty when weird things happen (like in Seattle when that radio station sent out a bug that bricked the radios over RDS -- the manufacture directed the dealerships via a service memo to replace the radios and bill the manufacture).

Service is a decent part of most dealerships these days, and a good amount of that income is driven from warranty claims.

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Re:Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegoti... by wumpus on Friday June 03, 2022 @01:15AM (#31604548)
All car companies have "service memos". It has nothing to do with dealers.
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Re:Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegoti... by bombcar on Thursday June 02, 2022 @09:27PM (#31603104)
Often companies have leeway on warranties - when I did warranty work we had a five year warranty but could give a replacement up to six months “out of warranty” if needed.
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