Save Money on Spare Parts – Without Blowing Your Warranty
Last time around, this column was about the terms and conditions of your warranty – specifically whether or not you are required to use the dealer you bought the car from, or another dealer in that brand’s franchise network, to service your car. The bottom line there is: you’re not required to have your car serviced at a factory-backed dealership. The ACCC has a robust list of prerequisites on who you can use to service your car and maintain your warranty, and we laid them out.
The fact is, consumers have a choice in selecting a service technician, and many are erroneously of the view that if they want to protect their warranties they are locked into getting their car serviced at a factory-based dealership, as if the warranty is a set of golden handcuffs for service. They are not – and this isn’t my view, it’s the ACCC’s.
One reader of that last report said that the new car sales divisions of most dealerships operate at a loss or just break even, and that it’s the service and parts departments that generate the profitability. I suspect that’s not actually the case, but even if it is, it is not a valid argument to suggest that consumers get their car serviced inside the factory network just so the dealer can turn a profit.
So, if car dealers want to enjoy the profit that can be enjoyed from servicing new cars then they need to compete with privateers – by offering a better (not necessarily cheaper) service experience. Some are already doing that, and some clearly aren’t. There is a lot of variation in the market.
Which brings me to another hate mail-inducing topic: spare parts. And I might as well drop the bombshell early: your new vehicle warranty is not dependent on you using only genuine (factory) replacement parts. More on that in a sec.
Scary stuff. At this time of year in particular a call like this can certainly put a dent in those family Christmas holiday plans.
First up, you should ask for a breakdown of the price. This is so you can know exactly which parts are required, what they cost, and what the labour to fit them costs. And then you should shop around.
The bottom line here is that if you want to fit genuine parts, this is of course fine. You can generally buy genuine parts only at factory-based dealers. However, this does not mean the price of those parts will be the same at each and every dealer.
I can only presume this is the case because some consumers feel as if there is a monopoly at play, and if they want their cars back on the road then the price quoted is the price that must be paid. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. There are also warranty-preserving options outside of genuine parts.