It's a deal!

Getting your car serviced at an authorised dealership is the best gift you can give your vehicle. Paolo Rossetti meets an aftersales manager to find out why

As I enter the Mercedes dealership in Al Ain, I am impressed at the size of the operation. Roughly as long as three large warehouses, the showroom, parts department and the workshop could easily house a couple of airplanes.

The workshop is spotless.

Mechanics in uniforms interact seamlessly with their vehicles, and the overall impression is one of efficiency and sense of purpose.

Alan Hamer greets me with a smile. He is the aftersales manager for Eastern Motors, Al Ain, part of the Al Fahim group of companies.

He has worked for the company for ten years and is a 34-year veteran in the UK motor trade, starting as an apprentice motor mechanic for a Jaguar dealership, then for Main Agents, VW Audi, Ford and finally, Renault UK before coming to the UAE.

He also worked for the Royal Guard Brigade in Muscat and Northrop in Saudi Arabia, always in the motor trade.

In an interview with Friday, Hamer offers a glimpse into what it is like running a workshop of one of the world's most famous automobile brands. Excerpts:

A lot of people tend to mistrust the servicing done by dealer workshops because they feel they are being overcharged. How do you, as the Service Centre manager, explain your prices?
The price is fair. We invest in our people and training is always of utmost importance. Also, we have to have the latest manufacturer's-approved diagnostic equipment and trained staff who can use it well.

The customer should have the confidence knowing the person working on his or her vehicle is factory trained and that we only fit genuine parts that carry and are backed by the manufacturer's warranty: this is what people buy into.

I have too many times seen the results of damage done due to careless workmanship - even changing a battery, a relatively simple procedure, can cause damage to control units if the ‘mechanic' gets it wrong.

We routinely receive cars to repair in our dealership with various control units damaged after the battery was changed (at an unauthorised/independent service centre). It's a question of fil-savvy, dirham-foolish in most cases. In the long run, we actually save our customers money!

So, what are the real differences one can expect to see, or perhaps not to see, between a repair job at the dealer's versus the same repair job at an independent garage?
There are strict procedures and guidelines set by the factory on how cars should be repaired. Small independents don't have this technical information readily available. In an effort to cut costs they will fit cheap copy parts, which generally are not up to standard.

Even second-hand and scrap parts are commonly used! So when talking of safety items, ie, brakes and steering, how safe would you feel, not knowing what exactly has been fitted into your car?
Accident repairs particularly give cause for concern. You may have seen a cars that (lean heavily to one side) when running and not driving in a straight ahead position?

These cars have been in a major accident, repaired badly and are twisted or bent. The Vehicle Testing and Registration stations are doing a good job by refusing to pass these cars.

How do you think your service centre is compared to one in Europe, for instance? How do you measure quality of service?
We value quality at all times and that's a reason why we have two European Mercedes Benz trained workshop supervisors. They ensure our repairs are of the highest standard possible. So in answer to your question "how do I compare our garage to those of Europe" I would say "up there with the best".

Let's say you were not the Mercedes Service Centre manager but a regular guy and driving a 2001 Mercedes E Class. Your car's brakes appear to be little soft and you think it requires a new set of brake pads. It's not a complex procedure that requires a professional installation. Given a limited family budget, would you go to the dealer's workshop for repairs?
After buying a house, for most people buying a vehicle is the second most expensive purchase they make. It would make sense that they should want to look after their vehicle in the best possible way.

Vehicles are highly complicated pieces of machinery and I would want someone who has been factory trained and who knows the vehicle working on it.

We recently had a customer who had had the brakes of his vehicle repaired by an (independent) garage. Immediately after the service, the customer complained of a noise from his brake but the mechanics were dismissive, unhelpful and wouldn't care to look at the vehicle.

We checked the vehicle and, to my amazement, found that one of the two brake pads which are located in each calliper had not been fitted, and the noise he complained of was the metal brake piston pressing against the metal brake disc!

So again the answer to your question would I use a dealer?
I would definitely say 'yes, every time'. Just imagine if that customer had faced an emergency braking manoeuvre!

I suppose that one of the challenges you face is that customers come regularly to you during the warranty period, but the month after it expires, they disappear.

What are you doing to retain their custom?
We offer special discounts on labour and parts to customers that have vehicles over 5 years old, and they also receive a 2-year parts warranty with all our repairs. So in the unlikely event the same part replaced failed, it would be replaced under the terms of the guarantee.

Actually, some of our best customers have been coming to us for years - we know the entire history of the car, we have a good relationship with the owner, and quite frankly most do not even dream of taking their car elsewhere.

Where we do need to work better is in bringing in people who buy a second-hand vehicle; often they have not yet developed a relationship with the dealership and they feel that because it is not a new car they can just as easily maintain and repair it elsewhere. I'd like to encourage those people to give their cars the servicing they deserve.