The horrors our cars go through at service centers

Don’t Drink and Write
Vernon B. Sarne

One of the most interesting facts about the automotive business is that car dealerships generate much of their earnings from after-sales service. It’s easy to think that the main revenue driver of dealers is sales — that they rake in the most money from retailing brand-new cars. But that’s not entirely accurate. A dealer actually makes a killing from the technical service it provides to customers who have been sternly warned that they need to bring in their vehicle for routine maintenance if they want their three- or five-year warranty to stay valid.

This service stipulation in the warranty is how a dealer hooks its customers into giving it sustained business long after the car is purchased, the latter having no choice but to get an otherwise inexpensive oil change from the casa even if virtually the same service is available outside at a significantly lower cost. So now you — the new car owner — is faced with a predicament: Do you go to a friendly neighborhood talyer for regular maintenance to save money, but in the process void your car’s warranty? You wouldn’t do that if you were smart, of course, because you’d end up paying more if a major component suddenly broke down and your dealership refused to honor the warranty.

No biggie, you tell your consumer self. What’s a few more bucks for world-class service rendered by professional, competent and honest technicians? You don’t mind the premium because the general theory is that your prized possession — for which you surrendered your life savings — will be meticulously looked after. And therein lies the problem: Professional, competent and honest car mechanics are about as common as honorable and trustworthy politicians. And if a recent viral video is anything to go by, you really shouldn’t entrust your vehicle to the care (a misnomer, apparently) of dealership mechanics for longer than a day.

In case you didn’t see the video, it was recorded by and collected from the camera installed in the SUV of a couple, who had left their vehicle at an authorized service center for exterior repairs. They got the surprise of their lives when they viewed the video, which showed service personnel using their SUV to conduct driving lessons. Which would explain the visible signs of damage they discovered on various parts of the car.

This incident doesn’t shock me at all. In the years I’ve covered the auto industry, the horror stories I’ve heard about authorized service centers range from the comical to the atrocious. Coins being pilfered. Gadgets being stolen. Fuel being siphoned. Original parts being replaced with fake ones. Units being used as air-conditioned quarters during siesta. Luxury cars being taken out for romantic trysts. Underwear (belonging to female car owners) being sniffed and passed around by lecherous dealer employees.

The truth is that these shady activities happen quite often with almost all car brands. There are bad eggs everywhere. The problem isn’t any single automaker — it’s the duplicity, the irresponsibility, the rapacity in our culture. This issue has been around ever since the earliest mechanics slithered underneath an automobile to plug a leak, presumably realizing: “What’s to stop us from fabricating nonexistent leaks and conning the owner?” It’s for this reason you are made to sign a checklist before you leave your vehicle for service. It’s one safeguard — not completely foolproof but better than nothing — to help ensure that morally bankrupt mechanics will return your property no worse than the condition they found it in.

Dealerships have also implemented other measures to check on their technicians, including closer supervision by service managers and the use of CCTV cameras in the work area. But then these measures only make sense if the bosses aren’t party to the chicanery. In many (not all) cases, unfortunately, corrupt mechanics are in cahoots with their superiors, who get to pocket their own cut from the racket. How else could their staff members keep swapping parts between cars without them noticing? Either they’re unqualified or they’re playing EverWing all the time.

To be fair, disreputable car mechanics are not endemic to the Philippines. Their double-dealing kind is also prevalent overseas. There’s something about the trade of automotive repair and maintenance that swallows those who practice it. It’s just that our erring mechanics seem to be far more shameless, far more avaricious and far more audacious. A pity, because there are surely more upstanding auto technicians out there (they just don’t go viral on Facebook).

With digital and wireless everything amplifying even the faintest and most private of whispers via social media these days, you’d assume car mechanics would now think 77 times before they tried to pull off a fraudulent scheme so brazen they’d have to have a secret wish to get sued or fired to even consider it. But they still do it, and with astounding regularity. Maybe they simply don’t care about their job. Maybe they’ll always take the risk if it means augmenting their little income. And maybe their principals don’t give a hoot either. Maybe they’ll continue to turn a blind eye as long as the service department delivers the numbers.

But the head office — the chief caretaker of the brand — should care. It should get alarmed. It should panic. It should lose sleep over these shenanigans. No business entity should fritter away bottomless advertising resources, only to allow itself to be discredited by a brand-wrecking shitstorm from a complication it conceivably has the power to fix.

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