GoGoGadgetMachE
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Michael
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2020
- Threads
- 153
- Messages
- 5,614
- Reaction score
- 12,655
- Location
- Ohio
- Vehicles
- 2021 Mach-E 1st Ed., 2022 Lightning Platinum
- Occupation
- Professional forum cheerleader and fanboy
defending myself a bit, I've never paid anywhere near $150 for scheduled maintenance, literally ever, and the maintenance intervals on modern cars are such that it's not like I'm doing it every 3,000 or even every 5,000 miles.Nice to see someone else is honest with numbers.
One big issue I see is that (well, coming from a Tesla forum so take that for what it is) EV owners also tend to be the types that would take stealership servicing hook, line and sinker. That is, they were indeed paying through the nose for "maintenance", but I'd argue that they were really being taken. Stories of paying a dealer $150 for an oil change (that you can do for like $20 with very good parts), or those omnibus services that include a lot of spurious things like "check this...." "inspect that...." "change blinker fluid" and maybe an oil change or tire rotation but charge like $1k. I've owned many cars and never done any of that, and honestly I have yet to have a car that I would consider to have had extraneous repairs - brakes, oil, filters, plugs, etc are all somewhat expected, all DIY, and none particularly expensive.
does going to the dealer cost more than Johnny's Five Minute Magic Oil Change? yes, in theory, but if you go to a place like that, you know the sales push there is as bad as a dealer finance manager's office, because they make nothing on the basic oil change. ("You want the Sparkly Oil with Super Sekret Additive and the Nitrogen Storage Service (tm) or you will die a FIERY DEATH!")
and yes, I could in theory do an oil change myself. But I don't want to. I could do a tire rotation myself. I don't want to. Such things bring me no personal enjoyment or sense of satisfaction - it's a chore. I can pay the dealer $49.95 and have them do all the maintenance while I screw around on my phone or do work on my laptop? SOLD!
of course this is a very person-to-person thing. Just want to make it clear that it's not anywhere near as simple as "you had your dealer do maintenance? YOU'RE DUMB!"
edit: by the way this is part of the "dealers have a place" argument, for what it's worth (which is little, admittedly)
Sponsored