Mooney_Driver wrote:
My car however has a warranty which is bound to the official dealership,
Is that still a thing in Switzerland? It’s not legal in the EU, AFAIK. (Certainly not here.)
Airborne_Again wrote:
Is that still a thing in Switzerland? It’s not legal in the EU, AFAIK. (Certainly not here.)
Well, it’s how that manufacturers warranty works. You get an initial warranty of 3 years which is then extended to 10 years or 180’000 km, but for the extension you have to keep the maintenance schedule prescribed, otherwise the warranty is terminated. The current schedule is every 15000 km or 1 year whatever comes earlier. As I bought the car after a leasing return, it was already out of the normal warranty but has the full extension going now. I’ve made use of it once already.
Maybe the service schedule is mandatory but not the use of a factory dealer?
There can be good reasons to not visit a dealer. For example after the VW ECU cheat was exposed, and they issued the “fix”, which made the car run significantly worse and greatly shortened the life of the £1000 EGR valve, and they offered an extended warranty to those who applied the “fix” to cover EGR valve replacement for IIRC 2 years, you would be a fool to get the “fix” applied and ruin a very reliable car. But if you took the car to the VW dealer, they were legally free to apply the fix without asking you (and even against your specific instruction to not apply it) and then you would have to spend some £400 to have the “fix” rolled back. My then GF had to do that. I never had it applied. But neither of us could use a VW dealer again, ever. Also if you had your ECU remapped, again you cannot go to a dealer 
It wasn’t just VW, either. A range of mfgs did the same cheat, with the help of Bosch who told them it is probably illegal but did it anyway. It was VW which took most of the heat.
Peter wrote:
Maybe the service schedule is mandatory but not the use of a factory dealer?
I think it has to be a factory authorized shop as they have to prolong the warranty every year. I’ve been dealing with a local garage which is a Toyota dealership for over 30 years now, the owners are friends of mine, so the question does not arise for me to go elsewhere.
Silvaire wrote:
Cost doesn’t matter if you don’t get the function you need, and people will pay a lot extra if necessary to get what they actually need.
Define “need” 
There’s a whole range of definitions out there depending on income, status, etc etc.
I was talking about energy; production, distribution (grid), operation. It’s what I do for a living, and has done so for decades. Just like 100LL, stuff are not likely to completely disappear Nonetheless, the writing is on the wall. Solar + (sodium ion) batteries will become impossible to beat, it already is, on an industrial time frame (20+ years). There’s no envisioned or existing technology that will come close to this.
Peter wrote:
Maybe the service schedule is mandatory but not the use of a factory dealer?
Yes, that is the case in Sweden and I would expect in all of the EU.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Maybe the service schedule is mandatory but not the use of a factory dealer?
Yes, that is the case in Sweden and I would expect in all of the EU.
Could it be that the two of you are talking about two different things?
Warranty (“Gewährleistung” in German) which is mainly about manufacturing defects, usually for two years and legally cannot be reduced or tied to using only a factory workshop (at least not in the EU).
The other thing is a guaranty (“Garantie” in German) which can be offered by the manufacturer/dealer and can include whatever (extent/duration) is in the contract and therefore can also legally limit to which workshop you go etc.
GrasStripFlyer wrote:
Warranty (“Gewährleistung” in German) which is mainly about manufacturing defects, usually for two years and legally cannot be reduced or tied to using only a factory workshop (at least not in the EU).
The other thing is a guaranty (“Garantie” in German) which can be offered by the manufacturer/dealer and can include whatever (extent/duration) is in the contract and therefore can also legally limit to which workshop you go etc.
Is “Gewährleistung” the legally mandated responsibility of the manufacturer and “Garantie” the voluntary commitment? In that case it is actually the “Garantie” that can’t be limited to branded workshops – although services still have to follow the manufacturer’s procedures.
Dealer service was mandatory in European countries to maintain warranties for a long time but this was changed in 2003. IIRC the landmark case worldwide for this issue was in around 1970, against Chrysler in the US. This was then carried forward into the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act in 1975 that has since been used as a reference worldwide. It did take almost 30 years for the EU to catch up, but it happened.
In theory you have to retain receipts for e.g. oil changes and present these to the dealer when making a relevant warranty claim, but I doubt it’s requested often.
Nowadays a similar pushback is happening in relation to ‘right to repair’, the concept that manufacturers should not create similar barriers to trade by designing in features that make repair or service by others technically impossible.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
300 km is nowadays a thing for small city vehicles, most of the family type cars have a far greater range, 4-500 km
I see that we don’t have the same understanding of a “family car”.
Mercedes EQV, Ford Tourneo Custom, or their derivates from Citroen, Peugeot or Opel. In real life they drive less than 300 kilometers per charge.
Only the brand new models from Volkswagen and the VLE from Mercedes have a greater range, but those are not real vans anymore, rather relabelled midsize ones.
