Warranty restrictions on servicing

I was horrified to see a lawyer giving out advice on a website about restrictions on servicing that was misleading, if not plain wrong. (I was pretty horrified to see a lawyer hiding behind an alias giving online advice for £21, actually, but had the advice been correct I would have been a little less excited about it.)

The questioner who is now £21 worse off asked whether the block exemption meant that you could have a vehicle serviced at a local independent garage rather than a main dealer, and whether the position was the same where the vehicle was leased or hired on a long contract. The lawyer told him in general terms what the Regulations (sic) do in the aftermarket, but advised that it was not possible to go to any independent garage for servicing and remain with the warranty conditions.

Had he said that the block exemption did not allow you to get your car serviced by an independent without jeopardising the warranty, at least he would have been correct up to that point. I suppose anyone who goes looking for legal advice on the Internet has to be content with getting a technically correct answer that is of no assistance to him. The Commission now has warranties in its sights, but as far as the UK is concerned (and this was clearly a UK question) the matter was dealt with, voluntarily, at the instance of the Office of Fair Trading a few years ago.

The OFT published its report of its Market Study into New Car Warranties in December 2003. It found that manufacturers' and dealers' (extended) warranties had the effect of keeping new cars captive in the authorised repair netowork, and indicated that unless the vehicle manufacturers took steps to stop this there would be action under teh Competition Act. In the June 2006 Evaluation report on the market study, it recorded that the vehicle manufacturers had complied (although they were not exactly giving a great deal of prominence to the revised warranty terms). So you can get your car serviced at an independent without invalidating the warranty, whether that is the manufacturer's warranty or a dealer's: it's nothing to do with the block exemption, and indeed not the result of formal legal action of any description, just a voluntary move by the industry to avoid a confrontation that had been building for some time. The poser of the question should have looked at the warranty terms rather than going online for legal advice. As it is, he isn't only going to be £21 out of pocket - he'll also be paying more than he wanted, or needed, to for a service.