I have been seeing a lot more of these dealership-placed stickers on cars recently. It just drives home the point that the new-car dealer is your competition. These pieces of “propaganda” affixed under the hood of every car these dealerships sell reinforce a false belief among some consumers that independent shops can’t service late-model vehicles because they are too complicated.
New-car dealers have been using “only call us” stickers under the hoods of new cars for more than two decades now. These stickers intimate that drivers must take their vehicles to a factory-authorized facility because their cars are equipped with “highly technical” onboard computers. The OEM would never put this type of a sticker on a vehicle due to Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.
The fact of the matter is that most independent shops can service vehicles outside the warranty for repairs and regular maintenance. Shops have access to information, tools and parts to complete just about any repair that a dealer can perform.
Dealers are putting more emphasis on the service side of the business. Now they want to see a vehicle long after the warranty has expired and not just sell a customer a new car. Why? The game of billing OEMs for warranty time is not what it used to be. With better-made vehicles, there are fewer warranty repairs. Also, they have restructured diagnostic time to create procedures based more on codes and symptoms. They would rather have a technician swapping parts instead of properly diagnosing a vehicle.
I encourage you to discuss the sticker with your customers and ask them if you could remove it and clean away any residue. You can even create your own sticker that refers them to your shop.
