Called my local friendly and efficent dealer whom I've bought both Monsters form to arrange first service on current Yeti only to be told they ceased to be a Skoda Franchise yesterday.

Michael Shaw Cars Longford were not a glass palace dealers but more like the old fashioned friendly and efficent dealers of yore.

Nearest service franchise is also an Mercedes, VW and Audi so don't expect the same lowish pricing.

Awww that's a shame.

Did they say why they have crossed over to the dark side??

As SUK gets bigger they want big fancy dealers. It's the trap most bigger car sellers fall into.

Old fashioned customer service is great, but let's be honest... the important thing to them is really shifting shedloads of cars.

Once they get bigger and bigger each individual customer is actually less important.

Bigger dealers, bigger sales target = bigger profit margins. That's what's really the aim of the game.

Sad, but true.

I used to work as a car salesman for a Peugeot main dealer. Small family run business with about 90% repeat customer business. Peugeot weren't happy with the size of the place so moved the franchise to a much larger motor group premises where Peugeot shares a showroom with Citreon, Nissan, Suzuki, Volvo, Jeep, Landrover, Chrysler, Jaguar and Skoda. Big place, big profits, big volume!

You can still take it to the original dealer for servicing, they don't need to be a Skoda franchise. As long as the service is completed to manufacturer specification using OEM parts then there is no problem.

Skoda ie did the same to TMC cars in Navan. Western Motors in Drogheda picked up the franchise as they have a plush showroom and pricing to match. TMC sold large volumes of Skoda in the North East but it appears their showroom didn't meet the image. I priced around for servicing and found Pilsen in Dublin to be competitely priced with excellent customer service.