I decided my 9 year old 87K miles Octavia no longer needs to go to the stealers, and I'll DIY from now on.

So for the first time, oil and filter change (very simple), air filter (very simple, done that before, the Skoda interval seems too long..), cabin filter (that latch is a pain but done it before also), spark plugs (so I bought the pull tool from eBay, helped a bit I guess, but still felt uncomfortable at the force needed to pull the coilpacks out.....all good though. All four old plugs a little rusty on the threads and some squeaking as they were unscrewed...yeuch...but it is what it is).

Greased the hinges and checked the levels, lights, tyres etc.

Took a couple of hours, saved a fortune.

Took some photos and have the parts receipts for the records...

 

By how much have I devalued the car, if at all, for a potential buyer?

Edited 4 May, 20242 yr by robs12

It's all personal choice in my opinion.

Some people won't touch it with a bargepole, others will prefer a diy serviced car.

I've recently completed my first diy service on my 2017 245, which I plan on running it until it dies. I know everything has been done, I have receipts to prove everything that has been changed. 

If it was a new car that I was going to trade in after a few years then I'd stick with a garage service history personally, but if its a car you love and plan on keeping then diy it.

14 hours ago, gs86 said:

It's all personal choice in my opinion.

Some people won't touch it with a bargepole, others will prefer a diy serviced car.

I've recently completed my first diy service on my 2017 245, which I plan on running it until it dies. I know everything has been done, I have receipts to prove everything that has been changed. 

If it was a new car that I was going to trade in after a few years then I'd stick with a garage service history personally, but if its a car you love and plan on keeping then diy it.

I agree it would be very person specific in a future sale. Personally, if I was looking at a car that had a load of receipts for stuff done by the owner then it would lead me to think it had been better looked after than one with dealer history. My car had dealer history when I bought it and the pollen filter had never been changed and was an absolute disgrace. 
 

My maintenance for all my recent cars has been done by a friend who is a VW tech. He does a great job and charged me very fairly. Going forward, I have learned that things like basic servicing is just easy so I’ll be doing it myself on both of our cars as we intend on keeping them both for a while anyway. Anything more difficult that I don’t feel confident doing or don’t have the tools for will go to my mate or to one of a couple of local very good VAG specialists. 

Once out of warranty I serviced my (now traded in) Octavia 3 by buying genuine oil and filter and getting my local garage to do the necessary with them only because it's a bit of a messy job to do on my drive.  I bought and fitted spark plugs, air filter and pollen filter myself.  I kept the receipts and when I traded the car in, the fact I had done the work outside of Skoda dealerships made no difference to my trade in price.  Dealers charge a fortune for routine service work and I have little confidence that they do what they should anyway.  It's easy to see if the oil has been changed but without taking the car apart, it's very difficult to check everything else has been done.

On 04/05/2024 at 20:19, robs12 said:

I decided my 9 year old 87K miles Octavia no longer needs to go to the stealers, and I'll DIY from now on.

So for the first time, oil and filter change (very simple), air filter (very simple, done that before, the Skoda interval seems too long..), cabin filter (that latch is a pain but done it before also), spark plugs (so I bought the pull tool from eBay, helped a bit I guess, but still felt uncomfortable at the force needed to pull the coilpacks out.....all good though. All four old plugs a little rusty on the threads and some squeaking as they were unscrewed...yeuch...but it is what it is).

Greased the hinges and checked the levels, lights, tyres etc.

Took a couple of hours, saved a fortune.

Took some photos and have the parts receipts for the records...

 

By how much have I devalued the car, if at all, for a potential buyer?

It's difficult to say, @robs12, as it depends.

 

There's no reason a competent DIYer can't service their car to a high standard themselves.

The problem arises when you have confident cretins who have a crack at doing their own servicing.

There are a surprising number of people who have the mechanical sympathy of a chimp with a rock, and seem to perform maintenance on their vehicle in the manner of a rock-equipped simian. Even fairly bright people can, in innocent ignorance, do some surprisingly stupid and damaging things to their car, in their attempt to service or maintain it.

(Example: I managed to obstruct my curtain airbags when I "cleverly" fitted my reversing camera. Fortunately, I'm bright enough to know that I had to put that right, and not take the "It'll be alright!" attitude, that is unfortunately prevalent with a lot of people.)

 

Beyond that, there are "clever" people, who know better than everyone else, and ignore OEM specifications and use a different grade of oil, grease, whatever, as it's "better", as they see it. There are the "Nah! You don't need to bother with that!" people too. Have a look on here, and you'll see people who swear blind you don't need to change your brake fluid every 4 years. "You must", "you should", "you could", "you don't need to" are all approaches that people can take in regard to an aspect of car servicing, particularly when it's annoyingly expensive and seemingly trivial things like replacing the coolant. "It's still pink, innit? So it's alright!".

 

As a car buyer, when people hear that someone did their own servicing, they don't know if they are dealing with a clever and capable person who has meticulously serviced their car, or a rock-wielding chimp who's just topped the oil up when it ran low on the dipstick. I think it's particularly risky when someone gets a "mate" to service their car. They get all the benefits of bargain-basement servicing, and none of the accountability for poor servicing, as they can blame their "mate" for anything that is not as it should be. Any questions about servicing can be shrugged off onto their "mate" who has no liability for the quality of the servicing and is invariably going to assure you everything was done to the same or higher standard as a main dealer. Personally, I would never by a car from someone who's had it serviced by a "mate".

 

People take their car to a garage to be serviced, because they lack the time, skill or inclination to do it properly themselves. (Incidentally, it's also perfectly possible to have your car serviced badly at a garage, because you instructed the garage to only conduct very basic servicing, only fixing things when broken.) The number of people who have the time, skill and inclination to service their own car correctly is relatively tiny, so when I hear of a DIY-serviced car, I am seeing a load of additional risk associated with my purchase.

 

I doubt you've devalued your car, but you might have made it less appealing to some cautious buyers. You could mitigate your risk by a full service at a garage just prior to sale, which I think would put a lot of people's minds at ease. They could reasonably assume "Yes, he might or might not have serviced it poorly, but it runs alright and it's just been serviced at a proper garage."

 

Perhaps the best thing to do is ask one of the professional mechanics on here what their instinctive reaction is when they hear a car has been DIY serviced, and how often they are called on to remedy issues instigated by DIY servicing.

I doubt you'd devalued a your car at all considering it's age & mileage. 

I'm only having my car serviced at Skoda due to it's extended warranty with them, otherwise I wouldn't let them touch it. I don't use a main dealer for better service, infract I've known them cut corners on many occasions, not just with Skoda, either. I also replace my own brakes, as they're not covered under warranty, plus I'll save a lot of cash within the process of doing so. 

So if you have the ability to service it yourself, why not, something rather rewarding with maintaining your own car to a decent level, do it's yourself then you know it's done right & you've saved yourself cash.