Consumer Reports Reports: Lexus, Buick, and Acura Top Maintenance Survey

Once again, TTAC has received an embargoed press release. Once again, please don’t send us anything you don’t want us to publish before you want us to publish it unless we agree beforehand (which we won’t). An agreement requires two parties. And party they might down at your local Buick dealer’s service department. A Consumer Reports (CR) survey of 349k vehicles (full methodology unavailable upon request) reveals that, “Among the top scoring in dealership maintenance satisfaction were Lexus, Buick, and Acura, with 85, 83 and 82 percent satisfaction rates, respectively. At the other end of the spectrum, Volkswagen, Suzuki, Jeep, and Nissan owners were far less satisfied with dealer service at 67, 69, 70, and 70 percent respectively.” But wait! There’s more! “Despite the turmoil surrounding the American auto industry, six American automakers (Buick, Saturn, Mercury, Cadillac, Lincoln and Oldsmobile) ranked among the top ten in terms of customer satisfaction with dealership maintenance.” Pay no attention to the word “Oldsmobile.” Notice the word maintenance. Not repair.

That’s MIA. Well not exactly. Seems CR grasped that nettle—but only in a showdown between independent and franchised service departments.

Among owners whose cars needed repairs as well as maintenance, the difference in satisfaction with dealers and independent shops was even more pronounced: 75 percent were very satisfied with independents versus just 57 percent with dealerships.

Hang on; cars that needed repairs AS WELL AS maintenance? Call me a Kareshian pedant, but I reckon you’d need two totally different surveys to accurately gauge customer satisfaction with each service.

To wit: if you start off asking a customer about a service department’s maintenance abilities, you alert them to the fact that (for all they know) the service department’s doing a good job. Then, when you switch to repairs, they might be less willing to kvetch.

In any case, the best repairs are those you don’t have to do. TrueDelta (no longer financially affiliated with TTAC) has the actual repair rates for specific vehicles. Other than that, caveat emptor in extremis.