Capped-price servicing – what it is and how it works
One of the most recent buzz phrases to start doing the rounds through the auto market is ‘capped-price servicing’, so we decided to take a little time and talk about what it is and how it works.
The idea behind this concept is to alleviate any doubt and hesitations that consumers might have in regards to their vehicle’s regular scheduled servicing, throughout their running life, or for the first three to five years at least.
The capped-price refers to the manufacturers openly declaring a price ceiling for each individual scheduled service during the allotted time period of the servicing program.
These time periods will vary from brand to brand of course, but normally they’re spread across three to five years, and the idea of the capped-prices is to give car-buyers piece of mind in regards to a fixed financial factor that they can take into consideration alongside a vehicle’s purchase price.
The first company to introduce this servicing scheme was Toyota back in ’08, with the Toyota Service Advantage which gave new buyers a fixed-price plan for each standard scheduled service for the first three years of their vehicle ownership, or 60.000km.
The next company to jump on the capped-price bandwagon was Mitsubishi, who began their program in 2010, which covered the first four years or 60,000km.
In December of 2010 Nissan followed suit by offering their capped-price servicing for six years or 120,000km through their myNissan program.
Ford unveiled their plan across all models in July 2011, and it stretched for every model that they’ve built since 2007, covering six years or 105,000km.
Opel have started their own program in August and is thought that Volkswagen are considering to follow suit soon as well, this capped-price servicing appears to be here to stay.
