3 /5 King London: Foreign Sports has changed ownership a few times since it was known as Mikes Foreign Sports (which I loved). The current business approaches maintenance in a completely different and in my view vastly inferior way.
Back in the day, Mikes would do a routine service based on what the manufacturer recommended and anything coming up on inspection. If your brakes still had a couple thousand miles on them, theyd tell you that you could wait a while. They were super honest about everything. For example - they said switching the spark plugs on my car would be relatively expensive and asked if Id be selling it in the next year, I said probably, they said they wouldnt bother doing it then as it wouldnt affect the trade value and the current spark plugs looked fine. Perfect. They did all the stuff you needed to do, nothing you didnt need and anything in between they explained and gave you the option.
The current owner takes a wildly different approach and recommended that I do a whole load of work to my car following a routine service. I asked them what actually needed to be done and they said these were the correct maintenance items specific to my vehicle based on mileage driven by the system. OK... so I checked the maintenance items and intervals recommended by the vehicle manufacturer, and they were completely different. There were things the manufacturer said did not need to be done until 150k which they were recommending at a quarter of this mileage. The recommendations did not correlate with the manufacturer guidelines at all.
I put this to them, and they said that the recommendations were what they thought was best to keep a car in tip top shape and that might be above and beyond what the manufacturer recommends. OK, but that isnt how things were presented...
There were things on there which, as a car guy, I knew were totally unnecessary. Transmission fluid for example, why are you saying I should change this when the manufacturer says it doesnt need to be done for years? Am I towing anything? No Im not. Ok, so I can wait right? Yes. Ok, great, but why not speak to me first instead of just recommending I do something totally unnecessary?
If you have a car and you want to do absolutely everything which will keep the car in amazing shape, be proactive in terms of maintenance - the way they approach things will be perfect for you. If I had a classic car, or a car which I knew I wanted to keep for a very long time, I can see how it might make sense. But I dont, I will keep my cars for a few years, sell them and get a new one. I am not thinking about making sure the car will run perfectly when its at 150k miles, I wont own it then. Ask me first before presenting a bunch of options which I simply do not need to do (according to the manufacturer, I just want to follow the manufacturer recommendations).
Second issue, and this is the killer for me, is price. The price for basic service is a little expensive but fine. The quotes I received for the additional work were frankly outrageous. Literally dealer pricing or higher. If I take my car to the dealer, they will guarantee everything, Ill sit in their nice air conditioned offices, they will give me a loaner car, I will get my car back washed and cleaned... personally, I am not willing to pay a premium for all that, so I go to an independent garage. Why on earth would I pay a huge premium on what stuff should cost if I get none of those benefits? I dont see how you can justify it unless were talking about the quality of the work.
Ok, so again if I have a classic car or vehicle I want to baby, maybe the premium, dealer level pricing is justified. But its not for me. Especially if were talking about routine, easy stuff which anyone can do. I had a quote for brakes (both axles, rotors and pads) which was close to 3k. Absolutely insane, huge mark up on parts and insane labor costs. I did the brakes at Tireman for just over 1k using the identical OEM European parts which were quoted by Foreign Sports. 3k for brakes is totally insane. Completely unjustifiable.
