The best thing about a new(er) car is the warranty.

Its still a bit of a minefield though! Let me expand. My 2021 Dacia Sandero Stepway was in for an MOT and service last month, and I mentioned that there were two issues I wanted looked at. The passenger side front electric window had stopped working and the SOS button kept flashing up with an error. On any of my other cars, this would involve me googling for a few days, spending hours poring over exploded parts diagrams, ordering parts then setting to with my toolkit to find and replace parts. It tends to be cheap in money terms, but expensive in terms of time to do it this way. 

However the Dacia is new enough to be covered by the manufacturer (extended) warranty which renews for 12 months every time you take it to a main dealer for servicing. This makes it more expensive than an independent, and a lot more than doing home servicing, but theoretically means that anything which goes wrong gets fixed under warranty, for free.

Except its not quite as simple as that. 

When you take the car into the dealer and explain the issue, you have to agree to a diagnostic fee of £180 per problem. If they agree with you, AND the manufacturer agrees its a production fault then its waived, but that's a big ole gamble! I was very fortunate with the Dacia this time, the electric window regulator fault was agreed as being covered by the supplying main dealer, and the SOS button was covered by Dacia themselves so zero cost to Bootstrap Garage Consortium, but its still a tricky one. I like to think that I have suitable mechanical knowledge to be able to accurately diagnose the issues myself, but woe betide me if I attempt to actually do anything about it, otherwise it would instantly be 'you touched it last so its your fault' and no warranty goodwill.

I kind of get it, I suspect that otherwise well-meaning but fundamentally clueless people would commit all kinds of automotive atrocities and leave the dealer to pick up the (literal!) pieces afterwards, but its still a rather fraught 4-6 hours between dropping the car off and telling the service dept that there are a few things you need to have a look at and the phone call to say "yep, we agree, and no cost to you - when do you want to book it in for the repair work"

I fear I may not be this lucky forever!

Anyway, by and large the car has been fault-free. The issues that have come up have all been sorted FOC and turned round fairly promptly which is good. Its the not-knowing bit that bothers me. I wish there was a big list with two headings:

- We will cover this

- We will not cover this

And I could check on that first, if the job fell into the second column then I could either sort it myself, or take it to an independent specialist. But such is the way of the world. Someone has to fund the free coffee and fancy chairs I suppose!