Solitaire - Adelaide VW/Skoda

[tigger73]

Does this mean they have lost their sales franchise as well?

Yes sales and “authorised factory” service are going according to reports. Which means they can still do your service like any other independent workshop but can’t do any warranty work or sell any new cars after a c train date (not exactly sure when that is).


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[sdabel]

Bit annoyed at this, Mile End was a good location. Cbd location will mean customer will be paying for the extra rental costs.

[tigger73]

Not if there's fixed price servicing. Then the dealer will just be paying higher rent for the worshop and will have no way to recover the higher costs. The only way to make the money back is employ cheaper labour...

[Gerrycan]

If Skoda have not arranged an alternative Adelaide based sales point to replace Solitaire in the very near future then that will probably leave a bit of a hole in local sales figures until sorted.
I can understand Solitaire not wanting to set up an independent Skoda sales/service unit, after all Audi, Skoda and VW are pretty similar under the skin and mechanics can probably apply their skills to all three brands at the relatively new Mile End centre, but the old Medindie sales site was woefully inadequate as they were pretty much tripping over each other. Parking and entry/exiting the site onto the highway was unnecessarily dangerous too.

I suspect that Solitaire will no longer service Skodas at the set prices which were well below equivalent VW Golf when I last looked.
The one failing of Solitaire was that on two occasions they tried to charge me at the higher Golf service price.

Mine is just out of warranty so I'll probably be going independent but not Solitaire independent in future.
Lookout Transporter I'll be contacting you

[tigger73]

On sale until 31 October. Grab a bargain!!!

[gadget007a]

From memory the letter I received said that Solitaire was relinquishing their dealership rights and as a result cannot and will not perform any warranty work, and a vague mention about Skoda announcing who the next city dealership would be.
This doesn't affect me as I am locked into using Jarvis due to the Warranty extension debacle on purchase of my car, in saying that the service department has been bending over backwards to help both myself and my wife (she bought a Fabia), get a free loan vehicle each time we take our cars in, but I do feel for those who still have cars under warranty.

[Rooboy]

There's been a post or two on the auskoda fb page indicating that Jarvis will have an announcement to make in Nov which ties in with Solitaire relinquishing the rights at the end of the month.

[sdabel]

Not if there's fixed price servicing. Then the dealer will just be paying higher rent for the worshop and will have no way to recover the higher costs. The only way to make the money back is employ cheaper labour...

Good point, but still not good for the (Skoda) customer.

[bbcrowdog]

I am near the end of my 3 yr lease on my RS... having purchased the extra 2 yr warranty thinking it would be good for resale or if I decided to keep it at the end... I was pretty disappointed to receive this letter.
I rang Skoda oz, they said they are in the process of setting up a new dealership. I guess we wait and see


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[Dutch77]

It made sense for Jarvis to pick it up in Adelaide given they already run a shop out in the Barossa.

It really won't make a scrap of difference to the average customer - who knows, perhaps it helps mainstream the brand a bit more because Solitaire certainly had little interest in pushing it.