RE: Our friends at AofA

["Geoff Jenkins" <jenkinsg@pilot.msu.edu>]

FWIW (probably not a lot), my personal suspicion is that the timing
coincides all too well with the end of the 36 months of free service on
early A4s ('96s sold at the end of '95). Given that (according to The
Economist, which did some research on all this) a well-run large dealer can
now make more profit from the service & maintenance of newer cars (as
opposed to parts etc for older ones) than from sales of new or old vehicles,
it'd make a lot of sense to retain as many of these people at the dealer as
possible.

Either which way, it's a free oil change, some parts will cost somewhat
less, and I don't see how bad that can be, give AoA's more usual behavior...

Geoff

ps I'm always truly amazed when at the dealer by the number of people who
apparently get the oil changes for their (still warrantied) A4s at Jiffy
Lube etc... I've even seen the service techs trying to explain that it's
_free_, and the customer not getting it. Odd.