Going Back to Ford to Avoid Cheating

I was at the Ford Service Centre - PJ, servicing my car when I met a nice old lady who said she's been sending her Ford Escape the service centre for the past nine years. She said she's afraid of getting cheated if she were to go elsewhere.

This is rather surprising for me, especially since the Ford SC-PJ has been rubbished quite a bit in the Ford Malaysia Enthusiast Club forums and in Autoworld forums. And from personal experience, Ford SC-PJ has come up short a couple of times for me as well, especially on lubes advice.

Still, the nice old lady had a point. If you go to a place you don't know, you're bound to be scammed. After all, if they do too good a job, you'd hardly need to come back.

Also, non-Ford specialist centres may overlook certain things that Ford SCs usually won't.

This is really why, despite my issues with the Ford SC-PJ, I find myself coming back to this place over and again, and it's not just because my car is still under warranty.
Unless I get solid recommendation from friends on a good alternative, I'm going to go back to Ford. And even if I do get a reliable referral, I'd still be super cautious.

Back when my late father was driving his Volvo 244 GL, a friend recommended that he go fix his car at a non-specialist centre manned by people who used to work for Volvo. At first, things seemed to go along well. Then, one after another, things started to go wrong.
He was told that he needed to change this and that, fix this and that; and the list kept on getting longer and longer, and the bills kept piling up higher and higher.

Granted that cars need a lot of fixing as they grow older, but come on! It's like, each time the Volvo 244 gets its service, something major needed to be fixed.
Till today, I can't help but wonder if my dad's old Volvo needed all that fixing to begin with.

And when I meet people, like the nice old lady at Ford SC-PJ who says she doesn't face major issues often with her Ford Escape in her years of servicing at Ford SC-PJ, I become even more convinced that sticking to authorised service centres is better than taking chances with non-authorised service centres.

It's not like I've never had good experience with general mechanics or general service centres. I used to send my old Mazda 626 at the old Shell service centre at Jalan Batai, Damansara Heights, Kuala Lumpur.

The service there was good and reasonably priced. But that was a long time ago, involving a third hand car that was already breaking down terribly anyway.

For as long as I can afford to, I think it would be safer to stick with sending my Ford Focus S2.0 back to Ford SC-PJ, for servicing.

As an added bonus, it has a nice waiting area with free Internet access, food and drinks :)