Under certain circumstances, it may become important to know if a dealer for one GM brand can provide under-warranty service for the vehicles from another of The General’s brands, or whether it’s necessary to find a same-brand dealer to complete repairs or service.
An example of such a situation might be if you bought a Cadillac from a dealer far from your home, but only Chevy and Buick dealers are present locally. Another circumstance where this question could be crucial is if your vehicle suddenly requires servicing while traveling, but you can only locate a different GM brand’s dealership nearby.
In fact, GM allows dealers from one brand to provide service for vehicles of another of its brands, provided the dealership owns the right equipment to carry out the repair successfully and properly. However, with that said, a dealer has the right to refuse to attempt a repair on a vehicle from a different brand.
A GM dealership is allowed to say “no” to a repair request for another brand and does not need to provide a reason for doing so. Simply not wanting to carry out the repair is a sufficient reason to refuse if the dealer decides to do so. A dealer is more likely to refuse, however, if they lack the correct tools, equipment, or know-how to perform that warranty service.
As one instance, a Buick dealer could easily do work on a Chevy Trailblazer, Chevy Traverse or Cadillac XT5 since these models share similar components with certain models from the Tri-Shield.
However, a Cadillac dealer may decide not to work on a Chevy Silverado HD or GMC Sierra HD, a GMC Hummer EV or a Chevy Corvette, all of which are sufficiently different from Cadillac models to make a successful repair difficult. A Buick dealer may not want or simply not be able to work on a Chevy Bolt EV, lacking expertise and equipment vital to repairing the subcompact electric vehicle.
Larger trends and outside factors could also increase or decrease the likelihood another GM brand’s dealership can offer service. For example, in July 2022, dealer repairs – including own-brand servicing – fell by 6 percent month-over-month and 9.8 percent year-over-year.
At that point in time, a shortage of both components – with supply chain disruptions continuing – and labor made it difficult for dealers to offer timely warranty service.
Some developments are conversely making certain repairs easier. A universal EV diagnostic standard may be rolled out by 2026, making cross-brand diagnostics of EVs much more feasible in the future.
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Comments
I usually get my oil changes for my chevy at my caddy dealer. They work on it with no issues, and were willing to do other work except warranty. Not sure why, perhaps reimbursement rate not high enough for warranty work. Mainly I do it for convenience and I like my service advisor at caddy. Trust goes a long way. He does not try to upsell me.
Your assumptions regarding warranty reimbursement carry merit. Working as a technician at a Chevrolet, Oldsmobile and Cadillac dealer for over 23 years beginning in 1980, life was much simpler with “badge engineering”.
Platform builds were near identical, with trims and some minor differences. Training was common across the brands, except for Corvette, for which a Pontiac dealer would not send their technician to training.
We routinely provided warranty repairs for customers with Pontiac, Buick and GMC vehicles who preferred our service from previous vehicle experiences and likewise the Pontiac dealership provided service to some of our customers. While it is preferrable, there have always been times when deviation is allowed.
Fast forward to current times and while there are many almost badge engineered vehicles, there are some notable differences, which could affect warranty 3.0 reimbursement, if the servicing dealership does not have technicians trained for the system being diagnosed and repaired under warranty, regardless of which GM brand.
Moving forward and this may become more noticeable with EVs, there are distinct EV technician training paths for each brand, beyond the base EV training requirements.
Now, there will also be some differences between USA to Canada operations, so there is no “one size fits all” answer to many questions or concerns that people post.
Many years ago I worked as a fleet manager for a large national corporation, and at that time I think a dealer had a right to refuse to do warranty work on a car, even of the same brand, if they were within a certain distance of the delivering dealer (I think it was 50 miles?). I ran afoul of this a number of times with company cars. We were using a leasing that had to find a dealer willing to accept courtesy deliveries, but these delivering dealer’s weren’t always the closest one to the office, factory or home where the car was going. This sometimes resulted in driver’s having to take car’s 30 or 40 miles away for service, when there was a dealer of the same make just a mile or two away, who wasn’t willing to work on the car.
I’ve been dealing with a Chevrolet dealer for years who owns two Buick/GMC stores. Since I have a long term relationship the Chevy store, I buy my Denali’s through them. They make the deal, order the truck through one of their GMC stores and then deliver and service my GMC’s at the Chevrolet store.
I ran into the same problem about 30 years ago with Ford trucks. My company leased our service trucks through a single dealer then distributed them to our local offices across the state. The local Ford dealer refused to do warranty work on the trucks, even though they would get factory reimbursement. But karma got him, he went out of business a few years later. It was a small city and he was the lone Ford dealer but I guess he alienated enough potential customers to kill his own business. A smart businessman in that position should have offered to service anything that showed up on the lot.
“It was a small city and he was the lone Ford dealer”
Let me guess… it was a family-owned and ran outfit, where everyone was related and arrogant as #.
Actually I’d much rather do business with a small shop, where the salesman IS the manager and doesn’t have to ask people above him, where you’ll buy from the same person for decades. But if they get the attitude, where the customer has to be worthy of their presence, forget it.
Some of those who refused years ago, did it simply because “You didn’t buy it from us, so don’t expect us to lose money fixing warranty problems, while you get it serviced somewhere else”.
Working in a GM dealership with two local dealers from 1980, while it was preferable that repairs should be completed by the selling dealership, there were always reasons why the other dealer could accommodate.
As you stated, it is also about working relationships and someone who switched brands will often wish to return to their preferred dealership rather than the selling dealership. Rules are somewhat flexible and dependent upon training standards.
There may be technician training requirements that the dealership of choice may not meet, that result in having warranty repairs performed at a dealership with the requisite training.
While declining warranty work years ago was more of a choice than a hard rule, today the specific training requirements can come into play, as does the on site tooling supplied to the different brands.
I have my GMC’s serviced at the local Cadillac dealer, warranty work and oil changes. Never had an issue with scheduling or sub-par work at any of the GM dealers, except the small mom/pop GMC/Buick dealer, unfortunately.
The Cadillac experience I get, which is pretty good, pales in comparison to the Lexus dealership service we receive on my wife’s Lexus, and my GMC costs 2x as much as her vehicle.
GM needs to hire as an advisor whomever set up Lexus service departments.