A cautionary tale emerged at our offices this week which must compel dealer principals to double-check their service up-sell processes.

A colleague recently had his car serviced at his local Peugeot dealership, and was delighted to discover a free 1-litre top-up bottle of oil left on the passenger seat.

Upon telling everyone in the office about the find and his dealer's generosity, AM’s resident cynic questioned whether it was really free and suggested he checked his invoice.

Which he has just done…and found he was charged £9+VAT for the bottle.

Although the service reception had explained work entailed in the service it had not gone through the invoice with him, and at no point was he actually sold the top-up.

Now I’m sure that this is a rare occurance and not a routine tactic by the dealership in question to guarantee increased aftersales revenue.

Otherwise surely it verges on being a con?

And now that our colleague’s car has gone out of warranty, he’s adamant that he won’t return to the franchised dealer.

A cautionary tale indeed.