Lou Tedeschi: Owner of ASPI Motor Cars in Dedham; President of the Massachusetts Independent Automobile Dealers Association, says customers need Right to Repair

As the U.S. auto industry continues its perilous slide into bankruptcy and dealership closings, consumers are flocking to used cars or holding onto their cars longer rather than buying a new car.  That's mostly good news for businesses like ASPI Motor Cars in Dedham, MA where owner Lou Tedeschi has his hands full keeping up with demand for quality used cars.

But like most of the members of the Massachusetts Independent Automobile Dealers Association (MIADA),  a 500-member organization which Lou leads as president, he says he can't escape the control that car manufacturers exert over the cars he buys and sells even though the cars are out of warranty and should be beyond the long arm of manufacturers.

Now in his third decade as the owner of ASPI Motor Cars, Tedeschi recounts one story after the next about cars he purchases at auction that need some amount of repair before they are conveyed to a buyer. He tells the story of a 2005 Grand Prix he bought for a customer only to find a check engine light that hinted at a problem. Using one of the scanners that he owns for situations just like this, his mechanic plugged in the diagnostic scanner and got back a "strange code" they had never seen before. Searching an online database, they couldn't resolve the undefined code and had to take it into a GM specialty shop. In less time than it takes to get a cup of coffee, the GM technician - armed with the information Tedeschi could not get at any price - diagnosed the problem and charged Tedeschi $160 for about 10 minutes of work.

And then the GM shop told him it would cost him $1,300 to make the repairs, effectively ending any profit Tedeschi could make on the car. Now armed with the diagnostic information, but not the specific detail about what to repair, Tedeschi brought the car back to his own mechanics who "basically threw parts at the problem until we got it fixed."

All told, Tedeschi was able to repair the vehicle for $400 - a far cry from the $1,300 soaking he faced at the dealership, but it was another lesson in what Tedeschi calls "the dealer tactic to get the work back into their shop. We are basically at their mercy," he says.

The story is the same for all of the MIADA members who are buying cars at auction, many of them leased vehicles, and then trying to resolve mechanical and electrical issues that they discover once they have the car back in the shop.  Another car Tedeschi brought in, a Mercedes, needed a headlight, but putting the headlight in is only half the battle. "You can replace the bulb but it is a programmable headlight so you have to plug it into a computer to activate the bulb."'

A highly trained mechanic who cut his teeth as the lead mechanic in a dealership, Tedeschi says he and his mechanics are more skilled in repairs than their dealer counterparts, but the manufacturers control the information and are reluctant to part with it, particularly since people aren't buying new cars. "It's definitely getting worse," he says.

What is also getting worse, says Tedeschi, is the value for consumers.  "If we have to pay more to repair the vehicle, that all goes into the cost and the customer pays that. Everyone is facing the same problem and it is hurting our business and adding costs unnecessarily to the buyer of that vehicle."

The Right to Repair legislation that MIADA and more than 10 other automotive repair and consumer organizations are now backing, would level the playing field for independent repairers and give consumers a true choice about where to repair their vehicles. For more information about Right to Repair in Massachusetts, please go to www.massrighttorepair.com