Clutch replacement. dealer or private Mechanic?

[jambo101]

Theres no clutch slip in normal driving conditions,and i would rather not rev the hell out of the car trying to see if i can make it slip.
The shudder pulling away from a stop is recent and as i have been driving this car daily since i bought it new 8 years ago i'm suspecting something mechanical is wearing out and not my driving technique.
The dealer i'm thinking of taking the car to is Spinelli in Lachine, i have bought 2 cars from this place over the last 10 years and have had no problems dealing with them.
My reason for favoring the dealer is they will have the parts needed will have prior experience in doing such a job and will do the job according to factory standards,whereas my private mechanic while good and trustworthy will be doing a Yaris clutch exchange for the first time,will have to order all needed parts and will obviously not have any prior experience with this job.

[Rigaud]

Originally Posted by jambo101

Theres no clutch slip in normal driving conditions,and i would rather not rev the hell out of the car trying to see if i can make it slip.
The shudder pulling away from a stop is recent and as i have been driving this car daily since i bought it new 8 years ago i'm suspecting something mechanical is wearing out and not my driving technique.
The dealer i'm thinking of taking the car to is Spinelli in Lachine, i have bought 2 cars from this place over the last 10 years and have had no problems dealing with them.
My reason for favoring the dealer is they will have the parts needed will have prior experience in doing such a job and will do the job according to factory standards,whereas my private mechanic while good and trustworthy will be doing a Yaris clutch exchange for the first time,will have to order all needed parts and will obviously not have any prior experience with this job.

I won't ever go near a spinelli dealer in the West Island. Multiple issues, maybe the Lachine one is good but the others forget it. A good garage would have no issues doing the job, it's not that difficult to do unless they lack experience.

[CoryM]

To the OP:

End of the day, as a customer take it to wherever you are comfortable dealing with, and trust. I always recommend finding one location and building a relationship with that shop. You need to be comfortable that they will do the job correctly, deal with it if it goes wrong, and will only sell you what you need. If you have that, stick with that shop.

In regard to flat-rate I stand by my statement. Having spent ~3yrs in flat-rate dealerships and 15+yrs at independents, I have no problem saying that flat-rate is terrible for customers. Flat-rate guys tend to rush and the quality of work suffers for it. Not all flat-rate guys, or flat-rate shops are bad by any means (just as all independents are definitely not good). Just the business model sucks for customers when mechanics make $20k+/yr more by rushing/over-selling/playing games, and when front-counter people basically live off commission. There is no question that dealerships know their cars better since you see the same ones all the time. I knew damn near every fastener of every common vehicle in the line while I was there, as did most of the guys I worked with. It's the flat-rate that sucks as the rewards for being greedy are too high. If your dealership is good, great! Keep doing what you are doing. But from my experience, on average most dealers will cost more and gain the customer less.