I'm cooling my heels in the waiting room at a Mazda dealer right now while my wife's car is being serviced (issue with the heads up display). Anyway, last time I changed the oil I noticed what appeared to be a leak around a lower ball joint. So I mentioned this to the service advisor.
Later on, as I was waiting, the service advisor texted me a link to a detailed video made for me by the technician who is actually the guy working on my car. The tech pointed a camera all around the ball joint while narrating that he found no cuts or breaks in the rubber boot. He said the slight amount of noticeable color difference in the metal of the lower arm was typical and was nothing to be concerned about.
I was very happy to get communication made for me directly by the guy working on my car instead of having things filtered through a 3rd party of the service advisor. Plus I could see he was not BS-ing me. I've never heard of this level of service before. I'm not sure how a non-car person would feel about the level of detail that was shown on the video, but for me it was plain wonderful (since I'd really like to be hanging around my car as it is being worked on anyway, so this is the next best thing!).
The tech also made a second video where he went all around the car, checking tire tread depth, oil level, air and cabin filter conditions and so forth. Very impressive level of service communication at this dealer! 4.gif
Here's a photo I took of the issue before I went there.
Yeah, our MINI dealer does this stuff, when you bring your car in for service they video what they find and send a link along with the estimate.
That's pretty cool 77.gif
The VW dealer in the UK did that with my Golf R. The dealer that did the Pre Delivery Inspection had left one of the suspension packing pieces in, and when I got it there was terrible knock from the front suspension. My local dealer when they checked it, took loads of pictures and a video so I had evidence if there was future issues that I could show the lease company that it was the original dealers fault.