Given that many people ask, I wanted to share so you know what to expect.
I received a letter this summer telling me to go at a time and date to the cantonal road office to have my car checked. Its a 2019 Volvo XC60, so it is 7 years old.
You can reschedule if you want.
Preparation: full car wash including undercarriage and rims. Check oil level, engine alarms, all lights, seatbelts, windshield wipers, OBD alarms, tire thread depth, tire pressure. chatGPT can give you a full checklist.
I have been doing all yearly services at a Volvo dealer every December.
The day of the appointment everything was very smooth, you just give them the car and go to waiting are from which you can watch. It’s a very standardized and detailed procedure, they do all sort of tests and bring it to a dark room to test the lights etc.
What was a bit annoying is the outcome. They can ask for some additional tests and you can do them only in a list of authorized shops, within 30 days.
They marked three things:
Brake disks thickness, asking to check with the manufacturer minimal thickness and replace if necessary. That is a bit silly because the thickness is checked every year at the service, I already had them replaced at 80000 km as expected. They are fine and I would have checked again in December. But authorized dealers ask for 150 chf to check.
Brake fluid pipe, because it was covered in dust so they could not check for cracks. It‘s a 7 year old car , never had to top up brake fluid. I am willing to bet that there are no cracks, and an authorized shop will charge 150 CHF to dust the pipe off.
Fog lights may be misaligned, check. This may be a good one. I had the front repaired at a Volvo dealer after a small accident a few weeks ago and they worked on the lights. It was covered by insurance, so I could go back there and tell them to do their job properly. Unfortunately, I need to do it at an authorized shop, and it will also cost 150 CHF at least.
Authorized shops also charge 100 CHF to communicate the positive result to the road office. And the road office charges 20 CHF to receive them.
TLDR: I am happy to know that cars on the road are inspected so carefully. I don’t like the idea to pay 650 CHF for nothing.
My advice is to schedule the yearly service before so that you can fix some small things before going there.
