If you listen very carefully you’ll hear a quiet rumbling in the air that forces you to look back over your shoulder, to feel the edgy anxiousness of knowing that something is coming, but not knowing what. Allow me to enlighten you. You, the consumer, are about to get kicked once again, this time by the auto industry. Not surprised? Neither am I. We consumers have been getting it so much lately, I’m beginning to wonder if we’re not all wearing signs on our backs that say, “kick me.”

Personally I’m at a loss to explain this strange phenomenon. As the engine that drives this economy (hasn’t consumer spending recently kept our sagging economy afloat?), one would think that consumers would be paraded through the streets on the shoulders of lowly CEOs, hailed as gods and goddesses for our ability to spend our hard earned dollars on what we need and more often than not, what we don’t. You’d think. But you’d be wrong.

The latest kick is delivered by the big auto manufacturers who, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that we consumers should ONLY be able to have our vehicles serviced at the dealership. They’ve done this under the guise of complying with emissions standards that supposedly have forced them to design some fairly sophisticated, chip driven equipment for their cars. To service this equipment requires equally sophisticated diagnostic systems, which they’d like us to believe independents are not trained to tackle. Thus, manufacturers are making it virtually impossible for independent service stations to repair new chip-driven vehicles by not supplying them with the codes needed for diagnosis and repair. Diagnostic equipment they are willing to sell to independents is prohibitively expensive and simply out of reach for many small independent shops. Who loses in this battle between independent repair shops and the big manufacturers? You guessed it. We, the consumer.

Here’s a potential scenario. You buy a brand new car in November and in June you take a new job in another state. You make your move and because life is never perfect, as soon as you get settled, your car breaks down. No problem, you say (you’re making more money anyway), I’ll just find a reputable independent repair shop to fix it. But when you do, the shop is forced to turn you away because they can’t get the equipment from the manufacturer to fix your car. So, you turn to the dealership. Unfortunately, the dealership is 70 miles away. Had enough yet? To add insult to injury, knowing they have you over a barrel, the dealership charges you about 30% more on parts and labor than the independent would have (so much for making more money).

Apparently this is not an unheard of scenario. In a recent USA Today article, a BMW owner had a similar experience in Washington state. In this case, the BMW could not be serviced locally and had to be transported from a remote island in the Sound to a dealership in Seattle. BMW paid the $200 fee for the transportation. But I wonder what will happen the next time this gentleman’s car breaks down. Will BMW pay the transportation costs again?

Has BMW set a precedent for paying transportation costs for vehicles that cannot be serviced locally? I sincerely doubt this savvy company is intending to pay up every time a car owner finds himself in this predicament. My guess is they complied in the Seattle case only as a means of heading off negative publicity (the car owner was mad as heck which is how USA Today learned of his dilemma). If this scenario becomes the rule rather than the exception, BMW will either make a blanket policy of refusing to pay these costs or find a way of passing the cost on to the consumer. Either way, once again the consumer loses.

What I find so perplexing is why car manufacturers would bite the hand that feeds them (and I do consider it biting, since inconveniencing the consumer of your products probably isn’t a great idea). The answer is complex and competition among dealerships and independent repair shops is only a part of it. I believe this shortsightedness is fueled by larger bottom line considerations such as the intense competition between car manufacturers who want nothing more than to keep their customers buying their cars. Think about it. Assuming that the first rule of marketing is to keep in touch with your customer or client, what better way for car manufacturers to “keep in touch” than to force a customer to have his car repaired at the dealership? When competition is as stiff as it is in the car industry, letting a potential customer just wander the streets untethered to the mother (dealer)ship could spell disaster. After all, what if he spots a car produced by a different manufacturer that he prefers over the one he has now?

And let us not forget that when competition heats up among manufacturers, the parts and service department can generate much needed revenue for a dealership. According to AAA, dealership labor rates tend to run from $10 to $20 higher per hour than independent shops and the standard dealer markup on parts from the manufacturer is 30%. Once again, the consumer loses.

By telling us that independent dealerships are incapable of working on our cars, the big manufacturers would like us to believe they’re thinking only of our welfare. However, making the dealership my only option for repairs sounds like it’s in their interest, not mine. It’s the sort of spin I find incredibly irritating. The bottom line is this. When I spend what amounts to a down payment on a house to buy a car, I absolutely DEMAND to have more than one option for service and repairs. If car manufacturers have other ideas, they might think about consulting consumers first—because regardless of what they might think, without consumers, they’re sunk!

Write to your congressional representatives and let them know this latest assault on your freedom to choose is simply not ok. If enough of us voice our anger, the legislative bill that is now before congress, H.R. 2735 - Motor Vehicle Owners’ Right to Repair Act, will be successful in ensuring that car owners can choose to have their car serviced at either an independent shop or a dealership. In other words, it will ensure that we consumers have a choice.

Not voicing your anger will mean that the auto industry’s incredibly powerful lobbying group will spend millions to successfully keep we consumers from having a choice. Worse than that, once the powers that be realize we don’t care enough to fight back when we’re kicked, word will travel to other industries. “Don’t worry, they’re all asleep at the wheel,” will be the banter in those paneled boardrooms, as each does whatever they want and can get away with. Soon that rumbling I referred to earlier will become the deafening thunder of we consumers being trampled into the ground.