Your quite right!
The cars 10 yrs old now anyway but apart from that I believe people are getting fed up with these main dealers as most either rip you or turn out substandard work. They display all their course certificates, hang a telly on the wall, offer the odd cup of coffee and charge the earth. I can see now how they can afford to do all that. I think " main dealer service history" has had its day.
As it happens I have a garage in mind that comes highly recommended by a pal of mine. The garage specialises in bmw's but they said they could do most of my work but I may have to go back to Nissan dealers if specialised equipment needed. Going to see him Monday.
All you can do is give the independent a go and see how it goes but I bet they'll be better than the Dealership & definitely cheaper. The garage I take my Zed to is very good and I have known the owner for almost 6 years now so trust him with my cars.
When I first got my Zed I wanted to get the plugs done by the local Nissan Dealer really just so that I could keep the Nissan service history stamps thing going in my book but in reality it's not worth it.
Try this one Dicky ~ needed one coil pack the other day to replace a faulty one. The Nissan dealership told my independent garage owner that they would need to know which bank it was for as there not the same (they are). They also then told him that they would only sell him a pack of six!! At £120 odd including the VAT each he told them where to go.
Luckily I found Alex (ZMANALEX) on here, got a great price/great pre-owned part, problem was solved in 5 minutes and I saved literally £££'s!.