Dacia Service History, made simple

Ownership explains most of how servicing records work on this badge. Dacia belongs to Renault Group, its UK sites are commonly shared with Renault, its warranty terms are published through the group, and the owner-facing account is My Dacia, which mirrors the arrangement Renault drivers use. Logging in shows the maintenance schedule for your particular car along with the servicing already carried out, and that is the first place to look before paying anyone to dig further.

Two restrictions on My Dacia catch people out. The account only displays visits from the date you took the vehicle on, matched against the name on the V5C, so everything the previous keeper had done stays hidden from you even though the retailer network holds it. And anything performed away from the Dacia network never reaches the account in the first place, because an independent garage has no route into the manufacturer's database no matter how thorough its own paperwork. An authorised retailer can query the vehicle directly and produce what is held against it, which is the practical route to a history covering earlier keepers.

Dacia's guidance is to have the car looked at yearly, or every 12,000 miles, with the detail of each visit set by what is under the bonnet. The TCe petrol engines used across Sandero, Sandero Stepway, Jogger and Duster, the full-hybrid drivetrains now offered on Duster and Bigster, and the diesels found on older Dusters all carry their own requirements. Spring sits outside all of that as a fully electric model, with no oil or filter change involved and the emphasis falling on brake fluid, coolant, tyres, the cabin filter and system checks.

The reason gaps are so common on these cars is bound up with why people buy them. Dacia sells on running costs, and the standard warranty covers three years or 60,000 miles, which is shorter than several rivals offer. Owners therefore tend to drift away to a local garage sooner, and everything from that point onwards exists only as loose invoices. Add a used Sandero or Duster that has passed through three keepers, a franchise that moved between sites or rebranded alongside the Renault operation it shares premises with, and a service book that was never filled in because the entries were meant to be digital, and the trail can look far worse than the care the car actually received.