To do oneself...

So I've joined the cycling blip group on the basis of I have just started cycling after swapping my last bike, a 'racer' (I believe they call them road bikes now) for a skateboard about 18 years ago and never looking back. This is my addition to the bike portrait thread that has started over there to introduce myself formally as more than just a skulker.

I've noticed a few things in this new pursuit but was wondering of other peoples thoughts on one particular point of note mainly, bike servicing.

Now I've spoken to a load of people and looked up a fair bit of information on this chosen subject and something that keeps popping up is the subject of servicing. There seems to be a lot of people and places offering a paid for servicing where you give your bike to the service provider in question and they do the various checks and replacements much in the same was as you do a service for your car at the garage. I thought that doing this sort of thing for a bike isn't that complicated and haven't really considered taking it to an professional* servicer. A bike feels like a nice simple mechanical device to tinker with, work out how things work. Nothing as complicated as internal combustion or anything. In fact I got great satisfaction from working out why my chain was jumping** periodically the other week and am dead chuffed that has kept in ship shape since I found the issue.

So in short, do you get your bike professionally serviced and if so, is there benefits or reasons why to do so?

* When I first got the bike as a second hand buy, I got my local unprofessional but very talented bike mechanic to give it a once over and give me a few pointers.

** I found through running the chain round the cogs that a single link in the chain was a bit gummed up and wasn't flexing as well as the rest of the chain, making it skip when it got to the front chain rings.