I picked up a great foxy tip from a lady driver I met this morning at a Business Link ‘Access to Finance’ seminar in Burgess Hill this morning.
She told me how she had been able to prove that she had been been treated unfairly and patronised after having her car serviced in a car dealership in Sussex.
I attend a lot of networking events as part of my job and more often than not, as soon as I say I run a motoring association for women I get told lots of stories (by men too) which remind me why FOXY Lady Drivers Club is needed and how we fill a genuine service gap for women who often find the UK motor industry to be a long way short of female friendly.
On this occasion however, a lady told me something I hadn’t thought about before and I am sufficiently impressed to want to add it to FOXY’s motoring tips in future.
Whilst we rarely blame and shame businesses in a public arena (because they clearly need our constructive help more than a poke in the eye) we will always make feedback about serious service shortcomings available to local members within the Club to be sure they don’t suffer the same plight. And in this way we all learn what is and isn’t acceptable here.
Where possible we welcome the chance to sort things out with the business but if they won’t listen we simply tell other females in their area to steer clear (we are foxy as in shrewd, canny and astute by nature, don’t forget…). And in the unlikely event that the garage or dealership had signed the FOXY Promise and/or was listed at the new female friendly approved website, we’d reserve the right to remove them from any FOXY listings (and we would if it was the right thing to do, trust me).
In this instance the car was a fairly new LandRover and I think it was still in warranty. Within yards of the dealership and after an expensive servicing the car developed a fault which the driver associated with the work carried out during the car servicing. The dealership staff maintained that this was a new problem and that it would be a separate job and therefore chargeable. No deal in short and no compromise either.
Now this lady knew her stuff and made it clear that she wanted things sorted out for free and some compensation into the bargain for her inconvenience. When she arrived at the dealership in West Sussex to explain what she knew to be true, she was shown into a meeting room where a male panel of senior bods closed ranks on her, told her she was wrong and, in her words, tried to intimidate her.
At the back of this room sat her two daughters one of whom she had given her mobile phone to, to entertain her whilst Mum sought a solution.
After their meeting, when there was no sign of any compromise from the dealer team, they retired to compare notes and Mum went back to sit with her daughters.
Imagine her surprise when the daughter with the phone told her that she’d discovered that the phone could record messages so she’d recorded their conversation and as they played it back together Mum and her daughters all had a laugh at how poorly she had been treated.
This exchange was disturbed by a member of the dealer team who abruptly left the room and told his colleagues they’d been recorded. The long and the short of it was that our very foxy lady driver did a lot better than she imagined and was asked to promise not to publish her tape on YouTube.
Oh that she has kept this recording for FOXY dealership training purposes…
The moral to this story is, when you are in the right and you are dealing with unreasonable people, take someone with you to witness or record proceedings. Or if you aren’t as confident as the lady in this story, join FOXY first and we’ll hold your hand through the experience.
Our lady now has an alternative garage provider who is also servicing her farm equipment including tractors 
.
FOXY Choice has yet to contact this dealership, despite them being well known and within a reasonable distance of FOXY HQ but when we do I shall explain that their need for female friendly staff training is a whole lot more urgent than they probably realise.
Good on you Mum (and her telecom-savvy daughter of course…)
FOXY Steph
“Don’t let a man put anything over on you except an umbrella.”
Mae West
The photo shows Eastbourne’s MP, Nigel Waterson, cutting the ribbon at the official opening ceremony on 11 September last.