How much did you say?

A number of garages expect me to start the buying process before they tell me how much my car servicing is likely to cost. But I’m foxy, remember; I’m used to comparing prices first and I have no intention of being fobbed off in this way.

If I pick something off a supermarket shelf or High Street clothes rack, for example, I expect to see the price before I buy it.

If it’s more than I want to pay I can keep looking or go elsewhere. Whether it’s a tin of beans, a car service or a fitted kitchen…

And I don’t expect to be asked for my personal details before I’m given a price. That’s enough to send me packing elsewhere…

So when my car needs servicing or repairs I want to know what my choices are and to be able to compare, like for like, what it’s going to cost for my car and model. Because otherwise it’s nigh on impossible to judge what’s best value for money for me, the car and the occasion.

As things stand…some garages publish car servicing tariffs online and others don’t.

Most dealerships and leading independent garages include car collection services whereas few national chain garages and fast-fits do…

And some garage brokers publish a price tariff and collect your car but don’t tell you which garage will be doing the work. This worries me because a low price can be a function of quality workmanship and this is an industry where garages aren’t regulated and mechanics do not have to be accredited as fit for purpose...

Yet many garage and main dealership websites expect motorists to book car servicing and MOTs via their website without confirming a price or giving an estimate for starters. And one assumes people trust them sufficiently to do this…

Well, knowing what I do about the UK’s garage industry I wouldn’t buy expensive garage services without knowing
1     who the garage is
2    whether it’s up to the job ie what are their credentials
3    what my local choices are and
4    that the price is a fair one in my circumstances (from a value for money point of view).

So my advice to all foxy lady drivers is to check the garage in question for measurable signs of quality (like ATA, BSI and OFT logos), look for a tariff (or ask for an estimate in advance) and shop around. And my advice to garages is to publish some sort of estimate before they go to someone else who does.

It’s a very competitive world when it comes to buying car servicing and/or vehicle repairs and this means that independents, dealerships, fastfits and bodyshops must each set out their wares to attract the right customer and car. Prices, customer services and amenities – not just the work they do.

Having said that, it is rarely in any motorist’s best interest to buy a used car or garage service on price alone and no-one should be fooled into buying any garage service or repair without getting a quote in advance…

Sadly too many foxy lady drivers are paying more than they need without realising this until afterwards.

To find out about your choice of garage solutions and signs of garage quality to look for, see FOXY’s Good Garage Guide. And if it’s female friendly garages you’re after, visit FOXY Choice’s website and email selected businesses direct to compare their prices and service levels first.

Finally let us know how you get on and, whilst this offer stands, we’ll thank women who give us garage feedback with a free gift of membership of FOXY Lady Drivers Club worth £23. Where we share the word about the best businesses to benefit foxy lady members and their families…

FOXY Steph

Jeremy Chapman with Stephanie and Hannah Brookfield

Last Friday, 14 October 2011, sisters Stephanie and Hannah Brookfield of Chesham in Buckinghamshire walked away with a free MOT for life and a free valet courtesy of Roy Chapman Ltd, the female friendly Ford garage in Berkhamsted, Herts.

Jeremy Chapman, Director for Roy Chapman Ltd, donated the two prizes in support of a pamper evening in aid of The Little Princess Trust and LUCY air ambulance. The pamper treatments included manicures and threading through to a wash and blow dry and full hair styling with all donations going to the two charities.

The event was organised by Principal Hair Dressers in Chesham and Kelly Perryman and Meredith Theodorou of LUCY Air Ambulance. Over £400 was raised by Kelly Perryman before the day, who had her hair cut off to make a wig for a child in need and, on the night, over £750 was raised from further donations.

Of the evening Jeremy said, “The event was really well supported and we were delighted to have an opportunity to promote the immensely important work provided by these two charities.”

Yet another sign of a caring community business to add to Roy Chapman’s already impressive female friendly credentials.

FOXY Steph

Would garages be any better if they had more women in them to sort out the customer service side of things? It’s a thought…

Based on everyday feedback from women drivers we know that the motor industry has many genuinely good garages in it but sadly there are quite a few bad ones out there too. Inevitably the motor industry doesn’t air its dirty washing in public and whilst the complaints continue about garages and used cars, nobody seems willing to ‘out’ the bad garages and the unscrupulous dealers we read about (or only use once).

In our experience the regulatory bodies lack the teeth to do the job here. Nice and understanding as they always seem to be, they will not name and shame offenders for ‘legal reasons’ they say. So the customer is expected to take the bad garage or dealer to Court and we suspect that few women do this in the end because it’s complicated, they’re often fed a load of lies by the business about the likely outcome and they worry it could end up costing them even more.

FOXY’s approach is different when it comes to problems that women drivers experience. We run a helpdesk for members so they know to come to us for the advantage of our practical advice. This can be important when it’s a technical matter and there’s a need to know or understand the jargon. Having given our independent opinion we then support the member to get things resolved. If it involves a female friendly approved FOXY Choice subscriber (yes it has been known…) it’s usually a case of our giving them a nudge, their resolving the problem quickly & amicably with us all learning from the experience.

Where the lady driver is a non member and FOXY doesn’t know the garage or dealer, we’ll help to check out their credentials so she knows if the garage is part of a trade organisation or complaints resolution service. She usually joins the Club at that stage, to be sure it doesn’t happen again.

Where there is no evidence of ANY commitment to quality and the garage doesn’t have a website, it’s hard to understand why any female motorist would buy from them in the first place. The reason this happens is because it is reasonable for motorists to expect garages to be licensed (they aren’t) and mechanics to be qualified (which they don’t have to be). So they trust a garage because they can’t imagine a garage wouldn’t be licensed or their staff unqualified. Which is a secret the garage industry can be truly ashamed of.

In a nutshell few motorists realise the risk they run, choosing a garage on the basis of price too many times, but without doing any homework first.

Sadly there is no one independent body above all others (that would be called regulation which FOXY would welcome tomorrow) to either explain and rate the many competing quality schemes or check if the garage is actually a member of the scheme it claims to be.

Our experience is that many garages tick quality boxes when they apply to join our female friendly approved garage network not realising we’ll check this; we don’t list quality logos until we can prove eligibility.

Sadly I can’t see this situation getting any better because the many competing good garage schemes are merely adding to the total confusion in motorists’ minds.

Our approach is to give offending garages and dealers the benefit of the doubt for a reasonable period of time to sort things out. If they don’t show any interest in doing this, we then spread the word among women drivers within the Club. Few garages and used car showrooms like to think of local foxy ladies hearing of their unscrupulous antics so it’s that sort of subtle approach that means FOXY usually get things sorted out in the end .

FOXY Steph

Find out about other support services FOXY Lady Drivers Club offers women drivers and their families.

AA Motor Medic in Ipswich used FOXY Choice approved FEMALE FRIENDLY garage logo without joining the network first.

I would like women drivers in Ipswich to know about a misleading garage leaflet that was printed and may have been circulated to them by AA Motor Medic. We are not sure how many copies were distributed because we only found out about this when a motorist checked the FOXY Choice website register and saw they weren’t there.

The leaflet features the distinctive FOXY Choice approved Female Friendly Garage logo. We would like to make it clear to all female motorists in Ipswich that, despite them using this logo, AA Motor Medic is not an approved member of our garage network and had no right to use our logo or claim to meet our standards in this way.

On contact, AA Motor Medic claimed they sent us an application form and a cheque. We hadn’t received this but knowing that the post is not as reliable as it might be, we decided to look at this case again and asked to see their application form. Because the business was so eager to join our network… we even held an interim Board Meeting (on their insistence) to discuss their application.

We were given several assurances that the initial leaflet printing/circulation was a genuine mistake, that they are a young and enthusiastic business, that they meant to check with us before circulating this leaflet, that they will be employing female staff, that a member of their staff had inadvertently circulated some of their leaflet stock without checking with the boss and so on…

After studying their application we noticed that they were featuring the Motor Codes industry scheme logo at their website but our checks (we check all garage quality claims as part of every application) revealed that they weren’t registered there either. After speaking to Motor Codes about this, we now see that this logo has been removed from their website…

That clinched it for us because AA Motor Medic didn’t have to be vetted by Motor Codes at the time of their application. All they had to do was fill in the online form and pay there and then. Or to claim a mistake and do that when Motor Codes contacted them about their logo? So it was quickly clear to us that AA Motor Medic chose not to pay for the credentials they were using to lure in business under false pretences – they thought they could just publish our logos instead.

So women in Ipswich will not be at all surprised to read that FOXY Choice has rejected their application to join our FEMALE FRIENDLY garage register. As we see it, if WE can’t trust a garage to tell the truth in a leaflet or at their website why would we want to promote them to women who are looking for genuinely good garages THEY can trust to look after our cars?

Sadly other garages do make similarly extravagant claims and we don’t always find out about them unless we are told about these by vigilant motorists.  But when we do, we expose them for passing off standards of course because they are using our services to pretend to be something they obviously aren’t. The motor industry needs to be MORE open and transparent in its dealings with all motorists, not LESS.

We always check for quality first…

Rest assured that false claims to do with quality do not get past our checks when we receive their application form to join the FOXY Choice FEMALE FRIENDLY garage network. We check all OFT, BSI Which is why we prefer our manual and thorough check of all applications before we accept them into our network.

We also welcome recent garage feedback via the FOXY Choice website so we can share this with other women.

FOXY Steph

Please see our latest interview with FOXY Choice’s Female Business Ambassador, Eileen Jack, who runs female friendly Lambert Street Garage in Halifax.

Eileen has been a supporter of the FOXY Choice approved garage scheme since its very early days.

Unlike some opportunistic garage owners who want to see if what we do means foxy ladies queuing at their door without any effort on their part, Eileen takes the female friendly business agenda very seriously.

She understands the female dynamics of course and that it’s often the very sight of a female in the business that reassures wary females; convincing them to visit Lambert Street Garage rather than another local garage. Right or wrong, many women are distrustful of males in the motor industry either based on their past experiences or the stories they have heard from others.

But it’s only when you interview someone that you start to get a feel for the person, their business principles and the other loves in their lives.

It is clear that Eileen loves horses as well as engines and we now know Lambert Street Garage is a female friendly family business which she runs with her son. Her husband brought her into the business and it’s equally evident that she does her job well and it’s sorting out her customers’ motoring problems that really turns her on.

And that is what makes a successful business of course. We’re not just here to make money on one-off sales, we’re here to make a difference through customer relationships. Get things right for the customer – exceed her expectations wherever you can, and she’ll pay back in spades through loyalty, referrals and by acting as your brand ambassador whenever she can.

Which is why having a Female Brand Ambassador in any business (but particularly in one with such a male dominated image) makes such good sense. And why, if you are female, it makes good sense to promote your existence and the fact that any wary customer (male or female alike) can speak to you about their car if they’d prefer.

And if the Female Business Ambassador isn’t the business owner, who is likely to do all this sort of thing instinctively, it surely makes business sense to appoint the right female to represent women’s best interests in this business. And to back her judgement and ideas to bring you more female business in future.

FOXY Steph

“I don’t mind living in a man’s world if I can be a woman in it.” Marilyn Monroe

Women who are wary about male dominated garages and mechanics that tend to baffle them with technical jargon will be impressed by Volkswagen’s new 100% transparent garage service at their Stourbridge showroom in Worcestershire.

Not just a promise to be more open in future Volkswagen has gone that extra mile and opened up their Volkswagen Stourbridge showroom by removing its workshop walls.

This then provides a glass encased inspection area for customers so everyone can see exactly what’s going on. They can also ask for the work to be explained to them by a qualified technician whilst their car is being inspected.

As you can see in the photograph, the inspection area is actually a glass framed enclosure and customers can see precisely what is being done to their car, even when it is on a vehicle ramp.

This sort of transparency is precisely what is needed to reassure worried women about garage workmanship standards and ethics. If you have nothing to hide, you will get brownie points for showing this off.

Not just transparency but extra value for money as well… because every VW to visit Stourbridge Volkswagen in Audnam will receive the offer of a complementary 34-point express visual check. Those that want to take advantage of this can then escort Vince Baker who will explain this in layman’s terms, providing a greater insight into the car’s condition and helping to build a much needed relationship of trust with a view to the future.

The pilot service has cost Volkswagen UK £70,000 to install we are told, and if successful it may be rolled out across the UK network.

We would certainly support this female friendly approach in future. Indeed it’s one of the reasons why Stourbridge Volkswagen is a FOXY Choice approved female friendly garage that we are happy to introduce to members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club.

FOXY Steph

Just three in ten women take their own vehicles for a service, compared with seven in ten men.

New research from Bosch Car Service confirms that women are doing all they can to avoid garage visits for fear of being overcharged and patronised for being female.

30% of the female sample said that they take their own cars for a service with 35% stating they were not confident of a good experience from a car service.

This is because too few UK garages are genuinely female friendly places to visit.

“It is clear that there is still a feeling of discomfort amongst women drivers towards taking their cars in for a service, which could be why they are leaving it up to men” said Bosch Car Service Concept Manager, Howard Price.

And why FOXY Choice’s ‘Female Friendly’ marketing services are designed to identify, promote and monitor garages and dealerships that have gone out of their way to be measurably better (in terms of quality), to provide services that address women’s needs and expectations and that genuinely welcome females.

But just because a garage can demonstrate measurable quality doesn’t mean that it’s female friendly. This is because too many men think that men and women should be treated alike; as if women want to be treated like men!

All this can easily be sensed during phone contact, when visiting websites, when making  email enquiries and via female garage feedback – providing it’s genuine and independent…

When will the industry look long and hard at the number of female employees in garages, for starters? This is the UK’s last male bastion and a perfectly valid reason why women find so many of them intimidating and unfriendly places.

It’s time garages, dealerships and bodyshops got their Female Friendly act together behind the scenes. What FOXY Choice does is unique and specialist, requiring garages to sign up to our FOXY Promise ‘to never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t need’ as a minimum standard. We then monitor this by encouraging genuine female feedback via the independent FOXY Choice website.

But just by saying they are a female friendly garage, women will not start to queue at the door. Nor does it mean that they understand what women want. There’s a lot more entailed and it may well mean they need to change the way they do things for women. Yes, they need to be seen to welcome local women with open arms but many will have to change their business culture in the process.

Employ more females for starters but make sure their needs are catered for – many do not stay in the industry because they don’t feel welcome.  Like many female customers for the same reason…

Garages also need to respond to the needs of busy women for stressbusting and time-saving services.

So garages need to work harder for women to be the richer for their efforts. By benchmarking performance standards to FOXY Choice approved Female Friendly levels women will be reassured and begin to trust garages, dealerships and bodyshops where they know they are understood and appreciated.

Once reassured they will recommend Female Friendly garages to others, men will be (secretly) delighted to share these higher standards and garages purporting to be good but not meeting FOXY standards won’t attract the female purse in future.

Bring it on guys – you know it is the right thing to do in the garage industry today…

FOXY Steph

We still come across garages that don’t have their own garage services website.

Independents with a template page perhaps, hosted by a big directory name or simply a free classified listing.

Or several listings, for that matter, including expired links… leaving the searcher in limbo and unimpressed.

And the reason these listings often don’t work, is because they rarely do a good garage justice, when motorists are shopping online to compare car servicing and MOT choices.

Surprisingly, it’s only FOXY Choice‘s website that gives women the inside information they need about garage services, promoting the measurably best garages by virtue of quality credentials such as ATA, BSI Kitemark and OFT fully approved code logos. We do this because some businesses have invested in these superior quality schemes and deserve recognition for this commitment. And we also like the businesses that employ women, offer exemplary customer services and provide top notch facilities and amenities.

As FOXY sees it, these are all quality features that can help women make informed decisions about the garage services they buy and so that businesses that have gone that extra quality mile can stand out in a highly competitive crowd.

So the garages, fastfits and dealers who think they don’t need their own garage services website are leaving themselves open to foxy (as in shrewd, canny and astute) competitors bagging internet glory ahead of them. And in today’s tough business climate if you want to have a future, the internet is surely where it is, so you have to be in it to win it.

And not just any website will do…

Garages in a male dominated industry need a female friendly website to reassure wary women who worry about being overcharged and/or patronised. Especially now that more and more women are shopping online for garage services like car servicing, mechanical and bodywork accident repairs. Women are looking to compare service levels and whilst price is a vital consideration, they are also out to avoid the well publicised industry cowboys.

Which is why women are more likely than men to think twice about using a garage that isn’t visible online. And for that matter, given a choice, she is also likely to think twice about a business with a website that’s evidently been designed by and for men and where she might feel unwelcome.

So what makes a good garage website for women?

As always any business needs to see itself from its customers’ point of view. And bearing in mind that 50% of customers are female and they are often shopping for family cars as well as their own, it simply doesn’t make business sense to ignore our needs or to imagine that women are looking for the same service levels as men. They aren’t.

And the first question (after seeing that you offer what she’s looking for…) she’s looking to see answered is whether a business understands what she wants. In other words…

• Is this business talking to me (or is it the sort of male dominated place I’ll feel ill at ease in)?
• Why should I trust it?
• How much will it cost?
• Does it offer car collection/courtesy car services/child seats (and how do I check for availability and any terms and conditions)
• How else is it a female friendly garage…

Typically, a woman will take a matter of moments to make her mind up, after taking a visual snapshot of the website homepage. Much as we make judgements in minutes about new people we meet face to face, we also make a quick decision whether the garage in question will take the sort of care we expect them to when looking after our car (and our personal safety).

So a female friendly website homepage should include photos of real life women (staff and/or customers), reassure us with evidence of quality credentials and superior customer service, give us a price guideline and not major too heavily on off-putting jargon or talk about torque…

And when making it easy for customers to get a quote by email, foxy ladies really do expect a reply the same day. Not like the garage that told us recently in an automated reply – we will get back to you within six days because this email is hosted elsewhere…

In summary, if women see a website that is making an effort to communicate with them, using colour and video and catering for children too, they’ll be more likely to favour one that is evidently female friendly over one that thinks men and women should all be treated the same.

Vive la difference as always.

But the business cost of getting things wrong for women is a steep one, especially when others around you are getting it right. Whereas a happy female is more likely to visit a garage more often, to be loyal and spread the word among her family and friends.

FOXY Steph

Meet Mandy, a member of the Simon Dean garage team in Stoke on Trent

Real life video is a great way for garages to impress their female customers. I say real life because slick and impersonal corporate style videos don’t have the same effect on me.

I prefer the video style of Simon Dean Motor Engineers in Stoke on Trent. Have a look at this then come back afterwards to see why this one really works from a foxy point of view…

Simon Dean is a member of the FOXY Choice female friendly approved garage network. They have signed the female friendly FOXY Promise and in return FOXY Choice endorses and promotes their credentials to women drivers.

So we expect to see measurable signs of quality and like the fact that all the garage engineers are ATA accredited; this makes them among the very best mechanics in the motor industry.

We also like to see evidence of a female touch and it’s instantly clear that Mandy looks after the customer facing side of the business par excellence. Being women we also like the promise of clean loos and a great cuppa but of course it isn’t just women who are impressed to find this in the garage industry.

Where the video wins over words is that it tells us a lot more. It introduces the business brand, its owner and his approachability and evident business pride. And don’t let’s forget he’s done this video himself, not paid someone else to do it for him…

In a nutshell, this is an honest snapshot of what happens at Simon Dean Motor Services on a daily basis, it introduces other members of the team and takes us on a tour, behind the reception desk.

Listen carefully and you’ll hear Simon use words like trust, welcome, peace of mind and safety. These words mean a lot to women and we have the knack of remembering the bits that matter to us.

Look again and you’ll see ongoing examples of their Female Friendly credentials so women feel catered for from the very start. Even the relevance of the garage’s investment in technology, delivered with a ‘I know, I know…’ sense of humour holds our attention despite our alleged short attention span at the very mention of jargon.

In such a competitive industry, there’s no time to stand still and a video is a perfect way to communicate the human side of a business to potential customers. It would be hard to do this much better than Simon Dean already has.

FOXY Steph

Which garage to choose - I'm confused

What a tangled web of misinformation there is for motorists to cope with when it comes to choosing the best garage for their MOT and/or car servicing.

For starters, the best kept secret in the UK motor industry is surely that the garage industry within it isn’t regulated, that garages don’t have to be licensed (so anyone can set one up at the drop of a hat), that mechanics don’t have to be qualified to repair our cars and there’s no fixed standard when it comes to the content of car services.

Trust me – this is all true.

And this disorder explains why there are so many complaints about used cars and garage services and why there’s a genuine need for FOXY to identify the businesses that sign our female friendly promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t need.’

One possible reason why the industry doesn’t want us to know this is that this is an opportunity for individual trade factions to earn out of subscription fees to their respective ‘good garage’ schemes. Or am I being too cynical?

For example, the SMMT (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders) promotes the recent Motor Codes Service & Repair Code which is skewed towards franchised dealerships. So the competing motor trade association in England, the RMIF (Retail Motor Industry Federation) has recently introduced another similar scheme, called Trust My Garage, which all garage members can join.

But neither scheme promotes measurable signs of quality, just that their subscribers operate to a fairly basic code of conduct. But they do promise a swift complaints handling procedure which has a self-fulfilling prophetic feel to it I suspect…

Another scheme called The Good Garage Scheme promotes subscribing garages through clever product placement in TV soaps and in adverts. But few motorists realise that this scheme is run by a US oil company and is designed to sell oils not garage credentials. Granted many of their garages probably are ‘good’ but with no benchmark to say what ‘good’ is, I’d definitely want to question that adjective in some instances.

In FOXY’s book, there are three quality logos that distinguish measurably superior and genuine garage quality. These are ATA (Automotive Technician Accreditation), BSI Kitemark and the OFT Code of Practice. To us, each of them means that the business or employee in question has gone that extra mile to invest in being better than the rest.

Then it’s up to the motorist to choose, and we certainly don’t tell women drivers whether they want a dealership or an independent garage to look after their car. Providing they do their shopping homework first and know their choices; it’s their car and their money.

One thing we do feel strongly about however is that a cheap price from a garage you don’t know or haven’t checked (or who hasn’t signed the female friendly FOXY Promise) isn’t worth the risk of saving a few bob on the bill total knowing that shoddy garage workmanship can ultimately cost lives.

But in the absence of industry regulation and recognising that few garages are ATA, BSI Kitemark or OFT logo enabled, we all tend to look for garage testimonials from our friends. This is where it gets really hard for motorists to distinguish the good guys from the pretenders. Because we don’t know who to trust for honest and impartial advice…

And let’s face it, garages are one of the least popular places for women to visit for fear of being ripped off or patronised; if we can delay going or get someone else to do it for us, that’s usually a result. But mightn’t be a foxy decision in the long run.

You might think the Which? Consumer association would want to lead in this area and promote the same signs of garage quality as us. But they prefer member feedback within their Local website. The problem with garage feedback is that it’s often based on an impression formed by a friendly welcome and convenient customer services. Both very important factors of course but it’s workmanship and ethical standards behind the scenes that matter most in my opinion.

Honest John supports the Motor Codes scheme which is dealership skewed and he provides good garage feedback too. As honest as he undoubtedly is <I’m a Telegraph reader> his main interest is clearly cars not garages…

And whilst word of mouth is powerful, testimonials can be rigged to favour or damn. When these appear on a business’ website, for example, with no names and bland/devastating quotes, how reliable can they be?

Finally, and interestingly where this blog started from in the first place… when leading websites that motorists trust, like confused.com, provide ill-informed and ultimately misleading information about garage choices words ultimately fail me.

And so I remain…

…yours confused

FOXY Steph

PS: FOXY is a female brand meaning shrewd, canny and astute which is what we believe women have to be in the garage industry today. Since our daughter’s bad garage experience in the early 2000s I have made it my business to become an expert in this field, on behalf of other women drivers. Which may explain why FOXY Choice is the only website to explain and promote the different measurable signs of quality, judging ATA, BSI Kitemark and OFT fully approved code logos as the pinnacle of garage standards.

Yes I’d love to see the industry regulated so the bad garages would be put out of business. But the industry needs to realise this and after 70 years of trying to regulate itself and failing, we are still where we were and it just isn’t good enough!