Q: Why should women choose a FOXY Choice approved female friendly garage?
A: Because they are better than the rest.

The UK retail motor industry is surely one of the last male bastions employing c90% men and only 10% women. Whilst most other industries have identified the power of the female purse, this industry continues to be slow to recognise that the gender spenders, women, are not men in skirts; in a misguided attempt to treat both genders as equal.

This is despite women influencing some 80% of all household purchases including buying new cars and garage services like MOT’s, car servicing and repairs. And despite women being wealthy yet wary shoppers in workshop and showroom environments, which we correctly describe as ‘too blokey.’

What a business opportunity for those that get female service levels right, ahead of others.

We’ve all heard stories about frighteningly shoddy garage workmanship, offensive predatory Swiss Toni tactics and a shocking tendency to overcharge us because we are women and don’t (always) do mechanical jargon and such like. Like many men too of course.

And those motorists who are in the know, know that UK garages aren’t licensed and mechanics don’t have to be qualified to repair our cars. Imagine allowing an unqualified electrician or gas fitter loose in your home? But we often do on our cars…

Then there’s the huge divide between the competence of garage businesses based on the equipment they use, their ethics and the prices they charge.

Which is where FOXY Choice steps in – a shameless plug but OK because what we do is unique and someone who sees it from the point of view of the motorist has to do it!

FOXY Choice expects all approved garages to sign the female friendly FOXY Promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t need.’ We give them marketing materials and a whole lot more to promote themselves to women and encourage that marketing gift – word of mouth. We also encourage their female customers to tell us what they think so we are forever monitoring our subscribers and  their customer service  standards.

Over and above this we are the only independent consumer organisation to explain and identify quality signs women drivers can trust such as ATA (Automotive Technician Accreditation), BSI Kitemark and OFT code approved schemes. In FOXY’s opinion these are measurable ways that all motorists can steer clear of garage cowboys where women drivers are likely to be ripped off.

We’re also the only organisation to steer a clear course between the independent vs franchised dealership choice. Unlike trade bodies funded by manufacturers (who will sell women franchised dealer garages) or ones representing independent garages, we give you the information so you can make your choice.

If you want franchised dealership expertise (they have to train their mechanics to manufacturer standards and are likely to do this to ATA standards too, to repair all makes of cars) or like their customer services and facilities then that may well be worth paying a bit more. On the other hand, you are likely to save money if you pick a good independent where their overheads are less resulting in lower hourly rates. In short, the choice must be the motorists alone but in both categories be dragons because complaint stats consistently confirm that a similar percentage of good and bad garages whether they are dealerships and/or independents….

So the FOXY Choice UK garage network helps you shop around and tells you which garages (fastfits, independents and franchised dealerships) have signed the female friendly FOXY Promise and their evidence of measurable quality including awards.

And which ones employ women in customer facing roles (because women trust women).

And which ones have been recommended by women.

So all women can make an informed and female friendly choice in a male dominated industry that thinks equality for women means treating us like men. Big mistake guys.

We’re looking for the best.

FOXY Steph

New in 2011 – Female friendly garage feedback invited here.
New in 2010 – See which FOXY Choice garages employ women in customer facing roles.

I’ve been involved in several well intentioned garage evenings for women and have reached several conclusions.

• Firstly that they are time consuming to organise and often disappointingly attended.

• Secondly that it is the best and female friendly garages that do this as part of their caring philosophy.

• And finally that the attendees are often women who have nothing better to do of an evening, some who are clearly only interested because it’s free and others who are obviously loyal customers already…

So what’s the point?

The reality is that few women are interested in the workings of their cars and even fewer are going to ever change a wheel if their car breaks down – why otherwise would we have breakdown cover and eyelashes to flutter?

But should women know how and what oil to change, how and how often to check our tyres and the signs of low brake fluid. I have to say yes of course, and yet I know that few motorists including men, women and yours truly (who knows how) don’t do any of this as often as we might. So I can’t expect others to do as I say when I know better and still don’t do what I should do often enough. Yes I’m busy and yes I rely on my car for my independence so why am I not a paragon of virtue here?

I think it might be because I don’t enjoy doing car maintenance so I keep postponing it, forget when I did it last, worry that I don’t do it well enough, often enough or to spot looming problems and have a husband who seems to enjoy this sort of thing more than me. But does he really, or do it regularly enough or well enough either…

And all the time I keep thinking ‘why do garages want to teach women what to do for themselves when they want to see more of them and their cars for business reasons?’ Maybe the answer is a network of FOXY approved garages for women offering free and no obligation car checks for women to pop in uninvited, say on a Saturday morning or a mid week evening.

To be approved by us would require them to sign the female friendly FOXY Promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t need or want’. Which truth be told counts out most of the national chains who encourage their staff to sell special promotion tyres, wipers and oils to earn commission knowing full well that this can result in motorists being sold stuff they do not need.

But if garages want to encourage women into their workshop/showroom they’d be better off surely getting involved in events that women like and attend – fashion, beauty, leisure, family and household-related. That’s what women enjoy and it might be a good way to get their name and offers noticed. And ultimately so women can start to enjoy visiting garages they trust in future. Steady on…

In the face of adversity there usually is a business opportunity to be found if you look closely enough but in this case it would be the sort of service that busy women like me who want to be able to trust a local female friendly garage might be interested in. And which could produce new business. Well worth a try for mutual benefit I’d have thought.

Whilst it’s easy for UK garages to claim to be good and/or female friendly without having to prove it, surely there should be some substance behind these claims as well as a means to monitor the situation if things go wrong.

No matter her age, most females today are shrewd, canny and astute when it comes to shopping – which is what the brand FOXY is all about of course. They are looking for evidence of quality, value for money (not necessarily the cheapest price), ethical behaviour and female friendliness.

And whilst you might think that all businesses should be able to sign the female friendly FOXY Promise, sadly many national garage groups can’t because they pay their staff commission as part of their income. This means that the likes of the big garage names we see on TV can’t promise that their staff won’t sell us tyres we don’t need, for example, simply to top up their wage. Whereas if they were earning a decent flat rate salary, they’d be operating to female friendly FOXY Promise standards like you’d expect them to be doing.

So, when it’s to do with national or regional garage chains, selling tyres and fastfit services in particular, you need to have your wits about you and to take a second opinion if you think you might be being ripped off here.

But at least you can choose a FOXY Choice listed female friendly garage because it will have signed the FOXY Promise to ‘never knowingly overcharge, patronise or sell customers anything they don’t need or want’. And if any listed garage doesn’t get this right, you can tell FOXY Choice and we’ll help you sort it out.

Ultimately we reserve the right to expel any garage subscriber that clearly isn’t good enough AND we’ll help spread the word to members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club.

Keep us posted please.

FOXY Steph

Other than having signed the FOXY Promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t need’, a sure fire way to spot a genuinely female friendly garage is when they evidently play an active part in their local community.

One such female friendly garage is Celtic Cars in Prestatyn, North Wales.

A family run Bosch Car Service garage with over 25 years experience in the motor business, Celtic Cars is run by David Chadwick, his son Nick looks after the garage side of things and Kevin Price helps women drivers find the right new car, be it an eco-friendly mini or one of the bigger prestige brands they are well known for.

From a female point of view, Celtic Cars organises highly successful Ladies Days for local women drivers and offer members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club free car checks throughout the year.

At the time I am writing this, they are also offering local women gift membership of FOXY Lady Drivers Club.

This gift is worth £23 and means that women drivers in Prestatyn can join the Club for free, saving money on a whole range of other services as well as having FOXY to hand whenever they need friendly advice, information or support.

Just call in to reception at 6-8 Melden Road and mention this FOXY blog.

FOXY Steph

To see what services and facilities other female friendly garages offer, check out the FOXY Choice website.

If you want to know about motoring etiquette then Debretts and car manufacturer Vauxhall have combined to write the ultimate 47 page book called ‘Thoroughly Modern Motoring Manners’.

When it comes to women drivers we are to get out of our cars in a ‘ladylike’ fashion <yawn>. To be specific we are told to

Smooth down your skirt.

Keeping your knees together, swivel your body and swing your legs outwards.

Place one foot down, keeping your knees together.

Dip your head and shoulders forward and slide and glide out of the car…

Apparently a true gentleman knows that jokes about women drivers are cliched and is never a back seat driver.

I wonder who the book is for? Men or todays modern motoring Millies?

I fear that if it’s for female motorists, some may find this a tad patronising, especially if their sense of humour is wearing a bit thin at the time!

FOXY Steph

Find out about the female friendly FOXY Promise to never overcharge, patronise or sell women drivers services they neither need nor want.

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 motor industry is struggling to sell new and used cars.

Not the small, green and £35 car tax cars that most women drivers want to buy but the bigger, more thirsty CO2 polluters, like Porsche, Land Rover, Jeep and Chrysler (who saw their sales halve comparing August sales with a year ago).

Clearly the fleet market is fundamental, and for as long as company car drivers continue to see the size of their car as a indicator of their business status, the green effect will be muted in terms of model sales.

As it happens, all this is unfair on the driver who chooses a Porsche, for example, then drives few annual miles in it, compared to a driver in a Vauxhall Corsa, who uses it for heavy business use (each paying their tax in fuel of course). Yet one is seen as green, the other as greedy.

A further blow has been the recent refusal of the EU to entertain predictable delay tactics to the compulsory 130g/km average emissions mandate that all manufacturers must now achieve by 2012.

The problem is that car production can’t be turned on or off, just like that. Apparently it takes 7 years to get a new car up to production and something like a 10 year sales lifespan to make it financially viable. Toyota, for example, has no less than 12 new models to be launched next year, six of which are totally new. Whilst I don’t know which ones, let’s hope they include a cheaper Prius and variations on the Aygo and Yaris rather than top emitters, the RAV and Land Cruiser …

What surprises me is the absence of new and creative thinking in an industry where, in many cases, the same old marketing money is being spent on print, when the market is speeding up and becoming more and more online…

And what about the more lucrative area of aftersales? Couldn’t this be sold better, to new prospects, and even act as a new sales channel into showrooms?

I suspect that the likes of car servicing, MOTs and car repairs are looked after by managers who are more operationally minded whereas those in the showroom are more sales-minded. Were these two to talk to each other about marketing methods, maybe the sales individuals might help aftersales be more creative ways in future, to mutual effect.

Providing they can sign up to the female friendly FOXY Promise, they’d do well to look at the new FOXY Choice website which would give them the added opportunity to show off their investment in quality customer facilities too.

The time is right for new thinking here.

From a consumer point of view, all competition is good and if the manufacturers didn’t seethe green movement coming, they will pay a heavy price. The good news is that in any downturn there are lots of opportunities for those that seek them but few, I suspect, for ostriches playing a waiting game…

FOXY Steph