How very boring garage speak is...

‘Almost half of us have stumped up payment for a garage bill without understanding what we have been charged for.’ Neil Lyndon, The Sunday Telegraph

Good for Halfords Autocentres then for tackling the subject of incomprehensible garage jargon and getting a Plain English approved stamp for their plain but ever so boring Garage Speak guide.

I find it interesting that the subject of baffling jargon in the motor industry is always seen to be one of caveat emptor (buyer beware). As a result, the female motorist is expected to learn garage speak to communicate with her local garage rather than the garage learn to communicate more effectively with her.

Does that sound reasonable to you?

Perhaps it’s easier to teach all women to shop in this industry than teach some mechanics how to do their job properly .

Of course we know that as many men are as baffled by mechanical jargon as women; the only difference is that most women are honest and say ‘we don’t know’ whereas few men would admit they didn’t know for fear of losing macho credibility.

But boy is this a yawningly boring subject and document to read… which sadly means it won’t get read by women – although it might do if it told us why all this matters.

All this matters because the garage industry isn’t regulated, complaints abound and some unlicensed garages and unqualified mechanics continue to fleece us all for repairing cars, often badly. This is what motorists need help to understand their choices when they go shopping for MOT’s, servicing and repairs in such a quality minefield.

And this is why FOXY’s totally independent Good Garage Guide advice to women drivers is to choose one that has clearly invested in being better than the rest. We say look out for ATA (Automotive Technician Accreditation), BSI Kitemark and OFT (Office of Fair Trading) logos and then compare prices and what they include (another minefield but more about this in another blog…).

In a nutshell, we help women understand their shopping choices when it comes to garage and customer service levels. Some garages offer so much more than others which can make the garage experience MUCH more enjoyable.

For example, knowing that women tend to trust women more in such a man’s world, if you’d like a female to explain your car’s working to you, why not check out which of FOXY Choice’s female friendly garage subscribers have a Female Business Ambassador for you to talk to. She will talk to you in language you’ll understand and if she doesn’t know the answer she’ll know someone to ask and then interpret the answer for you…with a smile.

Doesn’t that sound more appealing than having to learn a new Garage Speak language?

Especially knowing that women feel sufficiently ill at ease in garages to postpone their visits in favour of the very long list of places they’d prefer to visit instead…

More FOXY Choice approved female friendly garages = more female business in FOXY Choice’s book. Not too hard for you to spot the commercial link here is it guys?

FOXY Steph

A FOXY listed female friendly business

It’s all too easy to write ‘we are a female friendly garage’ at a website yet not have an inkling what this entails.  Very often businesses think equality means treating men and women the same and perhaps some garages think the FOXY initiative is a feminist thing; but just in case it might bring them new business, they say they are female friendly without giving this any thought.

Whereas the truth is that being female friendly is a BIG BUSINESS ISSUE because women are the gender spenders when it comes to buying cars and garage services like MOTs, car servicing and repairs. And because UK garages aren’t regulated and few mechanics are accredited so complaint levels are too high and service levels are too low…

Which is why we find that genuinely female friendly businesses are usually the best ones out there.

Most women think that the male dominated motor industry is in need of a female friendly makeover – making it a better place for women drivers AND men too. The business case is simple; those that get it right for fussy foxy females will reap considerable commercial gain over complacent other garages who think that their motor industry standards are good enough.

Sadly few businesses that say they are female friendly but haven’t joined FOXY’s network yet show measurable signs of workmanship quality, superior customer services or investment in facilities and amenities to make garage services shopping a more enjoyable experience for women in future. Which is what FOXY is all about, of course.

Just for the record, what FOXY does is different as follows…
1    Garage subscribers sign the FOXY Promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t need or want.’
2    We actively help women to understand their choices with an independent and unbiased FOXY Good Garage Guide.
3    We create a female friendly website page to supplement and complement and existing website entries; this is ideal to measure responses to marketing campaigns for example.
4    We cater more for females by identifying and focusing on quality standards, caring customer services and superior facilities that we know women want. We also reveal which garages and dealerships are near shops, have clean washrooms, employ women and welcome children.
5    We actively promote these businesses to women; online and via the Club.
6    FOXY Lady Drivers Club keeps in touch with members via email AND encourage feedback. We also invite this via the FOXY Choice website.
7    Finally, if a member has a serious problem at a garage, car dealer or main franchised dealership we’ll help her sort it out through our informal mediation. We haven’t needed to get the knuckledusters out in some 2 years so our approach does work and we reserve the ultimate weapon ‘we’ll tell local ladies within the Club’ or ‘we’ll remove you from the FOXY Choice register.’

But we can’t do any of this if you are dealing with a garage that says it’s female friendly but hasn’t signed the FOXY Promise. There is no alternative…

FOXY Steph

PS: In case I am being unfair about a genuinely female friendly garage that doesn’t know about FOXY Choice yet, please tell them and hopefully they’ll add their support to ours. We are all about focusing on industry quality for the good of ALL motorists by adopting independent foxy benchmark standards as in female, fussy and feisty. And because too few garages are good enough as recent Which? and BBC Watchdog consumer exercises confirm.

Like turkeys saying no to Christmas, the UK motor industry cannot police itself effectively because it has a vested interest in preserving or favouring the status quo.

Yet it is surely Consumer Direct’s biggest customer, looking after all the complaints their garages, fastfits, car dealers and franchised dealerships are responsible for.

Can you imagine M&S or Waitrose promoting a ‘straightforward and swift complaints service’ to their customers? I’d be looking for faults straight away and that very awareness could become a self-fulfilling prophecy…

However this is exactly what happens in the motor industry where complaints are endemic, the industry clearly cannot police itself and businesses might as well resign themselves to dealing with complaints it seems.

For example, one in five used car sales results in a complaint that reaches Consumer Direct each year. There were 65k used car complaints recorded in 2009 (50k from independent car dealers and 15k from franchised car dealerships) and the stats are up by 18% for the first six months in 2010. Plus c11k complaints during 6 months in 2010 to date about independent garages (can’t find the dealership numbers here as not in Top Ten complaint listing).

Can you imagine the scale of this and how many people are needed simply to handle these complaints (Citizens Advice Bureau, small claims court, lawyers, conciliation experts and many more, in addition to manufacturer complaints departments and OFT managed Consumer Direct) let alone the money that motorists who give up or whose complaint fails are expected to shell out to put things right…

Yet no-one ever tells the motorists who the genuinely good and bad garages, fastfits, dealers and dealerships are. For ‘legal reasons’ we’re told by Trading Standards.

Clearly the UK’s garage industry is in dire straits despite the fact, as always, that there are many measurably better garages and dealerships to be found – but you need to know what are the genuine signs of quality in a good garage guide. Like the saying ‘not all that glisters is gold…’ not all garages that say they are ‘good’ are truly good enough.

Remember that the UK industry isn’t licensed and mechanics don’t have to be qualified to repair your car. Choose a bad garage by accident and you could end up with a car that isn’t safe without you realising it. Or paying for work that hasn’t been done.

The more the industry promotes its complaints services the more it promotes its complaint levels and the motorists get uneasy, suspicious and likely to find fault…

Wouldn’t it be better to regulate the industry and have done with it once and for all? Safer cars, qualified mechanics, minimum inspection standards for used cars, all garages up to scratch, inspected regularly, the bad ones weeded out and a better industry image?

Instead of caveat emptor motorists?

I can see a compelling business case but I can also understand why motor industry trade associations aren’t the right people to be policing their own industry. After 60 years and some 12 previous attempts at industry regulation, they must surely realise they aren’t independent or unbiased; they have too much to lose.

As I see it, it’s like turkeys voting for Christmas – too many businesses know what their fate will be. And as long as HM Government postpones regulation, the industry doesn’t have to pull its socks up for as long as motorists are coughing up and putting up with inferior standards of workmanship and lacklustre customer service.

FOXY Steph

Pregnant women drivers are offered this motoring advice from the IAM (Institute of Advanced Motorists) so they can drive safely and comfortably.

Thinking they are protecting their unborn child many motoring mums to be wear their seatbelt across the centre of their bump which is not, apparently, the right thing to do.

According to the IAM and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) motoring mums should

• Wear the lap strap below your bump, as low as possible, from hip-bone to hip-bone
• Keep the diagonal strap between your breasts, moving the strap around the side of your bump
• Adjust the fit to be as snug as comfortably possible
• You can push the seat back, as long as you adjust your mirrors accordingly and can reach the brake, accelerator and clutch. NB:You can buy pedal extenders for this purpose. Being an extra three inches away from the steering wheel makes a lot of difference in an accident.

Professor Sir Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), said “Correct use of seatbelts by pregnant women is important, as incorrect use can cause harm to the fetus and fail to protect the woman in the case of an accident. Pregnant women should use three-point seatbelts above and below the bump, not over it.”

Women drivers can find out about motoring safety advice from FOXY Lady Drivers Club.

Motoring mums concerned about the competence of the garages in their area can find out more from the Good Garage Guide before singling out female friendly garages and dealerships from FOXY Choice.

FOXY Steph

With average garage labour rates varying between £90 an hour for a dealership and £56 for an independent garage in the UK it’s hard to know if you are paying more than you need to when there are so many other factors to consider.

Of course we all judge value for money based on our needs, expectations and satisfaction levels which is why FOXY Choice publishes a Good Garage Guide to help women with their MOT and car servicing shopping – this website identifies measurable quality standards as well as good female friendly car dealerships and independent garages.

From my experience I know that many female motorists choose where to have their car serviced on the basis of convenience factors like the location of the garage and whether it offers a car collection service. Increasingly women drivers are sharing female feedback online within FOXY Lady Drivers Club so I know that the following motoring myths continue for many, despite trade efforts to put the record straight…

Some women will happily pay more to have their car serviced by a dealership thinking they need to, to maintain a warranty or that a dealership stamp in the car’s handbook will guarantee a higher resale value.

Other women are more cost conscious and tend to shop around for the lowest price for MOTs, tyres and car servicing deals, thinking that all garages are much the same as each other.

The truth is that whilst dealership rates are undoubtedly dropping and represent much better value for money nowadays, many motorists can have their nearly new car serviced at a good independent garage for less money and within the terms of their warranty.  But it isn’t true to say that a dealership stamp will guarantee a better price when it’s time to sell – what matters most is that the car has been serviced regularly and to the manufacturer’s standards.

More worrying from a female point of view is that if you shop around for the lowest price going or choose a garage you don’t know anything about you could be risking your personal safety and that of your family and other motorists. This is an industry where garages aren’t licensed, where mechanics don’t have to be qualified and where complaint levels are high.

And very often we hear stories about the lowest price escalating because the garage doesn’t have the latest equipment to diagnose the fault correctly; you then end up paying more for the mechanic’s labour to see if he can find the fault instead.

To illustrate the differences in perceived ‘value for money’ a good example is the price that a BMW driver would pay in a dealership versus a good independent garage, for a simple job like an oil change or a typical car safety check.

In its recent advertising campaign the manufacturer states ‘Think we’re expensive? Think again.’ listing the following BMW Value Service prices for participating franchised dealerships to change the engine oil, front brake pads and carry out safety checks for BMW 3 series (E46) 4 cylinder models.

£115 Oil Service (includes microfilter)

£99 Front brake pads (includes sensor replacement)

£189 Inspection 1 (includes oil service and safety checks)

Clearly these prices have been reduced so they represent better value for money than they did but £115 still sounds a lot to pay for a simple oil change, no matter the use of the word ‘service’. And if BMW’s Inspection 1 costs £189 for an oil change and safety checks then their safety checks must cost £74…

But are these prices fair enough for an up-market dealership experience, with all that entails for the executive BMW driver?  That’s up to you, your car and your budget, dear reader .

The alternative solution to a franchised dealership is a measurably good independent garage who uses genuine BMW parts, BMW specified lubricants, accredited technicians and who carries out work in accordance with BMW’s specifications.

Starting with a female friendly Bosch Car Service garage in Scotland who operates to a fully approved OFT Code of Practice, Falkland Performance Centre in Glenrothes would charge the following prices:

£80.15 Oil Service saving £34.85

£147.70 Inspection 1 saving £41.30

But when it comes to the front brake pads, Falkland’s business owner Allan Adam calculates £111.35 which is £12.35 more than a BMW dealership because they always strip and clean the brake calipers prior to fitting brake pads which BMW does not specify.

Another leading and similarly female friendly independent garage, Woodley Autos near Reading in Berkshire (where labour rates are higher than in Scotland) who is ISO 9001 approved would also save local BMW motorists money for the equivalent oil change and safety checks as follows…

£86.26 Oil Service saving £28.74

£93.08 Front Brake Pads saving £5.92

£139.43 Inspection 1 saving £49.57

So in a nutshell it is possible to save money by shopping around and if these savings can be made for low cost garage services then there is much more to be saved by shopping around for the likes of full and major car services, comparing car collection and courtesy cars, other services & amenities and whether the business is near shops, a leisure centre or other entertainment to occupy the driver who chooses to wait.

But the most important factor on all occasions is surely to identify the best value for money, seen through the eye of the beholder, taking into account minimum quality standards, the latest diagnostic equipment, service levels and amenities to suit. This matters because, at best, motorists might be overcharged, patronised or sold services they do not need. At worst, the job might not have been done properly and they could be risking their personal safety and that of other motorists.

To find out more about this big subject, female and male motorists alike, please read FOXY Choice’s Good Garage Guide and search for measurably good and female friendly UK garages and dealerships.

FOXY Steph

PS: A cheap garage isn’t worth the risk if they cut corners to save them money…

At first I thought this was a joke from Nationwide Autocentres in their latest newsletter but it isn’t.

According to car sales giant Motorpoint who decided to ask, 77% of those they sampled thought women needed their own shopping car parks in the UK (not sure if the respondents were all male , female or some of each…).

This survey was fuelled by tales of a stylish and female friendly car park reserved for women drivers in a shopping centre in Hebei in China. And apparently there have been similar female friendly marketing to women initiatives in Japan and Russia.

But it’s still rare in the UK and I sense a deep seated male resistance here to associate all this marketing to women as being sexist. On the other hand, many women (me included) object big time to being marketed to as being frilly or empty-headed a la ‘colour it pink’ marketing tactics we so often see.

Whatever the shopping occasion, women want to have all the information to hand, female feedback ideally, to make the right choice. Then it’s up to them. A good example of this is the female friendly FOXY Choice garage website where women drivers can do their buying homework in FOXY’s Good Garage Guide and then check out which local garages, fastfits and dealerships have agreed to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t want.’

It’s full of information that isn’t online elsewhere and very soon it will include the female feedback women like – the sort of thing that savvy women want to read for their peace of mind, before getting their credit card out…

Of course if more male business owners knew as much about the workings of the female brain as they do about gadgets, computers and car mechanics (try The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine for some OMG eye-opening facts) more of them would understand how women think and react and (might) try harder to get it right for her in future.

If China is prepared to invest in getting it right for female consumers, why not the UK?

FOXY Steph

“Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.”
Joseph Conrad

There are several factors that influence the choice of a good garage. These are the quality of the garage workmanship (first and foremost because of the safety implications) then comes value for money (a good independent garage is likely to be much cheaper but a good franchised dealership might offer more services and facilities to suit) and of course the location of a garage.

Many female (and male) motorists think that choosing a garage is much like popping into the supermarket – you go to the nearest one and chances are you’ll get much the same service whether it’s a MOT, servicing or repair you need. Few realise that the UK garage industry is is an unregulated industry where garages do not have to be licensed to start trading, where any garage can pay to be listed in a good garage guide regardless and where the majority of mechanics are not qualified but are still allowed to repair our cars. Mystery shopping surveys always reveal that industry standards are not high enough… whether it’s a garage, fastfit or dealership.

To find out more about this subject (not the sexiest read going, I admit…) you can read FOXY’s Good Garage Guide.

To find a good and female friendly garage near you, you can check out the FOXY Choice website, entering your postcode to see what your local choice is. In addition to highlighting quality logos such as ATA, BSI, any Trading Standard’s Motor Trade Partnerships and the OFT’s fully approved Service and Repair Code of Practice (these are the best in our industry today…) individual garage entries will often tell you when they are near to shops and/or leisure facilities and which ones will collect your car and/or offer you a courtesy car service at servicing or repair times.

Very soon we’ll be adding online testimonials from females and highlighting those garages and dealerships that employ females. To a certain degree this might sound like mollycoddling women drivers to the detriment of some fantastically female friendly garages that are staffed by all male teams but the reality is that many women drivers worry about being patronised or even intimidated in a male dominated environment and the presence of a female to talk to, where necessary, can be very reassuring. I’d add that all FOXY Choice subscribers have signed the female friendly FOXY Promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t need or want’ which is a strong indication that a business is female friendly and heading in the right direction’.

Such is the poor image of the UK motor industry in the mind of many female customers that it needs a complete female friendly marketing makeover to win their hearts and minds in future…

And come that day , there are many leading UK garages, fastfits and dealerships that can demonstrate much higher standards for women drivers in terms of workmanship, value, cleanliness and customer service that will stand out in the crowd…

FOXY Steph