It seems that motoring Mums and daughters are the silent audience that car insurers are targeting from December onwards so they can underwrite more profitable business in future.

This is unfair treatment of women drivers however you look at it and nobody, other than FOXY Lady Drivers Club of course, seems prepared to stand up for women’s best interests here.

Reading about the subject I find that young women take an average of 51.9 lessons from qualified driving instructors compared to 36.2 for young men (DfT research 2004).

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why most young women drivers are safer and more considerate than many young men?

And why it makes little sense to rate young men and young women drivers as the same motor car insurance risk; which is precisely what is due to happen as a result of the forthcoming gender equality ruling in December 2012. Which is deeply unfair to most women drivers because it flies in the face of years of statistics that prove different gender motoring profiles.

To the extent of being sexist and ageist even?

Add to this the perennial debate that young drivers need more lessons such as taking a PassPlus course to gain insurance discounts…

Yet if I had invested in 15 more lessons than my male counterpart before passing my test (at an average £20 per lesson that’s c£300 more I’d have spent), I’d feel I had paid enough already. And if that difference was PassPlus or got me an insurance discount, I’d say that was self evident.

Like it or not driving ability is a gender thing and age is a key consideration too. Young men are naturally more confident drivers (it’s proven to be because of testosterone levels) than many young women hence their seeming to need fewer lessons before passing their test.

But this is but a false dawn because statistics confirm men attract 92 per cent of all driving convictions and 98 per cent of convictions for dangerous driving. So the driving test isn’t preparing them for a safe driving career whereas perhaps more lessons might…

According to the UK Treasury, taking gender out of the car insurance equation will result in a general levelling of premiums, with women under 45 paying an extra £920 million a year with men paying £620 million less. Women under 25 could see their premiums leap by a quarter, while men the same age will save 10 per cent. And there’s an interesting £300 million gap…

The outcome is clear – simply raising insurance prices for women isn’t going to result in fewer accidents – all it will result in is that young women pay for accidents they don’t cause and insurers get richer.

Or put another way – women drivers are being taken to the cleaners.

FOXY Steph

“What you need is sustained outrage – there’s far too much unthinking respect given to authority” Molly Ivins, American humorist and political commentator 1944 -2007

This blog entry is as a result of an an email from Elizabeth in Leeds who is a Club member.

Her experience echoes that of other members who are baffled when an insurer pays out in what is typically a no fault accident situation. And who worry that their premium or No Claims Bonus might be affected.

What seems to be happening is that whenever there is a liability dispute (which, let’s face it, insurers encourage by telling motorists not to admit liability even when it’s clearly their fault) both insurers are accepting shared costs (called a ‘knock for knock’ basis) rather than taking this further to identify the guilty or fraudulent party.

Simply because it is often cheaper to pay out on this basis than argue the toss…

This is what Elizabeth tells us about her experiences. Her comments about dealing with uswitch remind me why it can make sense to shop in advance and double check a comparison website later I you aren’t happy as obviously deals can change…

“I have recently renewed my car insurance. I tried uSwitch about 2 ½ weeks before renewal and did not much like the premiums. I tried again 2 weeks later and the premiums were 250 pounds cheaper! I chose a company, which I knew was affiliated with my existing one, but it turned out that they are the same company. So I have ended up with the same company, but at the price I found on uSwitch.”

“By the way, I have chosen a high excess because I have found that if you have an accident with a lower excess, it gets added to your premium anyway. The financial penalty for claiming for small amounts is larger than the claim.”

“I had an incident nearly 2 years ago when someone claimed I had hit her car and caused damage. I was not aware of anything and there is no way that my car could have caused that particular damage. She harassed me to the point where I had to go to my local police station. They got her to stop. In the end my insurance company (not the current one) settled in error, having received no proof at all from her. I reported this incident to my current insurer last year, but now it seems to have disappeared from their records.”

“I have had numerous instances where damage has been caused to my car when I have not been there – and of course no one has owned up.”

FOXY’s advice is always to tell the insurance company the full facts and if you know nothing about any accident or you deny any liability ask them to confirm that they have recorded this as a no fault accident. In these circumstances it would seem unreasonable for the insurer to inflate your premium or downgrade your No Claims Bonus as a result.

And whilst the ‘knock for knock’ settlement system seems lazy and unscientific ie  ‘we’re not sure who’s guilty so let’s split it’ we do appreciate that the time this takes to sort out can be more costly than a 50:50 formula.

If any motorist feels her insurance premium has been inflated by a previous accident that was not their fault they should check whether that accident has been scored against them on their policy. If the insurer is unwilling to review this as a no fault accident and perhaps your no claims bonus has been affected, please let us know the details. And shop around for  a better renewal deal.

I should add that this is going to be doubly hard to police in the lead up to insurers imposing gender equality ratings from December 2012 onwards. This is when insurers will be allowed to charge ALL women drivers more than they have been paying despite the statistically safer driving record of young women drivers compared to young male drivers in particular.

There is nothing fair about this ‘equality ruling’ when it comes to common rating genders for car insurance premiums…

FOXY Steph

NB: FOXY Lady Drivers Club includes a female friendly accident assistance service to help members and their family after an accident. Providing you contact them before your insurer, they can advise you of your best option in the circumstances. If you don’t claim against/via your insurer but get our service to claim from the liable third party there can be no doubt of this claim adversely affecting your premium in future.

A survey that’s unlikely to encourage many foxy lady drivers to take a financial risk at car auctions confirms that close on a third of buyers regretted buying an unreliable car.

And wouldn’t have if they’d known this of course.

Unreliability and breakdowns soon after purchase are the biggest regrets mentioned in a recent survey by Manheim Auctions.

Nearly a third of all respondents mentioned that their biggest regret was buying an unreliable car and 24% claimed their car broke down soon after they bought it. Nearly 15% of motorists regretted buying a car because they found it to be too expensive to run while 11% admitted that they paid too much for their car.

Only 3% of motorists did not like the colour of the car they had bought ‘proving that colour choice is a key buying decision factor’ [sic]. I’d have thought the opposite; that colour wouldn’t matter to those who were buying for price reasons. And unsurprising for the same reasons and to be expected in a recession, only 2% were concerned that the car they bought was not as environmentally friendly as they had thought at the time. Even though this would cost them more in running costs…

Andy Cullwick at Manheim Auctions explains
“Research is key to buying any car, as is buying from a reputable source whether it is an auction, car supermarket or dealer.  The internet is great for information gathering and for researching running costs including insurance, fuel consumption as well as service and repair costs. Don’t necessarily avoid high mileage cars; these tend to be ex fleet cars that have been well maintained and regularly serviced and may still have the remainder the original warranty in place.”

I’m not an expert of course but I seem to remember that it’s largely a male dominated and ‘caveat emptor’ environment where this sort of dissonance can be expected. Perhaps Manheim bucks the trend here by providing more support services for customers than others at their physical and online auctions?

But for the very reason this survey spells out, I’d steer clear of live auctions unless you know what you’re doing. Avoid ‘sold as seen’ cars unless you’re prepared to take a big risk and where in doubt ask for an Engineer’s report (for a fee) if you want a second opinion about the mechanical state of the car in question.

Prior to the bidding process, it also makes sense to check out the car’s value online, its performance in the reliability index, its safety performance at NCAP, the car’s servicing record, VED and insurance ratings before taking the plunge. Because you have little comeback in law if you buy a lemon as the following statistics confirm.

Regrets some 3000 motorists had after buying a car at an auction.
It wasn’t very reliable      30.3%
It broke down soon after I bought it     24.3%
It was expensive to run       14.8%
I paid too much for it     10.7%
I didn’t like the colour        3.3%
It wasn’t as ‘green’ as I thought     2.3%

FOXY Steph

Members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club can count on a handholding and advisory service when they come to buy a new or used car. Heaven forbid they end up with a lemon but if they do we help them sort it out and, if all routes are then exhausted, we can at least tell other ladies inside the Club about their experiences so they don’t have the same problem.

Most of us know that women are THE gender spenders who influence c80% of  all household purchases and are described as ‘instigators-in-chief’ when it comes to c60% of car sales (and presumably their garage care afterwards). We’re professional shoppers, we do our homework in advance, we know what we want and we’re not afraid of going somewhere else if we don’t get it.

But when it comes to comparing male and female shopping behaviour we know that men can do the job in hand quicker whereas we want to compare and contrast value and features before making our (better) informed decision. Take shopping for a pair of trousers for example. Casual or formal. He is more likely to buy the same style and the same colour as the last time and from the same shop before retiring to the pub for a liquid reward; happy because the job has been done efficiently and as painlessly as possible…

Whereas she might spend ages looking at what everybody else is wearing, comparing this season’s colour choices and then shopping online and on the High Street for the best deal… This has been known to take weeks in our household .

But it’s very important to take your time when it’s a big ticket item like a car or financing the deal for that matter. I’m sure we can all remember unhappy purchases we made in a hurry or when we’ve been seduced by a low price, only to experience the steep learning curve borne out of realising we’ve bought a lemon, wasted money and that we should have bought a different brand or product…

A recent survey from BMW Financial Services has been looking at men and women’s attitudes towards financing a car which reflect precisely these differences in our gender genes. Whilst the economy is struggling it seems that more of us are turning to dealer finance to fund the purchase of our dream cars than was the case in 2010.

This is probably because the car finance market is very competitive today and it’s so much more convenient to sort out the finance transaction alongside their new car and any part exchange paperwork.

According to BMW’s research, many males admitted rushing into an ill-judged car finance decision within just two hours whereas one third of women drivers take at least two days to make the choice. That’s the foxy way…

But apparently some consumers gave about as much thought to purchasing a car as they did to purchasing a sofa; not thinking through the implications of a longer finance deal for the more expensive vehicle transaction. Very costly I imagine.

BMW’s survey also confirmed that women are prepared to compromise when it comes to making joint decisions about which car or car finance package to buy whereas men prefer to choose entirely independently. Or put another way (assuming a gsoh)…
He thinks “This is motoring – this is a MAN’s department.”
She thinks “Oh for an easy life – let him think this is his decision but I’ll make sure he makes the right choice…”

This is in stark contrast to shopping for a new kitchen apparently which is more likely to be a joint decision. Or put another way (assuming the same gsoh)…
He thinks “ With a bit of luck she’ll be spending more time in it (cooking for me) than me so she really should have one she’s happy in (cooking for me…).
She thinks “If I am expected to do more cooking, washing, ironing and cleaning in the kitchen (than him) the least I expect is one that suits me best.”

Certainly attitudes to car ownership seem to have changed with women in particular spotting that buying a new or used car using car finance carries a number of advantages.

In fact Joe Pattinson at BMW Financial Services has detected a growing trend for women to sign up to ‘rent to own’ finance deals as he explains…
“Finance is the car purchasing model for women in future and we see this as a long term purchasing trend that is here to stay. A quarter of women (surveyed) say they are cutting back on all spending and changing their lifestyle considerably, and as these attitudes are applied to the concept of car ownership, (staggered car) finance will become the norm in the not too distant future.”

Joe continues: “Sadly many drivers are making greater compromises on the make, model and specification of their vehicle than they need to.”

Women need to know their foxy car finance choices perhaps?

FOXY Steph

A Ladies Garage evening in Leeds

Nightingale Service Centre in Horsham and Motor Marque garage in North Leeds are both organising free and timely Ladies Evenings in November to give women drivers cold weather motoring tips and foxy advice about caring for your car during what may well be a harsh winter.

When we recruit garages to FOXY Choice’s female friendly network we expect subscribers to sign our FOXY Promise (to never overcharge, patronise or sell women anything they don’t need or want to buy) and a minimum commitment to quality, value, cleanliness and a genuinely friendly customer welcome. But for non-compulsory ‘female friendly’ brownie points FOXY Choice particularly likes to see garages that employ women in customer facing roles and organise ladies evenings to help women run their cars

Two such FOXY Choice subscribers are organising special Ladies* Evenings this November in Horsham, West Sussex and Leeds in West Yorkshire.

*men welcome too of course (but few think they need this ); FOXY recommends these evenings to ALL novice drivers regardless of gender.

HORSHAM 29 November 2011 from 6-8pm
Nightingale Service Centre tel: 01403 253068 (ask for Shelly or Austin)
Free of charge but including a cuppa and a very merry mince pie in between practical tips on winter driving and hands on oil and wheel changing advice.

NORTH LEEDS 16 November 2011 from 6.30 to 8.30pm
Motor Marque tel: 0113 288 8899 (ask for Louise or Mark)
Free of charge but including refreshments, practical winter driving tips and associated seasonal motoring matters that women want to know about!

Please note that all women attending these sessions will receive a gift membership to FOXY Lady Drivers Club worth £23 so it also makes financial sense to sign up whilst there are still spaces.

FOXY Steph

PS Any men attending can nominate a foxy lady to receive their Club membership gift of course!

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.

Readers of my blog will know that I have firm views about garage quality standards and that even I find the industry’s competing schemes to be confusing from a motorists point of view.

But in an industry with such a poor reputation in so many female minds FOXY Choice’s criteria for female friendly garages includes identifying all evidence of quality wherever we find it because otherwise bad garages line up all too easily alongside good garages without any easy way for women (our target audience) to see which garages they can trust and then recommend to their family and friends.

We then promote female friendly garages to women via FOXY Choice and FOXY Lady Drivers Club websites and in blog mentions like this one as well as at Facebook and Twitter, where applicable.

And to complete the process, we encourage good garage feedback which we share online with other local women drivers.

So, when I meet a garage proprietor with equally strong views as mine, who agrees with me about garage regulation being the holy grail, and who is clearly ploughing his own quality furrow, I have a great deal of respect for his opinions about quality standards in the garage industry.

I am talking about Brunswick Garage in New Southgate, London N11  which is owned and run by Andy Savva. Who tells me he doesn’t join any of the industry badged schemes because his training regime is better than them all…

And I was reminded about this conversation by reading a feature about Brunswick Garage in a motor industry magazine this week so I thought it was about time that we looked at how Andy and his female friendly garage are doing things, for local women drivers in the Friern Barnet, New Southgate and Barns Green areas of North London.

For starters, female customers are in for a very pleasant surprise walking into Brunswick Garage’s spacious and stylish reception area with designer sofas, flatscreen TVs, homemade cakes, free WiFi and a coffee machine.

The business says it specialises in BMW, Audi, VW and Mini makes of cars but the staff are sufficiently well trained, with the latest diagnostic equipment to handle most makes of vehicles imaginable. Their expertise is down to Andy’s commitment to the best staff training; he doesn’t believe that a technician can ever be fully qualified ‘because there’s always more to be learned in an industry where technology marches forward regardless’. Very true.

Both Andy and I agree that the people who know cars better than anyone else are likely to include the manufacturers so that’s where Andy chooses to send his staff for training, who are then trained alongside franchised dealership staff.

Finally I’d like to make a few observations about the efficiency of the garage business so you can see how well thought through the whole operation has been. For starters, Andy’s garage building includes a part which is occupied by a Motor Parts supplier he gets his parts from. So when your car needs replacement car parts the purchasing staff just nip next door rather than wait for a distributor to put the part on their next delivery. And very soon they won’t need to do that because the part will be automatically ordered via a computer link and brought to the guy doing the job.

The size of the workshop area means a better than normal choice of car tyres to hand and no fewer than 8 of the latest vehicle lifts, each with essential equipment such as airguns and ratchets to hand of course, so that the business is as efficient as it can be coping with high volume and offering speedy repair slots.

But you won’t find trade membership or industry scheme certificates up on the wall remember, other than the FOXY Choice Female Friendly approved one that is, and I hope you now understand why. And you can be reassured that Brunswick Garage is one of the best and most female friendly garages in North London.

Quality, value for money, cleanliness and a genuine warm welcome. We think it ticks all the boxes that women like to see before they start to trust a garage, look forward to visiting it and refer it to their friends. Which is why Female Friendly garages are so successful of course.

FOXY Steph

I have been curious about hybrid cars for as long as they’ve been around but I had never driven one so a recent invitation from Lexus to test drive their 2011 CT 200h seemed the perfect opportunity to put this right.

Their invitation arrived via Twitter which I use to keep in touch with members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club and to help spread FOXY Choice’s female friendly message within the UK motor industry. Lexus  had evidently spotted this and tweeted us about their #socialtestdrive service because they wanted as many women drivers to know about this as possible. And how better to test this on behalf of foxy lady drivers everywhere, than to take one of their Social Test Drives myself, which is exactly what I did and why I am now recommending this service to others!

If I’m honest, I didn’t know too much about Lexus either, other than it being a luxury car brand and one that always seemed to appear at the top of customer satisfaction surveys; a long way ahead of the everyday car brand names I was more familiar with. I had unwittingly assumed that this meant that their cars would be very expensive but the list price of the Lexus CT200h hybrid I test drove is just £22,740. When you factor in the savings this means in terms of fuel economy and not having to pay any road tax or  London congestion charge this starts to make it a very attractive proposition indeed.

Test driving a new car
I know from our Club research that many women drivers are nervous about taking a test drive at dealerships and perhaps my feelings are typical of some of theirs.

Whereas my husband seems able to jump in any car and drive it to its limits, I don’t have that kind of instant confidence. I need time to get the feel of any new car before I drive it, spending time adjusting the driving seat and mirrors to my total satisfaction. If I’m to test drive this alone I’ll even flick through the vehicle handbook first (looking for a section titled ‘Important information when test driving this car’ in vain…) just in case. And when I do set out, I’ll always start slowly to familiarise myself with the width and length of the car, its clutch, acceleration and braking style before I can truly relax.

So the thought of taking a test drive with what might be a smug and patronising male salesman (sorry guys but this is in many female minds…) who expects me to just get in and drive, can be daunting. Which may well be why many women take a man with them of course; so the guys can swap technical banter and not bother the driver .

Fortunately Lexus seems to understand all this and is keen to make the car shopping experience as enjoyable as possible for us. I imagine that their test drive arrangements vary across the UK (they’ll tell you this if you tweet #socialtestdrives) but if you head into a Lexus car dealership first you are likely to meet a ‘host’ who’ll do as much or as little for you as you want. If you prefer to browse on your own that’s fine but if you want to know more, your ‘host’ will then involve a sales person. And if you decide to take a test drive you can always ask for a female member of staff to accompany you, wherever this is possible.

So the prospect of test driving the Lexus CT 200h 1.8 SE-I 5dr CVT Auto Hatchback at a time to suit me, from my home base as it turned out, was the perfect scenario. I was able to drive it on rural roads in Sussex before heading into central London to attend Radio 2′s Pop Festival in Hyde Park. The fact I was able to do this almost straightaway, on a combination of wet and dry roads as well, tells you just how easy I found this car to drive.

First impressions
I’m sure you’ve seen the Lexus CT 200h in the adverts fronted by Kylie Minogue. The CT means Compact Tourer by the way and it’s a 1.8 hybrid engine which was launched in the UK in January 2011. It looked just as stylish sitting on my drive and as good luck would have it, if I had been asked to specify a colour, I’d have gone for the Cerulean Blue metallic paint I was looking at, with its stylish black leather seats, spacious interior, reassuringly big wing mirrors and impressively roomy boot.

I was able to take my time, to feel comfortable in the driving seat and to appreciate that the ‘engine’ is really the battery when you first turn it on; so it’s virtually silent. The dashboard lights come on so you know something is happening but you don’t hear the customary vroom which is odd to begin with.

It’s also a semi automatic which I liked; you floor the brake pedal before selecting Drive or Reverse and as soon as you lift your foot the car glides into motion. That’s very smooth but please don’t think it’s a slow mover by any means; it can accelerate from 0 to 62 in 10.3 seconds if you need it to.

As it happened, my husband wasn’t able to come with me that day so I took my 6ft tall 18 year old son instead. This meant I had a self declared expert with me to test out all the onboard gadgets. This required a thorough ‘play’ with them all first of course, after which I got the thumbs up for the music system, the Bluetooth gizmos, SatNav and a very helpful visual reversing screen. It was good to be able to concentrate on the drive of course but I’m confident that even I could have coped with the central menu screen with its radio, music, satnav and cabin heating controls…

Helped by the foolproof SatNav system we travelled smoothly through Croydon and South London suburbs, up a busy Park Lane and into a Marble Arch car park with the minimum of stress. Quickly enough for us to fit in an excellent Sunday lunch at the Cumberland Hotel’s (Gary) Rhodes Brasserie before strolling across the road and into Hyde Park in plenty of time to catch the opening act of the afternoon – Jools Holland.

In more detail
In simple terms (for me that is) the hybrid engine and the battery take it in turns to drive the car as and when this makes best and most economic driving sense. You’d be wrong to imagine that this makes it a sluggish performer though; we really enjoyed the Sport driving mode for a firmer and more zipply drive through the country lanes on our journey home. You don’t have to do anything to recharge the battery of course, it tops itself up from the engine so you don’t need to worry about recharging points – one of the downsides of electric cars as things stand.

This hybrid relationship makes for an impressive 68.9mpg for a combination of urban and rural road driving conditions, like our journey to and from Hyde Park. Band A emissions of 94g/km means that no VED road tax is payable or the London congestion  charge which is a big bonus. And of course you get the three year Lexus warranty, knowing their dealers have a reputation other manufacturers covet when it comes to customer service!

All in all, the basic price for the Lexus CT 200h SE-1 is £18,950 plus VAT bringing it to a very reasonable list price of £22,740 with a 10% Benefits in Kind (BIK) tax rating for business users. You can then add optional features to suit, like parking assist sensors, metallic paint colours and various packages to include cruise control, a back guide reversing monitor and other navigation aids.

Overall I was very impressed and see this as a hard bargain to beat. It’s an impressive package and I’m confident that the Lexus CT 200h will soon become a very foxy car for stylish women drivers who realise that they can get this sort of value for money, the next time they are shopping for a new car.

To take a Lexus Social Test Drive in your area
If you’d like to test drive a Lexus just tweet your requirements to #socialtestdrive. Lexus tells me that they’ll then do all they can to come up with an experience to give you time to bond with their car. This can be an accompanied drive or not. Ordinarily this could take as little as 2 hours to as much as a whole day to suit you.

You can request any model (including the CT200h) and depending on the location they’ll do their best to make sure you get to drive the model of your choice.

So if you’re as curious as I was, why not have a test drive and see for yourself?

FOXY Steph

The first Top Ten UK dealership group to sign up to the FOXY Choice approved FEMALE FRIENDLY garage network scheme is Vertu Motors plc.

If you don’t recognise that name, chances are you’ll know them better by their trading names Bristol Street Motors, Macklin Motors, Vertu Honda and Motor Nation.

This dealership group is clearly committed to getting things right for women customers.  They employ an impressive number of female staff in customer facing roles which reassures wary women in what many perceive to be male dominated environments.

Women feel more at ease seeing ‘women like them’ that they can talk to if they wish. I think this traces back to our deep-rooted concerns after hearing so many stories about women being overcharged, patronised and baffled by unnecessary jargon in other garages.

Vertu Motors is also keen to employ women in a wide range of exciting careers in the UK motor industry.  That’s another indication of their FEMALE FRIENDLY commitment  because it’s surely easier to recruit men who are more likely to have industry experience (thus perpetuating the 80:20 male:female gender ratio of motor industry staff) and it must be tempting for men to recruit in their own likeness.

So it has been refreshing to meet Vertu’s Group Aftersales Manager, Cath Thompson, and to see a high percentage of the participating dealerships nominate a Female Business Ambassador to act as the eyes and ears of their women customers in future. We all agree that women want to be treated like women, not men, and have different needs and expectations in many instances.

For example, women like to see genuine signs of quality (the more the merrier in this industry), we don’t like fog-factor jargon, we expect clean washrooms and, if we decide to wait for our car, we want to know we can have a drink and read some female friendly magazines whilst we do… And because Vertu Motors dealerships tick these boxes and more, this goes a long way towards making them FEMALE FRIENDLY businesses in FOXY Choice’s UK network.

Needless to say all motorists benefit from courtesy car and car collection services but I am confident that women will be reassured by Bristol Street Motors and Macklin Motors  promise of a ‘free and no obligation inspection of any car that is causing concern’. This is part of the evidence FOXY Choice looks for that the business in question is going that extra mile for its local customers. And that they are prepared to stand up and be counted by our independent monitoring services that encourage garage feedback via the FOXY Choice website.

Nobody’s perfect of course, and this is a big Group with lots of employees, but it’s good to sense a business that not only wants to get it right for its women customers and staff but also grasps the business imperative that being FEMALE FRIENDLY is all about customer loyalty and future referrals at the end of the day.

FOXY Steph

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