A motoring club for women – what’s that about?

Members-OnlyWe are often asked why women need a motoring club of their own. Usually by men who don’t get the point that women are equal but different and don’t necessarily share their appreciation of blokey garages with grubby loos and smarmy car salesmen. What’s not to understand?

If anyone thinks these things don’t happen in today’s motor industry they should have heard the tales I did on our stand at the Sussex Woman’s Show in Brighton last weekend…

These things certainly happen in the female mind.

When it’s a woman who’s asking the question we then explain that UK garages aren’t licensed and their mechanics don’t have to be qualified to service or repair our cars. Most women are as shocked as I was when I first learned this some 10 years ago…

Can motoring services get any worse?

If that isn’t reason enough for most women to want to know who the really good garages are in their area we then add that things are even worse when it comes to buying used cars!

That’s because there isn’t a minimum ethical standard in the UK motor industry to stop the customer from buying gleaming used cars with major mechanical faults you can’t see. Not only that but many dodgy dealers also try to restrict customer rights by imposing their shorter warranty to protect them when things inevitably go wrong very soon after money has changed hands.

These are two unregulated areas in the motor industry where motorists need to be genuinely foxy. A ridiculously cheap MOT can be a come on for expensive (& occasionally unnecessary) remedial work and a good looking secondhand car can quickly turn into a mechanical nightmare.

Ways to identify the good guys in the motor industry

To do something about all this we started with garages by introducing a network of genuinely female friendly ones which we identify by their measurable quality, then promote to women and monitor through member feedback. Next we added a network of FOXY Lady Approved repairers at the request of Ageas Insurance for their accident repairers called Solutions Centres.

Later this year we’ll be launching a new FOXY Lady Approved ie female friendly network for car dealers, to help women (and their husbands/partners of course) do their car buying homework and, hopefully, spot the dodgy cars and dealers before it’s too late.

Those that break all the rules and clearly don’t give a monkeys about the customer can expect to feel the impact of our criticism when we spread the word within the Club, behind Club doors, so local women know not to use their services in future. We want to make sure that other females don’t suffer the same fate.

These are but a few reasons why women need a club of their own and one they can trust.

This is also why it makes sense to remind your family and friends to join FOXY Lady Drivers Club. And before we put our rates up in 2014.

FOXY