Tag Archives: car servicing

Members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club know that listed garages are female friendly and that they have signed the female friendly promise not to overcharge or patronise members of the Club.

car dealerships, garage services, women drivers

VW’s Spring servicing bargain

All women drivers buying a new Volkswagen can pay a one-off sum of just £250 to cover the servicing needs for the next three years or 30,000 miles, carried out by ATA equivalent fully trained VW specialists within their franchised dealership network.

And just like BMW Mini’s TLC package, if the car is sold before the three years are up (or 30,000 miles), the remainder of the plan can be transferred to the new owner which is an attractive sales extra.

Volkswagen Finance’s  servicing plan is open to all retail female customers whether they pay by finance or not. The £250 plan can be purchased up to 90 days after the first registration date of the vehicle or, alternatively, it can be included in selected Volkswagen Finance plans meaning peace of mind can cost just a few pounds per month.

The fixed-price service plan includes a maximum of an oil service at 12 months / 10,000 miles; an interval service including oil change at 24 months / 20,000 miles; and an inspection service including oil and brake fluid change at 36 months / 30,000 miles. At the same intervals, all VW Fox and New Beetle models receive an oil service, inspection service including oil and brake fluid change and a final oil service.

NB: A fixed-price servicing plan is also available for women drivers buying used VW cars from car dealerships for a one-off payment of just £299 under a separate plan.

Both fixed-price servicing plans apply to routine servicing based on the manufacturer’s recommended service schedule and exclude maintenance and other items.

Always check the small print and for more information visit www.volkswagen.co.uk.

Why not search for a female friendly garage or car dealership near you?

FOXY

female friendly, garage services, women drivers

Bishop Auckland garage gets female friendly vote

Many garage websites show photos of the exterior of their garage and let’s face it, few are memorable for that reason ;-).

Yet a photo, so they say, speaks a thousand words… which is why the one from Auckside Garage in Bishop Auckland, County Durham for their female friendly FOXY Choice entry is spot on for local women drivers doing their garage homework.

Yet if you simply google on garages in Bishop Auckland, looking for an MOT, car servicing or repairs for example, all you get is a list without any way of knowing who are better than the rest (remember that garages don’t have to be licensed or mechanics qualified in this industry) and which are genuinely female friendly.

Bearing in mind that we women place a lot of importance in how things look (and we’re quite fussy being expert shoppers ;-)) then the exterior of a used car lot, a garage forecourt or a me-too car glasshouse dealership isn’t necessarily the best photo for a business that wants to be memorable for its female friendly customer service.

Instead, a photo of a smiling staff team in clean overalls or a smart, well organised, clean looking, neat and tidy office team conveys the right sort of image to women who can then imagine the business behind the friendly image.

Quite obviously from their photo Auckside Motors is an honest, hardworking and friendly garage, a member of the Good Garage scheme to boot and a female friendly FOXY Choice subscriber so they have signed the FOXY Promise© to ‘never knowingly overcharge, patronise or sell women services they neither need nor want’. As a result of all this, they also get a listing at the new website www.femalefriendlyapproved.com and are a foxy choice for women drivers in and near Bishop Auckland in Durham when it comes to MOT, car servicing and garage repair work.

Why would any woman settle for second best when she can have a female friendly business to look after her best motoring interests for a change?

FOXY

female friendly, garage services, women drivers

Awardwinning female friendly garage in Oxford

One of the great things about what we do is to identify and promote the best and female friendly UK garages based on their commitment to quality and ahead of other local businesses in their area. So we keep our eyes open for female friendly business news and encourage this feedback, especially when it’s to do with business or trade awards.

Female friendly garage TJ Hall & Son in Sandford-on-Thames, Oxford, is one with a special award to celebrate in 2009 – Robert Hall has won leading trade publication CAT Magazine’s ‘Technician of the Year’ Award, sponsored by Castrol. TJ Hall is a friendly and family run business who are clearly proud of providing a warm welcome for women drivers and their garage services include MOTs, car servicing and vehicle repairs for all cars, including classics and older ‘cherished’ vehicles.

The oil companies are good at spotting and working with the best garages. I have posted about this recently – US company Forte Oils (nothing to do with the hotels) runs the Good Garage scheme, Shell co-ran the recent Aftermarket Better Garages competition and Castrol has partnered with CAT to promote their Technician of the Year Awards. They all like to be associated with the best businesses in an industry with a rip-off reputation, especially when it’s for women.

Either way, remembering that this is an industry where garages don’t have to be licensed or mechanics qualified, those that can demonstrate another tier of excellence, such as TJ Hall & Son, clearly rise above others who know they can’t rise to these standards.

It’s also good to note that TJ Hall have signed the FOXY Promise at the FOXY Choice website (so they can be trusted not to overcharge or patronise women), include a local car collection and delivery service and operate a breakdown recovery service too, should any foxy lady driver in Oxford need to call on a female friendly emergency service if stranded in future. This gives the business a further listing at the new www.femalefriendlyapproved.com website by the way.

These are all signs of quality so we advise women drivers in the Oxford area to choose a local garage with recent and prestigious awards for their next car servicing MOT or repairs, preferably one signed up to the FOXY scheme of course. Well done Robert.

FOXY

female friendly, garage services, women drivers

Foxy Deborah beats the men in the Dragons Den

I have just caught up with some TV programmes including a recent episode of Dragons’ Den with a new garage network called Servicing Stop run by two brothers who asked for £100k in exchange for 12.5% equity.

Peter Jones wanted in but just missed out by trying to close a deal too fast. One of the other male dragons offered the same terms (35% equity) but in the end they said yes to Deborah Meaden who came in at the end and offered the deal they wanted for 30% equity. Very foxy.

How interesting that the brothers would choose instantly (without having to speak to each other even…) on the basis of the cheapest money to service, rather than the one who might have the most relevant experience or opportunities to offer.

However I have a lot of time for Deborah and know she will bring commonsense marketing expertise to the garage debate. She has considerable business, tourism and leisure experience but has she been involved in the UK motor industry before? If not she might be surprised by what she finds; I certainly hope she finds it a more female friendly experience than a lot of women drivers do!

I was surprised that no Dragon asked about the garage competition or the target audience here as this is an extremely competitive sector. There are at least a couple of dead ringers here already and they are actively courting business women drivers, although more in a Fleet proposition where they drive BMWs and Mercedes not elderly Kia’s or Vauxhall’s.

It’ll be interesting to see how NSN and Prestige Car Servicing react – as well as Nationwide Autocentres when they spot the ubiquitous use of the nationwide keyword when offering the same services.

I also note that when asked how many garages they had on their books, one of the brothers said 600 but their website says 750+. Is that the power of the programme? In which case this and the customer exposure has probably paid for itself regardless of whether or not the deal goes ahead with Deborah.

I do have some reservations however in that whilst it’s a simple broker model, I worry about attempts to tighten the financial screw again and again and again in an industry without regulatory safeguards in terms of minimum safety standards. This industry has a well earned reputation for shoddy garage services and few garages are pro-actively female friendly with women drivers frequently singled out for patronising behaviour and higher bills

This broker model means that male and female motorists alike are being encouraged to choose independent garages over franchised dealerships (when some franchised dealers can compete with these prices by the way, depends on the make of car) and shop by price. The garage is  expected to prune their operating costs to get to the low fixed rates, pay an entry fee to the scheme I’m sure, provide a car collection service (this can be expensive to offer in terms of time and opportunity cost) and pay the garage broker a hefty commission for his marketing.

I hope the garages willing to do all this have been hand-picked through recommendation, are genuinely good enough to maintain safety standards and can make a profit from doing the job properly.

Undoubtedly the network that will do best is the one of the three that markets itself better than the others, hence the high cost of marketing mentioned (and where Deborah can help).

From the female motorist’s point of view (as often discussed here) the garage must deliver genuine value for money in that it must stick to the advertised price (no surprise extras on the bill), provide quality workmanship that is measurable (although many women wrongly assume this to be the case..), superior customer service and a reliable car collection/delivery service that doesn’t let them down.

I look forward to hearing all about this at the business networks I go to by dropping the words ‘car servicing’ and ‘garages’ into the conversation… I’ll also hear about this from FOXY’s female friendly garages, dealers and dealerships who will know more about this service than me I feel sure.

FOXY

“Don’t be afraid to give up the good for the great”
Kenny Rogers

garage services, road safety

Which car mechanics are qualified?

2 Comments

I was used to associating Corgi with qualified gas fitters – in fact I thought that the GI was part of an acronym and stood for Gas Installers, but perhaps I was wrong.

I now read that I should ask if a Corgi Gas Fitter is on the Gas Safe register.  I remember the BBC Watchdog programme mentioning this recently.

Presumably this is so that Corgi can stretch its brand and look at the likes of plumbers, builders and other home services. No bad thing if the minimum standard for registration is a qualification which needs to be refreshed to keep it up to date on a regular basis.

Once more, we are expected to check that our electricians and gas fitters are qualified but we are not told that few car mechanics are qualified to an industry minimum standard like that operated by the Institute of the Motor Industry.

By keeping quiet about this, most motorists, including many women drivers, seem to imagine that all mechanics are qualified and they are as horrified as I was when I found out they aren’t and that garages don’t have to be licensed to operate in this safety business.

So why don’t car mechanics in the UK have to be qualified like Corgi engineers and how do you find out who the good ones are; garages and mechanics.

As things stand, there are two relatively new quality schemes in the garage services area, each doing things differently. There’s the highly regarded and expensive to get BSI Kitemark and the government’s Consumer Codes Approval Scheme including service and repair schemes that have reached Stage Two of the OFT-approved code. So far I estimate that in the region of 10% of all garages, dealers and fast fits have either or standards (the very best have both…).

Can you imagine letting an unqualified electrician or gas fitter loose in your house?

So why would we let an unqualified mechanic work on our cars? Because few of us know enough about this subject I suspect.

One thing is true of all, they can all kill us if they do their job badly.

Interestingly there are few publicly available statistics about the number of fatal or serious road accidents caused as a result of unsafe cars. I suspect this might change if insurance companies decide to reject claims when they can prove that a car that caused or was involved in an accident wasn’t roadworthy.

Of course, shoddy workmanship isn’t the only reason for the high level of complaints in the garage industry.  Many women drivers are unhappy about being patronised and we all object to paying over the odds. Choose a main dealership rather than a good independent  to service your old car and chances are you will pay considerably more than you needed to had you gone to the independent.

Our garage website FOXY Choice doesn’t take sides in the main dealer versus independent garage debate though – we believe that motorists should be given the information to choose whether a dealer or an independent garage is best for their car and budget at car servicing or repair time. Anecdotal evidence included many car dealerships who are starting to compete on price with the top end independents.

Putting on my FOXY Lady Drivers Club hat for a moment, my advice to an unsuspecting motorist would be to see which local businesses have invested in quality services and amenities over and above others and then shop around for the best price, all things being equal.

I’d then say ‘don’t be fooled by a DIY cheap car servicing or MOT offer without doing your homework first’ for fear of this being a loss leader, leading to paying more for services you didn’t need. Always remember that the consequences of a bad car service could be life-threatening. And don’t think that one car service will be the same as another – again there are no agreed minimum standards here so caveat emptor and always study the small print to see what you are getting for paying more, or less.

The Club introduces foxy ladies to some of the best garages in the UK and includes many exclusive MOT and servicing offers. The FOXY Choice website is open to all, including a Garage Services shopping Guide and listing quality and female friendly garages and dealerships to choose from whether it’s garage services or new car buying time.

Always do your homework first and, please excuse the cynic in me speaking here, don’t place too high a value on a friendly voice answering the phone – that’s nice, of course, but it doesn’t tell you what the workshop standards are so always ask.

FOXY

PS  If you want to check where the industry qualified mechanics are in your area, visit industry site OKwithATA.com. Like the new Motor Industry code, there are more dealerships listed than independent garages which is a shame because price is the main decision-factor in getting older cars serviced regularly – make it seem too expensive and they mightn’t get serviced (no one makes you service an old car and the MOT is but a snapshot on the day) losing business for the industry and likely to result in an unsafe car on our roads.