Tag Archives: garages

women

Female friendly approved UK garages and car dealers

Steph-garage-250I am often asked if our network is different from others that sound impressive but that any Tom, Dick or Harry garage can join. I can honestly answer ‘yes we’re different’.

We have to be different because a bad garage, or one that pretends to be good but is, at best, mediocre, can compromise our motoring safety. Not just for women but also for men I hasten to add which is why we have many male fans and followers because they realise that our standards are higher than most others….

So, when you choose a FOXY Lady Approved female friendly garage you can be sure that it’s been vetted and endorsed by regular female feedback even if we approve a range of garages. As I see it, there’s no point in sending an out of warranty car and its owner into a franchised dealership and paying over the odds if there’s an approved good independent garage alternative. Unless the dealer is competing with them of course…

Our network is run by FOXY Lady Drivers Club’s sister organisation, FOXY Choice. Approved garages pay us an annual subscription to be identified, promoted and monitored as a female friendly garage or car dealer. I am comfortable with this relationship because it’s their money that funds our not for profit club and if the motor industry was as good as it should be, there’d be no need for the Club or for the good guys to have to be seen to out-perform the cowboys.

But there is a need, because, other than MOT’s, this isn’t a licensed industry. One where anyone can tinker with our cars because service and repair mechanics don’t have to be licensed or trained re the latest technology. An industry where she who knows when, where and how much to haggle will usually pay less for a new car than a more trusting neighbour who might venure into a showroom on her innocent own. Where used cars glint as does the salesman’s eye when he sees a gullible prospect to sell a used car to that he knows is about to blow a metaphorical gasket, just outside a mythical warranty he’s sold you. And where you can buy part worn (aka part safe) tyres or buy a car with part worn tyres without your knowledge. Or get your car repaired using cheap and not authentically original car parts. And so on. You get my drift – scratch any surface in this industry and you’ll find standards that aren’t good enough and that let the genuinely good garages and dealers down.

Clearly Rome wasn’t built in a day but FOXY has always started with minimum quality standards. We like to see businesses (garages and dealers) that have invested in training staff, listed on the IMI Professional Register. We also like to see manufacturer approved businesses because, if things go wrong, you can at least escalate problems through the dealer to the manufacturer…

A second standard is the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) schemes run by Motor Codes (backed by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders ie SMMT hence the emphasis of franchised dealerships), another me-too scheme run by Trust My Garage (backed by the Retail Motor Industry Federation ie RMIF hence the emphasis on independents more than franchised dealers) or the identical code-scheme operated by the Bosch Car Service network – mainly independents at the high end of the quality spectrum. Amazingly none of these Code of Practice schemes require staff to be licensed but Motor Codes is an Alternative Dispute Resolution services so at least you have somewhere to go if any of their members (and non members) behave badly.

We also expect businesses to sign the FOXY Promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t need’ which is sadly the image that too many women have in their heads. A huge number of women dread the garage experience meaning they don’t go as often as they should for this reason and, in too many cases, delegate the actual MOT, car servicing and often new car test drive to their (male) partner.

Shame on this industry for making us feel intimidated and without a means to fight back. We who are about to outnumber male drivers and who want more for our money. Those who are members of FOXY, can fight back of course, as we will always support them, assuming they’re in the right of course.

My personal bete noir is cleanliness and toilets in garages. These are mainly areas run by men so perhaps cleanliness isn’t as important to them as it would be to us. So where loos are pristine and impressive I heave a huge sigh of relief and want to shout this from the rooftops when inspecting washrooms as customer facilities.

Finally, even garages and dealers with all the quality ratings can be rude. In fact I have encountered some of the rudest men and women in customer facing business roles ever when phoning garages and/or dealers who are clearly oblivious to the way potential customers are treated.

So that’s about it really. A commitment to the FOXY Promise, minimum quality standards, any indication of investment in being better than others in the industry, value for money (I don’t mean cheap here), cleanliness and a warm welcome is what we look for before we award FOXY Lady Approved status. Then minimum supplies of female feedback to make sure they’re keeping their side of the bargain.

PROVISO – Not all FOXY Lady Approved garages tick all these boxes because this has to include a FOXY (as in female) Choice and clearly the more you expect (vehicle collection/courtesy car/italian coffee, WiFi etc) the more the business overheads are but at least you’ll know the garages are doing a good job for women. And that if they get this wrong, they have us to answer to, as per our Terms and Conditions.

My final advice is, don’t buy garage services on price alone. Make sure you know if they are good enough to do the job. Just like a cheap used car, there’ll be a reason for this and it won’t be because the business wants to do you a personal favour.

Trust me – this is the motor industry and it just isn’t good enough yet.

Here’s where to find our FOXY Lady Approved female friendly garages and dealers…

Please tell us about your latest garage experiences here…

Finally for just £24 you can join FOXY Lady Drivers Club and get a lifetime subscription in 2016 opening the door to cheap car insurance, car deals and VIP garage services we’ve vetted so women (and men in many cases) can trust too.

If you’re a member please tell your friends and help spread the word that women drivers have a female choice.

FOXY
@FOXYTweets

garage services, women

Why is our government ignoring motor industry regulation?

Industry standards need to be higher for all motorists, and our government needs to lead the way by introducing regulation in terms of car service and repair work, above all, in garages.

raising-the-bar1In an industry where VW seems to be getting away with selling us cars they’ve fiddled re mileage claims, where Vauxhall tries to deny responsibility for serious Zafira fires and Kwik Fit is exposed by Watchdog again for charging motorists for services we didn’t need (and in some cases not even providing them…) is it any surprise that so many of us feel we can’t even trust the BIG names in the motor industry?

What a shame for the genuinely good businesses, being tarnished by the same brush.

If unethical car manufacturers, garages and/or car dealers were banks in Iceland their top executives would go to jail. If mis-selling us cars and garage services was considered as serious as PPI was, the fines would reach £ millions. And quite rightly so say I.

So how come the silence seems deafening from our government?

Whilst a ‘no nannying’ governmental strategy sounds good for business this doesn’t work in the unregulated motor industry. If you allow unlicensed mechanics to repair our cars (our various Governments have let this happen for some 70 years now) the consequences of neglected cars can be fatal or very serious. This is not rocket science.

Other than MOT stations, any Tom, Dick or Arthur Daley can sell us unroadworthy cars, part worn tyres or garage services, attempting to repair our cars without the latest diagnostic equipment or manufacturer recommended car parts.

Why can’t the likes of the government, insurers and giant motoring organisations address the fact that badly and rarely maintained/serviced cars are more dangerous and expensive to repair in the end.

Motorists who don’t trust garages go there less often than they should do, hence their neglected cars, and yet the annual MOT is about to move from 3 years to 4 years regardless of the number of cars that fail their first MOT after just 3 years. Don’t get me started here – that’s simply the daftest example of the wrong governmental attitude to car and tyre safety that I can think of.

Our government and other influential consumer bodies don’t seem to be taking garage safety issues seriously enough. Other than our current economic woes, there must be other reasons or vested interests why nobody has bitten the road safety bullet here to help mediocre garages and used car dealers do a better job as well as putting the unscrupulous cowboys out of business.

Maybe this is because

1/ the automotive industry is such a big employer/economic multiplier that nobody is prepared to tell it what to do? And we seem to do what the EU dictates?

2/ the BIG motoring associations that exist to represent motorists (I’m talking about the AA and RAC) both earn out of comparison garage websites that are more price than quality driven?

3/ the (recently Chartered) Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) can earn out of ALL the me-too self-regulation schemes that competitive trade associations run (Bosch Car Service, the SMMT’s Motor Codes and the RMI’s new Trust My Garage scheme) rather than just one central scheme that REGULATION would bring?
NB: None of which require licensed individuals to work on our cars.
_________________________________________

Foxy-under-car-blue-102When visiting garages I always ask staff ‘are you qualified?’ Many say yes because they once were… but it’s fairly obvious they haven’t invested in training or learning new skills since despite massive changes in the industry. And knowing that these are often business owners and employers in their 50s and 60s, you’d expect them to want to keep their skills up to date and to be licensed to operate. As electricians and gas fitters need to. Knowing how complex and valuable our cars are…

Where are the motor industry professionals?

To find out who and where the licensed professionals are in the UK motor industry you need to visit the Professional Register operated by the IMI (Institute of the Motor Industry). But there are some 140,000+ mechanics yet to sign up here. In an ideal world I’d want this to be a compulsory business register with disciplinary teeth as well, to reprimand the likes of VW and KwikFit by charging any transgressor for fraudulent business behaviour.

These fines would be used tonfund the development of the register and so on…

Get regulation right however and the UK motor industry would be a lot richer from a reputational point of view. It really is time for regulation as the ONLY independent means to reward the really good businesses and ‘out’ the second rate cowboys who let us all down.

How to choose a measurably better local garage

The ongoing challenge for motorists as is, is how to spot the measurable difference between the good and the bad garages & dealers.

Here’s what we say about this… and whilst this situation isn’t as good as it should be, the Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) schemes mentioned above are as good as it gets in 2015.

But please bear in mind that garages promoting themselves as ‘good’ (but which are not members of a CTSI approved code scheme) may not have had to prove any minimum quality standards to be listed under a good garage scheme. Why not ask them about this before you use them?

Because as important as customer feedback is, this is often more about the customer service than the quality workmanship. Yes both are important but the MOST important factor bar none is the ability of a mechanic to make cars safer after their work not do a cheap job.

FOXY

cost of motoring

Savvy Woman interviews FOXY

Savvy woman interves FOXYLast Saturday I was interviewed by the Savvy Woman, Sarah Pennells as part of her excellent ‘Women and Money’ radio programme on Share Radio.

The programme involved expert author Maria McCarthy and Charlotte Halkett from leading telematics insurer ‘Insure The Box’ whose brands include ‘Drive Like A Girl’.

Sarah was exploring the fact that women are increasingly wealthy customers in the motor industry yet it still seems to be a blokey environment when it comes to buying cars and going to garages.

A topic after my own heart!

But rather than rewrite an interesting conversation here, here’s the link and I hope you enjoy this discussion.

If you’d like to add to the debate, especially to do with preferential insurance for safer women drivers, please do so via Twitter.

My personal account is @FOXYSteph and the business one is @FOXYTweets.

FOXY

garage services

UK garages charge women more for car repairs

car-repairs-at-rip-off-garagesBritish women are charged an average of £45 more than men for car repairs, an investigation by ClickMechanic has found. ClickMechanic, the online marketplace for car repairs, examined independent car garages across the UK and found that a standard repair costing a man £571 will typically cost a woman £616, an increase of 8%.

Male and female mystery shoppers requested quotes to replace the clutch of a 2011 Ford Focus from 182 garages across ten UK cities. The investigation found that eight out of the ten cities charged women a ‘female premium’ and only 6% of the surveyed garages gave a consistent quote to both male and female customers.

“For every female car-owner in the UK this report will come as an unwelcome surprise,” says Andrew Jervis, Co-founder and CEO of ClickMechanic. “While the vast majority of mechanics strive to provide honest and reliable quotes, these results show that there is a worrying minority of garages failing to do so. There is a desperate need across the industry for transparency and consistency in price in order to establish trust with consumers of both sexes.”

Birmingham repair garages charged the highest female premium at 31%, closely followed by Manchester (28%) and Glasgow (20%). Only two out of the ten surveyed cities bucked the trend and charged men more for a repair, with Sheffield and Edinburgh garages quoting males 5% and 19% more than females respectively.

The investigation uncovered some price-hiking across the country, regardless of the customer’s gender. On average, garages quoted both men and women £594 to carry out the work, £80 more (16%) than the £514 recommended by industry standard guidelines provided by car manufacturers, parts providers and trade bodies.

“Customers, both male and female, rely on mechanics to be accurate with their pricing. We recently carried out a study that found roughly half of people (45%) have no idea how much common repairs on an average household car should cost. While there is a small number of cowboys taking advantage of the fact that most consumers just don’t know how much their car repairs should cost, most mechanics are reliable and trustworthy. These results should therefore encourage the car repair industry to focus its efforts on making sure mechanics have the best possible tools in place to provide reliable quotes.”

FOXY COMMENT:

This survey confirms what we have suspected for ages but couldn’t prove. And few believed us. Clearly there is no excuse for price-hiking of any kind with the technology available to tell garages how long a job should take. All they have to do is add the cost of the parts they choose (that’s another area for discussion) and their labour rate which includes their profit presumably.

Why can’t the motor industry be more professional here? Yet again it’s the few cowboys letting the majority good guys down and doing untold damage to the industry’s reputation in women’s minds.And in so doing the women steer clear of garages when they should be using them more, not less, from a safety point of view.

Nothing short of regulation will do the trick we say, especially if one of the unintended consequences of this report is to encourage women to choose cheap repair quotes in future, regardless of whether he/she is licensed or not…

guestreviewThis is a Guest Blog from ClickMechanic, an online marketplace making it quick and easy for drivers to get online quotes and book a vetted mechanic using an online quoting engine so users know how much they should really be paying.

The survey was carried out during April-May 2015 across 182 locations in Birmingham, Manchester, London, Glasgow, Cardiff, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, and Edinburgh. Male and female mystery shoppers separately requested quotes for replacing the clutch plate, cover and concentric slave cylinder (release bearing) of a Ford Focus TDCi 2.0L 2011.

cost of motoring

How to enjoy motoring and save money

ack: Figaro Owners Club
ack: Figaro Owners Club

We were asked to write a blog for the worthy Money Advice Service about motoring savings their readers can make.

I am more than happy to oblige as saving money with women drivers in mind is a subject dear to our hearts.

My experience is that some rich people treat cars like designer fashion. When something stops looking new or the height of fashion, they want it replaced pronto.

You don’t want to buy a car from people like this for fear they’ve neglected the car, knowing this won’t be their problem come MOT time. This is why c40% of cars and a shocking 50% of vans fail their first MOT (safety check) after just three years.

And why you really don’t want to buy one of these vehicles even if they’re cheap at the time…

However, if you buy the right car in the first place ie a value for money car that’s clearly been maintained, serviced and cared for it’ll be more reliable for longer than one with a scant service history suggesting a car that’s about to get VERY expensive to run. We call these cars lemons as they always leave a bitter taste in the mouth – and motoring memory!

But if you continue to look after your car once it moves into its mellow MOT years, it’ll last you much longer and make motoring more affordable and enjoyable into the bargain.

Tips how to cherish a family car

A cherished car is safe and reliable for longer. Here are a few money-saving tips to help women economise on motoring bills.

1 If you are the main driver, get an insurance quote from a company that specialises in female drivers and excludes boy racers. There are big savings to be made for many women.

2 If you drive less than 5,000 miles a year, it still makes sense to have your car serviced once a year (because professionals can spot what’s likely to become expensive before it does) but you’ll save money, depending on the age of your car, by making do with an oil and filter change one year (cheapest formula), an interim service the next (medium cost) and a full service (the expensive one) every three years. And if you do this at the same time as the MOT ask for a half price one (saving c£27)…

3 Put a small amount of money away a month towards annual car servicing and unexpected car repair bills. You can’t run an older car without unexpected bills but if you have a ring-fenced motoring reserve to dip into this will ease the inevitable financial pain.

4 By all means shop around at MOT time but be canny. Garages aren’t regulated and mechanics don’t have to be licensed so some unscrupulous back street garages advertise MOTs for less than the cost of doing this to then rip you off. For example, a half price MOT brings in c£27 for the hour this takes. That’s not a lot to pay someone and contribute to overheads. Instead, check the garage is listed at Motor Codes or the IMI Professional Register – then you know the business has invested in being better than the rest and is unlikely to rip you off.

5 Check your tyres regularly. Illegal ones carry a fine of £2500 and 3 penalty points EACH. Choose a businesses listed at the female friendly Tyre Services Register because they’ve signed a promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell you tyres you don’t need.’ They’ll also advise you about the best buys at the time. Never buy part worn tyres – yes they’re cheap but a false economy as you don’t know where they’ve been.

6 Shop around for local fuel. Supermarkets aren’t always the cheapest/nearest and if you sign up to the PetrolPrices website they’ll tell you where your best local deals are.

7 Register with FOXY Lady Insurance for an insurance quote at renewal time. You can do this now. We’re cutting the cost of car insurance for nine out of ten motorists and this could be you…

I hope this helps you save money on your bills. Here’s to happy motoring for less in future.

FOXY

FOXY Lady Drivers Club