Tag Archives: Trust My Garage

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.
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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

garage services

Do Yorkshire men know it all?

Leeds garage Motor Marque is a member of the FOXY Lady Approved and Trust My Garage UK networks. They started offering free Motor Smart evening car maintenance classes to women in 2008.

motor-smart-women

They then opened these to men as well but there were no male takers… so it went back to the original model, calling the evenings MotorSmart Women.

To see how these evenings are organised, please see our interview with the garage’s Louise Richardson.

What does this tell us about Yorkshire women and men?

Sold at Staffordshire Oatcakes website...
Sold at Staffordshire Oatcakes website…
We’re talking elementary gender basics here.

That most women are more willing to admit they don’t know something and are then prepared to learn about it.

Whereas many men are unwilling to admit to not knowing something to another male, especially when it comes to their cars.

Of course, it is remotely possible that Yorkshire men are born with a ‘know it all’ gene?

For who wouldn’t feel a tad awkward putting the likes of leading Yorkshire born and bred males like Jeremy Clarkson, Brian Blessed, Sean Bean, Tom Wilkinson, John Simm, Malcolm McDowell and Michael Palin through oil checks and changing wheels? What could you tell them that they wouldn’t know already?

Rae Ellis, Motor Marque’s Business Development Manager puts it well explaining that “Whilst we have full attendance at our maintenance classes, they are always only attended by women. I think there is a stigma attached to cars that men should already know how to look after them and carry out basic checks and our attendances reflect this.”

yorkshireman-colour

Terry Gibson from the RMI’s Trust My Garage scheme added: “It’s great to see women starting to give men a run for their money when it comes to car maintenance and initiatives like Motor Marque’s free maintenance classes are a really great benefit for drivers.”

We don’t see car maintenance in such a competitive light Terry but perhaps that’s because Motor Marque provides FOXY Lady Drivers Club members with free car fitness checks. This is a great incentive to visit the ‘professionals’ on a regular basis – just to make sure we’re getting the DIY maintenance right.

Oh and when we’re there we can have a coffee and a chat whilst booking our car in for its next servicing and MOT ;).