Avoid overpaying for car servicing/MOTs

YorkshireTom

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Hi everyone,

Beginner moneysaver here.

My fiancee and I both had problems recently when getting our cars serviced. One was a local "friendly" garage, and the other was a national chain (no names, but I'm sure you can make an educated guess). We ended up overpaying for some work, and in one case I paid £110 to be told what a problem with my air conditioning was, then found out elsewhere that I was completely mis-informed and it was a complete waste of money (the problem wasn't fixed either).

I tried asking friends for garage recommendations and looking online, but couldn't find any sites that could help, so I spent the past few weeks putting this together: http://www.trustmygarage.co.uk.

The idea is that people can leave reviews for the garages they've used, which makes it easier for everyone to find a trustworthy garage which will do good quality work at an affordable price.

Hopefully this will help a few moneysavers share their experiences, find a good garage and avoid getting ripped off!!

Tom

Hintza

Well done Tom I think this is a great idea and I wish you luck.

There might be a chance the Mods see this as spam but I hope not.

YorkshireTom

Hi Hintza,

Thanks for the kind words.

It wasn't meant to come across as spam, I hope the mods don't see it that way.

I did check the forum rules first and it only said you couldn't promote paid goods and services - but TMG is free to use so hopefully it's OK!

Cheers

Tom

Optimist

How do you check that the reviews are genuine ? If I was a devious garage owner I would give several good reviews for my garage

YorkshireTom

Hi optimist,

Good question. This is something nearly all review-based websites have to deal with.

Firstly all reviews have to be moderated before they go live. This means that we can keep an eye out for any suspicious reviews (e.g. a really positive review in amongst a lot of negative ones).

Also, you have to register an account before you can post, which means it is possible to keep track of email and IP addresses, and see who a member has rated and how.

There is also a system of "top reviewers", whereby other visitors can vote for reviews they've found particularly useful. Reviews by these members are marked as such, so this gives them a bit more credibility.

Ultimately it's not possible to completely eliminate the problem of garages reviewing themselves, but it's likely that even if this does occur, it will be outweighed by all the genuine reviews

There's also the option of penalising any garages found to be acting deviously - e.g. a large notice on their profile explaining what they've tried to do, and how this perhaps reflects badly on their character. The threat of doing this might make people think twice before trying to play the system! I intended to make this point clearer on the posting guidelines - cheers for the reminder.

Tom

Wig

I don't see how you can decide a garage has tried to be devious, unless you trace all the IP addresses of all reviewers and then trace the owners of the ISP subscription and see if they work for or are friends of garage A or B.

Plus ISP are not going to give you the details of any reviewer without a court order, which you will never get just because some reviewer said something overly positive about a garage.

Your only hope is as you say the site becomes very popular and lots of people review, then sheer numbers will say who is good and who is rubbish.

Question is, what will you do when a garage or national chain, ask you to remove negative reviews against them, saying it is defamatory? Are you going to write to the reviewer and ask them for supporting evidence, and then fight any court action from a national chain?

YorkshireTom

Wig

Yes, the main defence will be the sheer volume of reviews.

Obviously if someone signs up with an email address like john@johnsgarage.com, then tries to leave a review for that garage, I'll know something suspicious is going on. But I won't be able to trace IP addresses etc.

We limit the number of reviews for each garage to one per IP and email address, so that restricts the amount of damage that could be done.

As I said previously, there's no way to be 100% sure about false reviews, but we're certainly not the first website to use reviews so I'm not too worried. I suspect that there are a lot more genuine motorists willing to leave reviews than there are dodgy mechanics trying to play the system.

With regards to your other point, I will cross that bridge when I get to it. Our posting guidelines are intended to reduce the chance of anything defamatory appearing in the first place, and it is worth noting that a negative review is not necessarily defamatory. We will not remove a review simply because it is negative - reviews are solely the opinion of the author.

Garages also have the "right to reply" to any review of their service, and I believe this strengthens our legal postion considerably (i.e. they are able to publicly defend their business against any comments made).

Plus, any garage wishing to take further action will be aware of the negative publicity that such a move would cause. Eventually, we may have no choice but to remove a particular review, but this process would be documented on the site and would give motorists a good idea about the trustworthiness of the garage - possibly moreso than the original review did.

Tom

DealDrivers_company_representative

Forums for any exchange of experiences are good, but speaking up for dealers and workshops who do a good job, work long hours, and provide superb customer service, I hope users will concentrate on recommending the good guys, not just posting about garages they don't like for their own reasons, good or bad.

Please see this as constructive criticism - do your homework - get a set of legal terms on there, backed up by an automotive and internet legal expert, and get your registration process tightened up first.

You are deriving income from the site as you have paid-for sponsorship on there, that may be seen negatively as you are getting revenue. If you are running this as any form of business you should have your trading address, VAT no' (even if you are not using the site for e-commerce) and company number visible (this is an EU legal requirement from this year).

Your 'terms of use' on the click-thru' at the bottom of the home page are just 3 lines long. Your 'posting guidelines' should be part of your terms of membership at sign-up stage, not merely in "FAQ's" which are unrelated to the registration process? When people sign up they only have to provide a username and email address, they are not required to agree to your house rules - this leaves you wide open and unable to police it.

In your FAQ's for garage owners it implies you are interested in taking advertising revenue from them at some point. You may want to re-think this if your site's aim is to remain credible. The site has a lot of data and preparation in it, implying you may intend to earn an income from it as you wouldn't have had the site constructed nor amassed this much address data of garages just for fun.

A garage or motor group will not use the 'right to reply' button, if unfairly criticised they will, of course, not reply in public but go straight to court for defamation of brand and reputation if they have case notes to show they have acted completely within the law and their working guidelines. You need to be extremely careful as their legal teams will be bigger than yours.

Don't forget there can sometimes be animosity and poaching of customers between garages in some areas and they'll waste no time in saying a competitor has done unnecessary work. Unless you are a good mechanic yourself, how do you know? To defame someone's business publicly on a website without grounds and evidence is not a good move so you need to think about how you are policing this.

You should prompt posters about pursuing a reparation process with the service provider first, and what was the outcome? Were they given choices of resolution?

..and if you don't like these points about your service going onto a public forum, imagine what it's like for a garage owner who has genuinely not done anything wrong but is at the mercy of a customer with an old banger & a grudge (!), or a competitor wanting to tarnish another garage's reputation.

All comments meant sincerely, and to steer you on to the right track.

YorkshireTom

DealDrivers,

Thanks for the feedback. In response to some of the points made:

So far there have been more positive reviews than negative ones, and I fully expect that this will continue. People are just as keen to share a positive experience as they are a negative one. I have tried to take a similarly positive stance with the promotion of the site, and not purely an "avoid the rip-offs" approach.

For the terms and conditions, as you made your post I was in the process of updating and improving these to reflect the nature of the site. They are more considerably more comprehensive now, though I do not pretend that they are perfect yet.

There are many many websites deriving income from advertising that do not currently display the details you refer to. I will do some further research into what is required, but I suspect that it will not be necessary to display trading addresses or registration numbers (it is not a registered "business", at the moment). For the record, the site is yet to make any returns whatsoever and is certainly not a profit-making venture, given the investment which has been made so far. You have reminded me though that I intended to add a disclosure policy similar to the one here at MSE. As long as the basis of the site remains the same, with free membership and usage, I cannot see why members or other visitors would object to some monetisation to support the set-up and running costs.

If a garage just wants to respond to a comment made, they can do so via the "right to reply". If they feel that they have been defamed, they are welcome to contact me and I will remove or edit any reviews which could be seen as defamatory. I have made this clearer in the terms, but will also make it clearer for those writing the reviews. Generally, defamatory reviews will not make it past the approval process in the first place.

Thanks again for the comments, I do appreciate the feedback.

Tom

PS: as previously mentioned, there are countless existing sites where members may leave reviews of products or services (ReviewCentre, Ciao, BeerInTheEvening, Amazon, Thompson Holidays to name just five). As long as the correct processes and rules are in place, I do not consider Trust My Garage more controversial or open to abuse than any of these.

PPS update: I have added a note in the posting guidelines to remind users that they should follow all available channels with the garage for solving the issue they are having. I have also added a reminder about the t&cs/posting guidelines on the sign-up form, so that all members must agree to them when initially registering. Thanks for these suggestions.

june1970_2

Tom, just to let you know your list of garages are not up to date as a garage my huuby worked for is on there and they went in to voluntary liquidation three years ago.

YorkshireTom

Hi June,

The database is always being updated with new garages added and old ones removed.

It's not perfect but unfortunately a totally up to date version (i.e. from the yellow pages, or thompson directories) costs several thousand pounds a year to use!

If you let me know the details of the garage I'll make sure it is removed.

Cheers

Tom