Dishonest Garages, Or Are They?

          It never ceases to amaze me at how many garages make it a habit to cheat poor single women! I hear about this a lot because poor single women make up a lot of my clients. But is this what's happening all the time? I think there is a high percentage of  single women being taken advantage of but I also think there are a lot of cases where there was not good communication either by the garage, the customer, or both. Because of this poor communication, a lot of unnessesary repairs are done.

          Even if you don't know anything about cars, there are steps you can take to make sure you are not cheated. I don't have room here to write everything I teach but one of the more important things you can do is clearly tell a garage what you want and make them explain things to you in a way you can understand. I know a woman that took a car to somebody and told them to do whatever was needed to get it running, the mechanic took that to mean he could replace everything related to the problem whether it was bad or not and he ended up replacing half the engine.

          When you need repairs, get estimates, if something doesn't sound right, get another opinion. If they can't give you some idea of what it will take to fix the problem then go somewhere else. Check out places also, if 8 out of 10 people have a problem someplace, then there might be something wrong with how they do business. The point is, I've talked to a lot of women that have had problems, they didn't do their homework and when there was a problem, they blamed the garage for everything.

          Garages need to be better at communicating with their customers. Even if you have a lot of people waiting, you need to take the time to explain in a way the customer understands, what the problem is and what needs to be done instead of writing a vague description on a work order and telling them to check back later. Even if a person doesn't have a clue as to what your talking about at least they can see that you care enough to help them rather then being another person lined up to take their money. If you have a large garage and you have a mechanic that got in a hurry or made a mistake, don't cover it up or blame the customer, your a lot better off in the long run to own up to it and make it right.

          Even when the customer and the garage does everything right, there can still be problems or misunderstandings, let's face it, none of us are perfect. And there are a lot of bad garages out there that prey on people, but I like to think there are also a lot of places trying to make an honest living but just have poor communication skills. Either way, lets do everything we can to make sure a repair goes smoothly and to protect ourselves from fraud before we acuse people of being dishonest.