Many ladies can feel intimidated contacting a garage to get quotes for work to be done on their car. There is a perception that garages take advantage of ladies and add on additional costs over and above what a male customer may be charged. Here at book my local garage we have undertaken to change that perception and offer lady garage customers piece of mind that they are not going to be treated differently to male customers.

So how have we actually defined “Lady Friendly” here at Book my Local garage.com Instead of us just using the terms “Lady Friendly” as a marketing gimmick?

We undertook a full scale secret survey here in Aberdeenshire in early 2020 and called over 320 local Garages to find out how they dealt with a male customer versus a lady customer.

Firstly we had a male call each garage requesting a service and MOT for a 2015 Mini Cooper S, we issued the car registration and provided details of the service we required. Approx 7 days later we had our lady call and ask for a service and MOT for exactly the same car, but we gave a different car registration in order to prevent the garage identifying its the same vehicle, and therefore potentially the same caller.

We had a scoring sheet to determine how our male customer was treated against our lady customers. Our scoring sheet had 5 sections as listed below.

Complicated Car Jargon Used Attitude of the garage upon hearing a ladies voice Speed of price return/call back Attempted selling of other services not requested Price difference between Out of 320 garages in Aberdeenshire,

28 Garages confused our lady caller with jargon she didn’t understand, but said yes after each suggestion implying she understood when she didnt.
21 garages gave a higher price for a car service & MOT to our lady caller than to our male.
1 Garage gave our male caller a higher price than our lady caller.
19 Garages offered a free diagnostic check to our ladies that didn’t offer to our male caller
14 Offered our ladies a tyre check that didn’t offer that to our male callers
26 Garages were more patronising to our lady callers than to our male callers.
6 Garages were more patronising to our male caller than to our lady caller.

The results were surprising and unexpected. The main concerning issue we discovered was the fact that some of those garages attempted to offer our lady caller a higher price than our male caller, in some cases the cost was almost £40 higher for each prospective booking. This is approaching 15% of the total bill.

So what are Book My Local Garage doing about it?

We removed the potential for garages on our system to issue prices to customers based on gender. Our website booking system provides instant pricing based on the make and model of your car model and nothing else.

We have not invited any of the garages who failed our call test or were negative or patronising to our female customer to list on our website.

We are the first website in the UK that specifically allows instant pricing and calendar availability bookings tailored to suit lady drivers in the UK. The fantastic website foxy choice / foxy ladies has been a trail blazer for introducing lady friendly garages to motorists in England. However it directs the user to the specific garage website whereby the user must physically call the garage to obtain pricing and make a booking. We have removed the requirement to do that, our website lists pricing for the servicing and or MOT of any car without the user requiring to identify herself or himself by gender. We are now introducing Lady friendly garage bookings into Aberdeen, Scotland and the wider UK.