If you’re anything like many of the vehicle owners we help at Kashy, there’s a fair chance you’ve had at least one poor experience with a mechanic before.
Maybe unsurprisingly, most of the females we talked to before starting our business suffered from a few really common and really disappointing experiences which had turned them off using a mechanic at all, leaving the car servicing to someone else or even just neglecting it entirely.
So, what are some of the experiences we’ve seen, how can you avoid them and how can you find a decent, female friendly mechanic?
The first and most obvious of these issues was that many of the females we talked to felt they were being ripped off by their mechanics. With visiting a mechanic often referred to as ‘writing a blank check’.
Additionally, poor communication, being in an unfamiliar place without transport and out and out bad service seemed to be common and lead to some pretty understandable distrust. One of our close friends even recalled a time when the mechanic had failed to fix her car properly which caused her to (almost) get stuck in the far north Queensland wastelands.
So, how can you find an honest, well priced, female friendly mechanic?
1. Trust your gut — While this might seem about the dumbest thing, trusting your gut is the best way to find a female friendly mechanic. Though you may not be able to see most of the work that a mechanic does on your car, your gut feeling is fine tuned and can usually get a feeling as to whether someone is giving you BS. This leads into our second point.
2. Listen closely — Alongside trusting your own gut feeling about a mechanic, it is imperative to listen closely. If a mechanic is willing to tell you the things you don’t need immediately, it is usually a good sign that they are interested in looking after you. Additionally, if a mechanic spends time explaining why you do need something, it’s a good sign that they care about you as a customer.
3. Get a second opinion — If something really doesn’t feel right when talking to a mechanics, getting a second opinion is usually the best way to either confirm whether a mechanic is treating you well or ripping you off. There’s no reason to feel guilty or trapped about doing this either and you should think of it in the same way as getting a second opinion from a doctor.
4. Look for the upsells — Upsells are absolutely everywhere in the automotive industry and are one of the (unfortunate) ways that many people get ripped off. If you’re visiting a mechanic and are repetitively being quoted to replace the same things, they may in-fact be upsells. If your mechanic is not able to verbally justify the repair to you, you should be sceptical of what has been quoted to you and you should repeat step 3.
5. Make sure to get an upfront price — While many workshops aren’t able to tell you the exact price of a job until after the job is complete, there should always be at least a reasonably accurate quote involved. On top of that, many services (including Kashy) are now offering upfront and set pricing, which means no nasty sting at the end.
All in all, these 5 tricks can really help in finding a good female friendly mechanic to use. In fact, we’ve based these recommendations around the very interviews we conducted at Kashy.
How have we taken this on board though?
Well, after conducting our interviews, we set up Kashy to always be upfront in pricing. Of the many jobs we’ve done, there are only enough to count on one hand where we weren’t able to give an exact cost upfront. We made our mechanics mobile so all your repairs and servicing could be done from the safety of your own home and, we made a promise to never incentivise our mechanics to upsell you things you wouldn’t need.
If you have any questions about this blog post, would like a second opinion from a mechanic or would like to find a female friendly mechanic in Brisbane, you can get in contact with a Kashy mechanic here.
P.S. Some of the tips and tricks here will also cross over with our blog "What to look for in a good mechanic".