Better consumer communications needed

Apparently women drivers aged 25 to 35 are the worst at keeping their cars in good condition according to a recent survey carried out by Bridgestone Tyres. This is particularly worrying because this age group is more likely than others to have children in their cars at some time.

I wonder if they surveyed female students as these are some of the motorists we find are looking to cut corners for financial reasons.

We are told that motorists in Nottingham are notorious for failing to maintain vehicles well yet Leeds leads the way in car maintenance.

In Nottingham, one in three drivers regularly fails to service their car while other “bad” regions include Birmingham, Bristol, Norwich and Sheffield.

Seven years ago our daughter was fleeced by a garage in Nottingham - this was the catalyst for my business, FOXY Lady Drivers Club.

None of this surprises me but I am disappointed that the retail motor industry has failed to get a stronger message across that a badly maintained (and serviced) car of any age is less safe, less green, less reliable and more expensive to run in the end.

I’d also want more motorists to understand that a professional eye is better than an amateur doing her (or his) best with car maintenance AND that a bad garage does not mean a good car service.

One area that I’d want to look at is the increasingly attractive sales promise that a new car needs fewer services… as the intervals in between lengthen. Yes this is good news for the fleet buyer but how are they checking that their car is being maintained in between? Lots of motorists/businesses think that an U3 year old car doesn’t need much maintenance in between servicing and few know how to choose one of the best local garages.

Maybe the new Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 will start to make these points, now that companies can be held liable in law if negligence can be proved or if an employer has failed to demonstrate a duty of care to their employees using their private cars for business use.

Imagine a situation where a female employee whose private car is insured for regular travelling to and from her work (in addition to the normal domestic, social and pleasure cover) and is involved in an accident as a result of her badly maintained car. How long will it be before the claiming solicitors look to the employer for settlement under this Act?

Makes sound sense for them to subscribe to FOXY’s corporate membership solution and get quarterly car checks, a friendly helpdesk and professional legal motor claims advice and fees I’d have said…

FOXY Steph

Nine years no claims bonus

I am not sure what ‘up to 9 years no claims bonus’ means for the motorist, as advertised by Zurich Insurance.

Certainly it sounds like Zurich wants to cream off the least risk motorists over 25 (more women than men I’d calculate) who are the least likely to use their motor insurance claims service… but what do foxy lady drivers get as a result?

LV= advertises up to 75% NCB which is a more meaningful promise for female motorists but is the Zurich offer even better?

And can you protect it? I certainly would recommend it if the NCB is as significant as it should be/probably is.

Or are they positioning themselves to be seen to offer better value for customers with RBS insurance brands?

FOXY Steph

A better car insurance deal for women?

If you controlled a third of the UK’s private motor insurance market, including a significant portfolio of policies held by better risk women drivers, and this market was predicted to grow by £6bn by 2012, would you choose to sell car insurance brands that are so well known by female motorists? I’m talking about big brands like Direct Line, Churchill and NIG.

That’s the situation the Royal Bank of Scotland is in with the likes of Zurich, AIG and Generali competing for any motor insurance business spoils.

With the marketing job done in terms of brand awareness and so many potential economies of scale to be gained in servicing this business I can’t help thinking that size and status quo is a critical financial advantage for the Bank to leverage. Perhaps we’ll see some brands peeling off instead but surely not the majority unless things are much worse than we realise…

At least this exercise will allow it to put a value on its brands and review ways to make it more competitive in future. Which will be a good thing for female motorists, either way, I’m sure.

Anyone up for a bet?

FOXY Steph

www.foxyladydrivers.com

Credit cards are a better motoring risk

If you prefer paying cash to avoid getting into debt you get less consumer protection that you would have by using a credit card. This is advice from the Trading Standards Institute, not me.

For example, if a foxy lady driver paid for garage services like car servicing or repairs by using her credit card, and if the work costs more than £100, she would be protected by the Consumer Credit Act 1974.

Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 makes the credit card company as responsible as the garage for a breach of contract or a misrepresentation. So, if she or any other driver was unhappy and unable to resolve the issue to her satisfaction she could take action against the garage owner (checking to find out if the owner is an individual, a partnership or a company), the credit card company or both.

But Section 75 does not apply if she were to pay by charge card or debit card.

Which seems daft to me when many smart females and males might prefer to pay cash or use a debit card… why should the law be any different depending on how you pay?

FOXY Steph

www.foxyladydrivers.com

Towards Sweden or Beijing?

There are 620 million cars on roads worldwide - why does this remind me of Katie Melua and Beijing…

To do something about our share of this massive global pollution, the UK Government has said that by 2010 5% all UK fuel should come from biofuels. The EU has gone further, setting a target of 10% by 2020.

This a highly sensitive issue for foxy lady drivers with recent emotional headlines about sustainable fuel sources, the understandable need for land to feed people first and bio mixtures that may damage car engines…

Having started life as a cynic in this area I now know that the UK motor industry is genuinely committed to reducing motor emissions and are doing a sterling job. Most if not all manufacturers are welcoming biofuels and the market leaders seem to be the the Ford Focus and the Saab bio-power (I think Citroen too; their UK fleet is run on biofuels I have been told) but these cars take 85% biofuel, known as E85 and still only available at a few UK forecourts.

Whereas in Sweden there are more than 1,000 biofuel stations and Saab sold 17,000 new bio-power cars there last year. Another difference is the Swedish government’s financial incentives - starting with a 10,000 SEK (£800) rebate on the cost of E85-powered cars; these vehicles are also exempt from Stockholm’s congestion charge and qualify for free residential parking.

Will our government look at doing this sort of thing here?

I seem to recall France encouraging motorists to scrap and cash in old French cars to buy new French cars at a good price? Was that a tactic to boost their car industry, or driven by environmental concerns?

Neither will be good news for motorists who can’t afford to buy new cars or simply want to run well maintained ones for longer.

FOXY Steph

Car safety question mark

A recent survey confirmed that 1 in 5 cars failed their first MOT in Britain.

That doesn’t surprise me as few motorists, female and male, seem to do regular maintenance or visit local garages as often as they might. Only recently my next door neighbour found she had run her ’special’ 3 year old VW tyres flat and paid £400+ for a new set (after two years of not checking them at all). She was not a FOXY member then btw…

What concerns me most is the genuine possibility of existing MOT rules being slackened from a 3 year old first MOT test thence yearly (referred to as 3:1:1) to the EU model of a 4 year old first MOT test then biennial tests (referred to as 4:2:2).

Knowing that so few of us, women and men drivers alike, check our tyres regularly, let alone the performance of our brakes, or economic/environmental indicators like oil levels, this would be an all round bad thing in my opinion. I am seriously surprised that little seems to have been made of this whilst the UK’s back door seems still open to this EU approach…

Perhaps this is because those of us who trust others to know best (as many women do in a male-oriented and often female-unfriendly industry) will welcome a financial save of the test fee, £50.35, in tough economic times, without any thought to possible safety consequences…

I recall that the only EU country to do worse than us in this respect was Spain which could support the theory that if left a further year ie tested at 4 not 3 years old, more cars will be less safe and potentially more dangerous; never mind the added environmental considerations of all poorly maintained cars.

There is a sense that today’s cars are safer than they used to be and that young cars don’t need much servicing or maintenance. Certainly longer intervals between servicing means lower running costs to vital car fleet operators YET commonsense tells us that a poorly maintained car is inevitably less safe, less green, less reliable and less economic to run than one that has been loved, whatever its age.

Shameless FOXY plug - Realising this, what we do is encourage women driving cars [of all ages, women and cars ;-)] to claim FREE green and safety car fitness checks as part of their membership; these check tyres, oil levels, lights, emissions, brake fluid levels and so on, working with Bosch Car Service across the country. For details see http://www.foxyladydrivers.com/freegreenchecks.php

There are now moves afoot to either progress this EU 4:2:2 route or park it once and for all.

Dear Gordon - please see the BIG picture here and support the 3:1:1 route for UK motorists and garage jobs alike - it’s dangerous enough out there as it is and the standard of MOT centres is better policed than ever before.

FOXY Steph

Scrap the car scrap scheme…

In today’s environmentally minded society I am told that Government regulations intended to solve the car scrap problem are being openly flouted by unscrupulous businesses who are probably adding noxious materials to local landfill mass.

Official figures suggest that just 900,000 Certificates of Destruction (CoDs) and Notices of Destruction (NoDs) were issued in 2006 out of some 2 million cars that were taken off our roads.

By the look of it, more than a million scrap cars a year, many that used to belong to women drivers perhaps, could be reaching landfill together with their harmful oils, tyres, plastics and unused airbags. This despite End of Life Vehicle Regulations which came in to force in 2003, requiring cars to be properly de-polluted and recycled at licensed Authorised Treatment Facilities.

As I understand it, the problem comes through a loophole in DVLA records and is compounded by poor monitoring by the Environment Agency. Under a system called continuous licensing, owners are supposed to pay road tax until a CoD has been obtained from a licensed dismantler. However, a tick-box on the V5 registration form means that last owners, as well as unlicensed dismantlers and shredders, can simply de-register a vehicle. Un-licensed operators can then do precisely what they like to our environment; selling valuable scrap materials first of course then dumping the rest including untreated waste. I can’t see any way that they can be penalised or the last registered keeper, for that matter.

I don’t know what the solution is but I do know that most foxy lady drivers will be unhappy about this after working hard to run greener cars over the last year or so. I presume that insurance companies specify licensed dismantlers in their garage services dealings but I shall ask my contacts in due course…

I believe it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that, at the end of a car’s useful life, it is disposed of in as environmentally friendly a method as possible.

But until everyone has to or knows they won’t get away with dumping polluting materials in similar ways, this is another example of bad practice being allowed to succeed in an industry with an appalling reputation. My point is that there are many good garage businesses that should be benefiting from this business instead…it’s a case of getting the rules right and then spreading the word.

Dear Gordon - please put this on your ‘another fine mess…’ wishlist to be sorted out PDQ…