AutoMD.com (www.automd.com), the most comprehensive and unbiased free online auto repair resource, today released its Advocacy for Repair Shop Fairness Report, the first to analyze how the top-50 most populated U.S. cities stack up when it comes to providing consumers with fair auto repair cost estimates. In the report, Memphis ranked as the best city for fairness and consistency of prices quoted in auto repair, while Chicago ranked as the worst.
For the report, AutoMD.com mystery shoppers conducted a fairness check of over 600 shops in the top-50 DMAs* (including a range of dealers, independent shops, and franchises like Pep Boys) by requesting quotes on a typical auto repair job: a front brake replacement job for a Ford Focus. To measure pricing integrity, the mystery shoppers called back two weeks later with an industry standard price estimate. The best and worst list was then calculated based on each city‘s rankings for three critical factors, weighted equally:
1. Repair Affordability: The average cost-per-job for that city based on prices quoted by repair shops
2. Price Disparity Range: The percentage variance between the lowest price quoted and the highest price quoted in each market
3. Shop Integrity Factor: The percentage of shops that shifted their original quoted price by more than 5% when presented with an industry standard price estimate
"If you are one of the 88% of car owners who feel that they are not getting a fair shake at the repair shop** ... this report shows that you are probably right," said AutoMD.com President Shane Evangelist. "Repair shop quotes in more than half of the cities for the same job had a variance from lowest to highest of over 150% - with over two-thirds of the shops overall changing their price quote when presented with an industry standard price."
Underscoring that few car owners are immune to the challenges of repair shop pricing, Evangelist noted that even in Memphis, the report‘s top ranked city, there was a 135% price quote disparity - with one in four of the city‘s repair shops tested changing its quote when presented with an industry standard price.
AutoMD.com‘s Advocacy for Repair Shop Fairness Report rankings for the Five Best and Worst Cities are:
"With such drastic quote fluctuations within each city -- and a chronic lack of integrity in the actual prices quoted -- consumers clearly need to arm themselves with research before setting foot in the repair shop," continued Evangelist. "The bottom line is that information is power; and, fortunately, car owners now have access to online tools so they can compare local repair shops, establish a local market repair invoice price and make sure that they get a fair deal at the repair shop."
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