Many female car owners will be all too familiar with the anxiety of taking their car to a garage for repairs.
From overcharging to being treated disrespectfully, a lot of women fear they could be taken advantage of in a mostly male-dominated environment. Penelope Silver is among the many women who claim to have been ripped off simply because of their gender.
The 49-year-old had never faced any trouble at car-related appointments previously as she always had her dad with her.
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The AI teacher, from Cheadle Hulme, visited a garage with her father two years ago when her clutch broke and described the customer service as “brilliant”.
But when the clutch stopped working again just a year later, Penelope returned to the same garage by herself and says she had a totally different experience.
“I noticed I was being treated differently,” she told the Manchester Evening News. “It was the complete opposite of the experience I had before.
“The manager was arguing with me saying ‘I had never taken the car there’ before and the clutch was nothing to do with them.
“My mum was dying and I was going to and from hospital trying to find all this paperwork. In the end, they found my car on their system and accepted they did the clutch. They said they would do the work on it and it would be £520 to replace.”
Penelope argued the clutch had recently been replaced and the repair was only just outside of its warranty. As a ‘gesture of goodwill’, the garage offered to replace it for £300.
“I thought, okay, I don’t want to have to spend it but they met me halfway,” the mum added.
It took a whopping eight weeks for Penelope to get her car back – during which she says she forked out around £250 on Ubers to take her daughter to school.
When she was finally reunited with her vehicle, the mum said she noticed the steering wheel wouldn’t turn and the clutch pedal was shaking. Not only this, it was also discovered the garage had replaced just half her clutch for the £300 she paid.
After paying a mobile mechanic £400 for a home visit, Penelope discovered her car needed additional repairs.
Unwilling to spend hundreds more on towing the vehicle back to the garage along with extra repair costs, she decided to buy a new car. Her old vehicle has now been sitting in her driveway for almost a year.
Penelope now believes she was taken advantage of simply for being a woman. “I’ve learned a lot,” she said. “That’s why I feel like they’ve shafted me.
“It’s not all garages, but my mum was dying and I felt like I was in a really vulnerable position. They said they were trying to do me a favour by only paying £300 and they weren’t. It’s just awful.
“I’ve been on my own for 17 years and raised two children so I think I’m a strong woman. But I know nothing about cars – it’s not my domain.
“I take people at face value. If I walk into a car garage, I’ve not got a clue what’s going on. If someone tells me I need a full clutch replacement, I’m not likely to query it. I’ll be like, ‘Okay’.
“People underestimate how anxiety-inducing it is for women to get car repairs. Even today, we’re still profiled and taken advantage of because we’re perceived as lacking knowledge. We shouldn’t have to fight twice as hard just to be treated fairly and honestly.”
Penelope isn’t alone in her experience of being treated differently for being a woman. For Carol Hughes, it wasn’t just her mental health on the line if she didn’t get her car sorted – her physical well-being was also at risk as she depended on her car for hospital appointments.
“When my newly purchased car broke down on the way home, the garage wouldn’t take me seriously until I had a male mechanic repeat exactly what I had told them,” she added. “I lost so much money and risked my health because they would only listen to a partner.”
In research carried out by Carly, a direct-to-consumer car diagnostics company, around 61 per cent of UK women want new rules to penalise mechanics and garages if they can prove they’ve been overcharged.
Out of 1,000 female car owners surveyed, only 23 per cent fully trust garages to be fair while 77 per cent feel unsure.
Additionally, 50 per cent believe they have previously been misled about the need for repairs while 45 per cent are not confident garage bills are accurate or fair. This is referred to as ‘pink pricing’, where women are charged more than men for the same product.
The survey also showed not only is it affecting women’s pockets – it’s also impacting their mental health. Around one in four women say they find nothing more stressful than visiting a car garage.
Car diagnostics company Carly is now aiming to shake up the automotive industry in a bid to help women feel confident when visiting car garages.
They recently launched a free Repair Costs AI tool that lets drivers estimate car problems and get accurate repair cost predictions. These tools aim to give users the information they need to talk openly and confidently with garages.
Daniel Meeghan, UK country manager of Carly, said: “The fact that women are still being treated unfairly in car maintenance is shocking, but it’s a reality we aim to change by increasing industry transparency.
“If more women – and all drivers, for that matter – have access to accurate, real-time information about their cars, they can feel empowered to question their mechanics, leading to long-term, trustworthy relationships with car garages.”
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