Among the more challenging aspects of owning a car is finding a good and trustworthy mechanic to maintain your vehicle. When it comes to consumer complaints and the repair industry, auto mechanics routinely rank high on that list with many car owners finding it difficult to locate a capable garage.
Online Search & Repairing Your Car
Now there is a website, Repair Pal at www.repairpal.com, that can make it easier to find a good mechanic in your area. The site gives independent, unbiased repair estimates before you take it to a garage and also includes user ratings and reviews.
Just enter in your zip code under “Find The Right Repair Shop” and you’ll get a list of repair shops near your home. You can shop sites by the make of your car or obtain a generalized list of service providers in your area.
You can sort your list by A-Z, relevance, distance from your home and rating. With the latter category those ratings are from one-star to five-star with no stars highlighted showing that the shop has yet to be rated.
Three Top Shops In My Area
In my area I found three five-star shops and immediately clicked on the one closest to my home. That move resulted in more details about the shop including address, phone number, directional map, makes served, specialties, amenities and affiliations.
A repair shop’s score consists of three parts: quality of work, customer service and confidence score. The latter is described on the site as, “…based on the completeness of each shop or dealer listing and the elements of that listing. The more listing information available about a shop, and the higher the quality of that shop’s verified affiliations, the higher the Confidence Score.”
Repair Pal also features an encyclopedia which is more like a repository of articles on a variety of subjects including how to buy car tires, cv joint replacement, heater blower motor, you name it. In addition, you can keep all of the repair information about your car right online for easy access at any time.
Finally, there is a related blog that is frequently updated which offers repair tips, new model information and much more, allowing reader participation for registered users.
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