How not to get paid in a car service

Choosing a car service is always a lottery. Beginners have no idea what to focus on, experienced car owners have been driving in one workshop for years and are afraid to change it: you never know who you will run into. Let's talk about the main tricks of car services, how to bypass them and how to save on maintenance without losing quality.

How not to run into inflated prices

In different car services, prices even for the same services sometimes differ by orders of magnitude. The reason is not only in the quality and professionalism of employees, but also in additional services. For example, someone enters into a work order (a list of work that needs to be done with the car) the polishing of the bolts, but someone does not.

The quality is also different: it doesn't matter if it is a dealership center or a universal one, or maybe even a closet in the garage. First of all, the repair depends on the professionalism of the craftsmen and honesty, and there are no guarantees in these matters.

You can call in a car service on the advice of friends, persistently repair in the same place, or choose a workshop at random, but we recommend doing a short research on your own.

For this there is Uremont.com - a service that selects repair shops, shows their ratings and helps to find the cheapest among the best.

You don't even need to look for anything. On the main page, select the make, model and year of production of the car, indicate what needs to be done, and Uremont.com shows who, where and for what amount is ready to repair your car. It remains only to choose: look into the company profile, where there are real reviews of car owners who have already used the services of the service.

Once you have chosen a workshop, you can apply for a repair.

Usually administrators in services understand immediately how well a person is aware of the prices of work. Therefore, newcomers can receive service at an inflated price.

Uremont.com eliminates this problem, because the services do not see you, they only receive a request and cannot guess who is on the other side. The only thing they know is that competitors are awake, so they will offer you the real price of the work.

For example, an official dealer offers to carry out Lada Largus maintenance for at least 7,000 rubles, and the screenshot below shows the prices that were offered by car services on Uremont.com in 10 minutes.

Application for Uremont.com is a market monitoring. It immediately shows how much it costs, who is clearly trying to save money (and it is not known whether it is on quality), and who is unjustifiably raising prices.

How to act in order not to pay for extra services

It's good when a person understands what needs to be done: change pads, CV joints or check the gearbox shaft bearing. Worse, when the car "does not go", "stalls" or "knocks", and the driver does not have enough experience to understand in which unit there is a problem.

In this case, there is always a danger that the car service will come up with a breakdown that did not exist, or instead of the simplest repair operation, it will count three or four complex manipulations.

What are the options?

Get diagnosed. Diagnostics shows where and what is junk, and based on its results, it is necessary to calculate the cost of repairs and spare parts. Minus: you will not understand if the car service workers tell you the truth.
Describe the problem to the masters and hear from them how much the repair may cost. Minus: to go around or call available car services, you have to spend several days.

Yes, here we will again return to the Uremont.com service, with which these trips and calls are not needed.

You just need to apply (it's completely free) and get feedback from workshops ready to take on your car. The application is sent to all workshops in the city, and answers begin to come via SMS in a few minutes.

Offers are available in your personal account, where you can talk with representatives of the car service. For example, you can describe the signs of a breakdown and find out exactly how much maintenance will cost.

Get some feedback, talk to the masters and make a choice. Uremont.com will give you a referral.

The price indicated by the service should not change, you negotiate all the conditions in advance.

It is clear that it is not always realistic to determine exactly what is wrong with the car, sometimes the problems are really more serious than they seemed.

Remember that in this case, employees do not have to correct everything right away and then write the services back into the work order retroactively. They should call you and tell you that new jobs are required, explain why.

How to understand that the masters will take this responsibly? Look at ratings and reviews. Good service is so good that it does not try to rip off the client.

By the way, you can pay for repairs directly through the payment system at Uremont.com. In this case, 10% of the paid cost will be returned to the user's personal account as a cashback after the completion of the repair. This money can be spent on the subsequent maintenance of the car.

How not to fall for common tricks

Services can cheat on spare parts too. For example, if the part is still good, they will remove it and put it on another car, and instead of a new one, they will also screw in a slightly less used one than yours.

Good form for a car service is to return an old part in a box from under a new one (which was just installed).

Ask in advance how the parts will be returned if they need to be replaced.

Experienced motorists do not recommend contacting car services located at car markets and spare parts warehouses, for this very reason. Look through Uremont.com where the workshop is located and double check the reviews so you don't end up in an unpleasant situation.

It is good to be present during the repair, so that the work order does not include works that in fact were not. Good advice if you understand what these works look like. And if not, then take with you a person who understands repairs. And be sure to check with the service if you will be allowed into the repair area. In theory, they can’t let them in, after all, your property is there. But there is also a safety technique, and the crowd of clients who climb to check if everything is being done there is not conducive to safety. Therefore, the entrance to the repair area is not open to everyone.

How to find out all the details of working with the service? In advance, ask Uremont via chat if they will give you a look at the work process.

There is an unpleasant scheme when car service technicians repair a car, but at the same time they either hack or add new breakdowns. The logic is this: the client's car will break down in two days, and he will come back to be repaired, that is, you can again shake money from him.

First of all, rating saves from such surprises. If a car service is trying to raise money in an ignoble way, new customers will come only by chance, and not through Uremont.com, where users will put a minimum rating for each joint.

Uremont.com does not affect ratings and stars, therefore these quality marks are real.

Secondly, a safety net will help. Ask for the last name, first name and patronymic of the master who will take care of your car. If something goes wrong afterwards, you will know whose job to complain about. A service that has nothing to hide will give such information without difficulty.

Third, take pictures of the car before sending it for repair. If, for example, scratches appear on the body during work, the photographs will help prove that it is the fault of the repairmen.

Choosing a car repair shop is difficult. Therefore, do not add work to yourself - use the service that offers the best options.