A recent report which suggested that women get charged an average of £616 for car repairs, compared to £571 for men, has been dismissed by comparison website WhoCanFixMyCar.
When quizzing its database of 113,000 previous users, 6,600 registered garages and 4,000 weekly tailored repair quotes, it found that the overall average female quote was actually over 10% lower.
According to WhoCanFixMyCar, across 64,000 data points, encompassing everything from an oil change to more complex work such as clutch replacement and even full resprays, the average quote to women was £208, compared to £233 for men – something which immediately calls the earlier research into question. Here are the relative prices, broken down in full.
The data shows that most cars show either a male or a female bias. Take a look at the ‘Most Common Vehicles’ chart below.
Superminis are up to two times more popular amongst women, with MINIs and Ford KAs up to three more likely to be submitted by a female driver respectively. Meanwhile, saloons such as the 3 Series, Mondeo, Vectra and Passat are around twice as likely to be driven by men, according to WhoCanFixMyCar.com data. Jaguars and Volvos appear to be the most male-biased marques of all.
Stripping back purely to top-selling, evenly male/female popular vehicles and most popular repair types, the true underlying trend emerges.
WhoCanFixMyCar claims the results confirm what its 40,000 repair outlets will have known all along: “A female voice on the end of the phone, or a female first name on an online enquiry, doesn’t affect the price quoted.
“The 1.3% difference in women’s favour shown here is too small for us to see as a true indicator of any bias.”
The data suggests that men are still more likely to deal with garages than women, with over 70% of WhoCanFixMyCar.com users being men. As shown below, it also seems that women shy away from certain, more ‘involved’ repair categories.
Alex Rose, Marketing Director at WhoCanFixMyCar concluded “It’s clear that the UK’s car maintenance industry can do without coverage suggesting that garage owners and managers jack up prices for female customers for a start, and we’re pleased to see that this myth can now be safely dismissed, with proof coming from a 64,000-point data set.
“However it appears that service and repair outlets could still do better at attracting ‘direct’ female business, above all when the issue is seen as particularly complex.”
