How To Find The Perfect Car Maintenance Shop For Every Vehicle
If your car was serviced many months ago and sounds like it needs some TLC, it might be time to locate a trustworthy maintenance shop to take care of your service needs.
Taking proper care of your car is essential to keeping it in great condition for longer. And if you have purchased a second-hand vehicle from a previous owner, your car may need some extra work to get it running smoothly. Adequate maintenance will improve the performance of your vehicle, extend its service life, and may help to prevent more costly breakages and repair jobs, too.
However, while car maintenance is undeniably important, it can be tricky to find a car care shop. Especially one that can take care of all of your service needs reliably, efficiently, and at reasonable prices. There are many unscrupulous workshops that will do a substandard job and overcharge you for the privilege.
The key to finding the perfect car maintenance shop for your vehicle’s needs is to know exactly what to look for.
Read on as we delve into the features that make a car maintenance shop worth your time and money.
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Look For Certified Shops
One of the first and most important things you should look for in any maintenance shop is extensive certification. The shop you’re considering should have qualified and certified technicians working for it—without exception.
There are numerous different certifications available in the auto-repair industry. But ideally, once you’ve contacted the garage, you should ask them if they are an ASE-certified workshop to ensure that your car receives the best possible level of care.
ASE stands for Automotive Service Excellence, and this certification is granted by the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence—a leader in the regulation of auto repair services. It is the most trusted and comprehensive certification in the industry, and its presence is one of the best ways to tell that your car will be treated with expertise and care.
The ASE grants certifications to technicians, shops, and even service advisors once they have passed strict examinations to prove their superior knowledge. Any specialist who carries this accolade has been thoroughly tested. This ensures that they have an exceptional level of skill and knowledge in their areas of expertise, including in modern areas of expertise such as servicing connected cars.
The ASE is a very demanding certification to obtain. So, a shop that only uses ASE-certified technicians is dedicated to providing the best car maintenance services possible. Shops with this certification will also display it in clear view of customers. Technicians may also wear short sleeve patches or blue, white and bronze badges indicating their ASE certification level.
Extensive Vehicle Care Services
So, you’ve contacted the garage and asked about their certifications. Now it’s time to gauge the quality and extent of the vehicle care services they offer.
Car care shops that offer limited maintenance services tend to be okay choices for minor services and repairs. However, finding a shop that provides full-vehicle maintenance is generally a better choice. A shop that checks your entire vehicle for you when you take your car in for a service is one that will likely strive to keep your vehicle running in great condition. It will take your car’s service history into account during every service to save you unnecessary costs and keep up to date with your unique maintenance schedule.
Any time your car goes in for a minor or major service, your shop has a valuable opportunity to check on your belts, exhaust system, brakes, tires, and electrical systems. Taking your vehicle to a comprehensive care workshop may mean longer waiting times for services. But it will ensure that potentially dangerous or costly issues are detected and that they fix the issue as soon as possible before they turn into thousand-dollar jobs.
It’s recommended that you take your vehicle to shops that actively promote preventative maintenance. Any shop that takes this seriously will do whatever it can to reduce your chances of suffering vehicle breakdowns and other hazardous problems. Additionally, the right shop can provide you with legitimate reasons as to why they want to order new parts or perform repairs on your car. If they refuse to discuss these reasons with you, you may be better served to find another workshop.
Technologically Informed Services
The best car maintenance shops are capable of working with the latest vehicle technologies on the market today. Many modern vehicles run on Android Auto, a vehicle-exclusive system designed on Android Studio that allows drivers to integrate their phones into their cars’ entertainment systems. It can mirror an Android phone’s screen on the car’s display, allowing drivers to control their phones using voice commands or the car’s touch screen to reduce on-road distractions and stay safe while driving. You will need a Google Account to run Android Auto in your vehicle, and will need to accept all cookies to proceed with the setup process.
The right car maintenance shop will have skilled and certified technicians available who can use stack exchange, AVD manager, and Android emulators to connect, troubleshoot and repair your Android Auto system. They may also be able to use programmers’ forums like Stack Overflow and Stack Overflow for Teams to scan question feed posts, identify bugs in Android Auto, to seek answers to common system questions, and to correct them for you.
A skilled Android Auto technician will be able to install APK files, run a cold boot where necessary, and install a package in Android Studio. Plus, they can give you all the information you need about starting Android and using its features from your vehicle’s console. They can potentially diagnose unknown failure CMD issues and return error unknown failure CMD problems, handle CMD package install, create processes, and fix unknown failure CMD errors.
Find A Shop For Your Vehicle’s Brand
Many workshops, garages, and dealerships specialize in servicing specific makes of vehicles, such as Mercedes Benz, Land Rover, or Volvo. The workshops that focus on your make of car are more likely to have the latest skills and training required to fix your car. And they’ll have the correct parts and equipment to perform an excellent job at a reasonable price.
If you aren’t sure about the shop you have selected, start out by having a few small repairs, such as oil and filter changes, done there. If you’re satisfied with the level of service they provide, you can move on to larger jobs, like major repairs and major services.
Remember to ask about the kinds of guarantees and warranties your shop offers on its work as well. Warranties can vary significantly among vehicle workshops. Some do not offer guarantees on their work at all. Ask about warranties ahead of time. Use a common and less expensive repair such as brake work, as a guide to gauge the extent to which the shop is willing to guarantee the quality of their work.
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Check Out the Shop’s Reputation
It’s always a good idea to establish a business relationship with your dealer or car repair shop for routine maintenance, such as oil changes, services, and inspections. This ensures that when you have an urgent job that needs doing, you already trust the shop you have chosen to do the task correctly.
You can gauge your workshop’s reputation by looking it up online too. It may have customer reviews on its official website, or Google reviews that tell you more about past customers’ experiences with the garage. If many customers have complained about the quality of their work, you may want to look for a new shop.
The Better Business Bureau can tell you how long your workshop or dealership of choice has been in business, along with how many complaints it has resolved recently and what its BBB rating is. However, you may want to take online user ratings with a pinch of salt. Some reviewers will complain about factors that are outside of a business’s control. These reviews may mislead you as to the trustworthiness of a workshop. If a shop has generally good reviews and only a few poor ones, you can probably trust that it will do a good job on your vehicle.
Key Indicators You’ve Found The Right Shop
Just like when you weigh up your car insurance options, you need to shop around a bit for the best place to maintain your vehicle. The ideal shop will have a few key features and characteristics to look out for. It will specialize in servicing your specific make of car, offer a clear warranty policy, and communicate clearly with you about any work that needs to be done ahead of time.
It will also have ASE-certified technicians and specialists skilled at working with Android Auto and other popular vehicle systems. Remember to look for a shop that offers comprehensive car care services as well. This will ensure that you can take your car to the garage for any issue you have, large or small.
