Drivers ‘dumbfounded by repair jargon’

More than half of drivers (56%) say they don’t understand the language used by garages.

According to RAC Breakdown research, half of drivers surveyed (50%) feel they’d been overcharged or ripped off by a garage, with more than one in 10 (15%) saying a garage carried out work they hadn’t agreed to.

This is partly because they didn’t understand some of the terms used by garages to describe faults and repair options.

Meanwhile, a quarter of drivers (26%) felt the cost of repairs they ended up paying turned out to be far higher than they were quoted, while nearly a fifth (18%) said the garage could not repair their vehicle for them at all. Nearly half (46%) said they would be uneasy dealing with garages they didn’t know.

RAC consumer roadside managing director Andy Baker said: “These figures show there’s a sizeable gulf between what garages say, and what the average driver actually understands. At best, this can be frustrating for drivers who need their vehicles repaired, but at worst it could mean they get a raw deal – with baffling language making it much more likely they approve any work, at any price they’re quoted.

“And at the end of the day, getting the right repairs at a fair price shouldn’t come down to how well drivers understand industry terms and acronyms. In a bid to overcome this language barrier we’ve included help in dealing with garages in all our new breakdown policies. This ranges from a patrol report that tells a garage what’s likely to be wrong with a car, right up to our teams checking garage availability, getting a repair estimate and then talking through what needs to be done to get a car going again – minus the industry jargon – and even arranging priority access to an RAC Approved Garage.”