Guarantee of Satisfaction

Press, 17 June 1986, Page 30

Guarantee of Satisfaction

New Zealand’s highly motorised community is served by garages and service stations spread the length and breadth of the country so, perhaps, it is not surprising that some are run by rip-off merchants whose shoddy workmanship and greed have given the automotive repair business a bad name. Motor Trade Association repairers must abide by the association’s ethical code which, for them, is normal business practice observed by all members since the M.T.A. was founded in 1917. Experience shows that most complaints laid at M.T.A. members’ feet by car-owners arise from the cost of the repair job, rather than the quality of the workmanship. In other words, they have their foundations in poor

communication between the repairer and the customer.

An awareness of lack of communication between some of its members and the motoring public has caused the M.T.A. to introduce the Guarantee to Satisfaction, which is based upon the standard job order form that each M.T.A. member should place before a customer to understand and complete before any repair work is undertaken.

With the completion of that order form a contract between the repairer and the customer has been made. The repairer has undertaken to do the job for an agreed sum and in a certain time, while the customer has agreed to pay for the work and any replacement parts that might be needed.

A number of M.T.A. members have been using the Guarantee to Satisfaction in the course of their business for some time now with encouraging results, and the M.T.A. will officially launch the scheme with an intensive advertising campaign next month. Interestingly, the key man in the campaign will be one whose name is a household word in the Australian motoring community, Evan Green. An internationally recognised motoring authority, Green has been a rally driver, organiser of major motor sporting events, television commentator, radio broadcaster, as well as a writer, presenter and producer of films. Green has drive around or across Australia 34 times, and so it is not entirely surprising that he is an authority on Australian history. No stranger to New Zealand, Green has competed in the country’s annual international rally, and at the beginning of this year, was one of the commentators employed by Television New Zealand to give coverage of the Nissan Mobil Wellington waterfront Group A International saloon car race.

Green will "front” the M.T.A.’s television commercials launching the Guarantee to Satisfaction, and so should become much better known to the local motoring fraternity, as well as the general public, over the next few months.