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Now more than ever, with the rising costs of living, a trip to the mechanic can often be scary to the bank account.
If you’re not extensively mechanically minded, it can be hard to tell if you’re being taken for a ride with the repairs quoted.
Or perhaps you just want to learn more about your car from an expert in layman’s terms. Either way, there is a mechanical chain in Australia that is helping make the process at least a little easier to bear.
Taking your car to a Bridgestone Tyre and Auto store will give you a video of the exact repairs being done to your car, explaining why they're needed and what might require attention soon.
The video link is a strategy used by the tyre and auto brand nationwide. The Tech Check, as they call it, is aimed at giving people confidence through transparency in the work happening to their car.
Bridgestone rolled out the Tech Check to its nearly 200 Select Tyre and Auto stores across the country in circa 2023 and has become a permanent feature in stores ever since. The idea is simple: send the customer a 30-second video that simply explains what they are repairing and what may need repairing.
Heath Barclay, Managing Director of Bridgestone Australia, says that the Tech Check has far exceeded their expectations both in the customer experience and in the employee training.
“It gives a view to customers of their vehicle that they've never seen before. So we'll go around the vehicle looking into the brakes, looking underneath the vehicle, showing the elements of the vehicle that are really critical to the performance of the vehicle and the quality that they're in,” said Barclay.
“So not only does it tell you where maybe something needs changing, whether that's brakes, but it shows you where things are good and don't need work done on. So it provides that really transparent view to the customer of the quality of the motor vehicle that they are trusting with their lives fundamentally.”
A similar idea has since been adopted by dealership techs around the world, mainly in the United States. However, Bridgestone is the most commonly found mechanical chain in Australia that adopts the strategy, with the Tech Check being part of the training process and being enforced across all stores.
“Our customers love the opportunity here, directly from their mechanic. So often in a service environment, you're talking to a customer service person. Still, in our videos, you get the opportunity to hear from the person who serviced your vehicle, and that's really valued by customers,” said David Honner, General Manager and Marketing of Bridgestone Australia.
Do you believe this should be common practice at all stores? Let us know below.
Zane Dobie comes from a background of motorcycle journalism, working for notable titles such as Australian Motorcycle News Magazine, Just Bikes and BikeReview. Despite his fresh age, Zane brings a lifetime of racing and hands-on experience. His passion now resides on four wheels as an avid car collector, restorer, drift car pilot and weekend go-kart racer.
