Garage Recommendations

cbyrne

Hi All,

I've owned a number of cars over the years and had a number of varying levels of service and quality at garages in Ireland whether buying, servicing or selling these cars.

One thing I've noticed over the years is a distinct lack of independent feedback on the performance of these garages or any place where potential customers can check the previous experiences of people who have used these garages. Similiarly one thing which seems to always come up on these boards is people asking others to recommend a good garage / body repair / dealership etc.

This got me thinking about setting something up which would allow this, and now we have the first release of our website www.recommendagarage.ie

This site is not currently commercial, and has only been released in its first version today. I just wanted to post it on this forum for the users here to have a look at it and either add content or provide feedback to us on it. I just want too gauge public opinion and see what direction to continue in.

The site is deliberately as simple as possible, and is meant as a recommendation site, i.e. if you feel a garage or service is good and want others to use it, then add a review. Its not meant as a ratemy site, as these generally degenerate into a torrent of abuse by people with a particular issue against someone. Our thinking however is that if a garage or service is good it will get good feedback and appear on our site, if its not good then it will not and will not be used.

Mods, feel free to remove this if in any violation of boards rules, but as I say am just getting peoples views and feedback at this stage rather than trying to promote. Your feedback will help us improve the site and content for our next release. Obviously we encourage those with good feedback from garages to add their experiences..

thanks!

niceirishfella

Hi,

I tried to write a review there and it just hung and hung, and then timed out..............

ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, and its nothing to do with my connection.

Good idea for a site, just needs more debugging me thinks.

deRanged

cbyrne wrote: »

This site is not currently commercial

do you intend to make it commercial?

the cynic in me wonders what will happen once people have supplied the content.

cbyrne

Well once up and running we will need to use advertising on it to pay for it so just meant commercial from that point of view thats all, but think this is standard practice.

I guess I meant to indicate to the mods that there is no advertising on it at the moment, just looking for peoples feedback

the_syco

An idea:

Good feedback: list it.
Bad feedback: list the garage, but just say "no positive feedback", or something like that, to avoid libel but also to show that people were unhappy with the garage.

The reason why it may not work: one garage may flame another garage, or give false positive feedback.

cbyrne

the_syco wrote: »

An idea:

Good feedback: list it.
Bad feedback: list the garage, but just say "no positive feedback", or something like that, to avoid libel but also to show that people were unhappy with the garage.

The reason why it may not work: one garage may flame another garage, or give false positive feedback.

Thanks for that, excellent idea! Will look at putting that in. I know the issues about flaming and false feedback, however no reviews are published without being verified by admin first, email must be verified and things like IP etc. are checked. I know this won't solve everything but is better than simply publishing reviews without checking as some other ratings sites curently do.

Trojan

I love the clean design, looks great.

I would attempt to seed the database with real data somehow - maybe by doing a survey of drivers in a city centre carpark, or phone some motoring journalists and ask them how their last garage visit went, etc and fill that in. The more reviews there, the more that will come.

cbyrne

Trojan wrote: »

I love the clean design, looks great.

Thanks Tojan. We have tried to keep the site as uncluttered and clean as possible.

NiceIrishfella, hope the site works for you next time, we haven't seen it ever hang before but as its only gone live its bound to have some issues with different browsers/version etc. but thanks for the note.

Tipsy Mac

I would get rid of the Dublin City/County as this will be confusing, either have it Dublin North/South or just Dublin. Otherwise people will end up putting garages in all over the place and it will be impossible to locate one properly.

jimwin

Great idea.

cbyrne

Hi Guys, thanks for all the feedback, response so far have been very positive. We now have a competition for a €100 voucher from Halfords for reviews submitted in January to get it up and running, I'm sure the people on this forum have good positive feedback of garages / mechanics etc. that others could benefit from!

Anyway, thanks to all who have commented, it has helped in our understanding of what we need to change/fix.

Raytown Rocks

Maybe in the " specify a service type" you could add "electrical"
I know a few garages that cover electrical work, alternators etc.
Chef

cbyrne

Hi Chef, thanks for that, yeah we are looking to extend this list, some other suggestions have been 'Tyres', 'Parts', 'Breakers', so will add this to the list.

Mr.Diagnostic

How about "diagnostics" as that is something people search for on a regular basis

quarryman

yeah diagnostics would be great.

cbyrne

Thanks, will add it to the list. Is it 'Diagnostic Check' .. e.g. check fault codes/ecu etc?

Mr.Diagnostic

cbyrne wrote: »

Thanks, will add it to the list. Is it 'Diagnostic Check' .. e.g. check fault codes/ecu etc?

I think a lot of small garages have bought scan tools and can do simple code reads but a complete diagnostic check is a different matter. Maybe "Diagnostic Specialist" would be better.

Seth Brundle

good idea
Validate the code before it goes commercial -
* http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.recommendagarage.ie%2F
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.recommendagarage.ie%2F

Where is your privacy policy?

cbyrne

kbannon wrote: »

good idea
Validate the code before it goes commercial -
* http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.recommendagarage.ie%2F
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.recommendagarage.ie%2F

Where is your privacy policy?

Thanks, have passed onto my developer. Sorting out privacy policy, T&C at the moment too...

Oilrig

Just had a quick look, great stuff.

Function suggestion: could you provide an overall/all categories report on featured garages? i.e. rather than having to search several times under each heading.

Best of luck with it, long overdue.

PS good luck with avoiding the minefields...

egan007

kbannon wrote: »

good idea
Validate the code before it goes commercial -
* http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.recommendagarage.ie%2F
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.recommendagarage.ie%2F

Where is your privacy policy?

This makes 0 difference to being commercial.
Check google....

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.ie&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0&verbose=1

Seth Brundle

@egan007 - I never suggested that it did. I recommended that it be done before it goes commercial.
However, whilst not necessary for SEO, validation helps ensure (but doesn't guarrantee) that the page appears in all browsers as intended. From the W3C site:

Browsers follow the second half of this maxim by accepting Web pages and trying to display them even if they're not legal HTML. Usually this means that the browser will try to make educated guesses about what you probably meant. The problem is that different browsers (or even different versions of the same browser) will make different guesses about the same illegal construct; worse, if your HTML is really pathological, the browser could get hopelessly confused and produce a mangled mess, or even crash.

To quote the W3C:

Validity is one of the quality criteria for a Web page, but there are many others. In other words, a valid Web page is not necessarily a good web page, but an invalid Web page has little chance of being a good web page.

In other words, valid mark-up is a best practice for ensuring standardised delivery across client platforms (from redcardinal.ie)

Anyhow, it is thought that google's code is crap due to bandwidth issues.

kyote00

nice clean interface and a great idea....

(now the buts )
1) The search option probably has too many clicks for my liking --- as the site grows you may learn about more common searches that people use and then present those also

2) There is downside with a potential legal implication in that a recommendation is based on only a small number of reviews (perhaps one) and so may give unbalanced rating of the actual performance of a dealership....Also we all know, the internet is full "nutbags" and people with axes to grind

3) People also value some things more than others - for example "cleanliness" -- if you are obsessive about clean garages then you will more likely score it lower and pull the overall score down....

I note that you state that the opinions are those of the posted and not the site .... I doubt this will protect you legally....its a bit like saving that "the 'gun' killed him, your honour, and not me"

good luck

I will add a review soon for linders in chapelizod (toyota) who have always been excellent when servicing/repairing my car and TI-AUTOs who is the best technical alfa specialist in the country

cbyrne

kyote00 wrote: »

nice clean interface and a great idea....

(now the buts )
1) The search option probably has too many clicks for my liking --- as the site grows you may learn about more common searches that people use and then present those also

2) There is downside with a potential legal implication in that a recommendation is based on only a small number of reviews (perhaps one) and so may give unbalanced rating of the actual performance of a dealership....Also we all know, the internet is full "nutbags" and people with axes to grind

3) People also value some things more than others - for example "cleanliness" -- if you are obsessive about clean garages then you will more likely score it lower and pull the overall score down....

I note that you state that the opinions are those of the posted and not the site .... I doubt this will protect you legally....its a bit like saving that "the 'gun' killed him, your honour, and not me"

good luck

I will add a review soon for linders in chapelizod (toyota) who have always been excellent when servicing/repairing my car and TI-AUTOs who is the best technical alfa specialist in the country

Hi kyote00, thanks for comments -
(1) You don't need to use all options for search, i.e. you can just select an area without specifying a service type/dealer type. However any improvements to search options you suggest will be welcome
(2) True, but we intend to demonstarte that if theres only one review then it shouldn't be relied apon as accurate as something with 10 reviews. Working on the algorithm for that!!
(3) Will be changing this rating system slightly, thanks for comments and understand what you mean.

I think the comment that the ratings are not our views is important (and true), how much it protects us I don't know, but its better to have it there and clear than not. There is much more detailed breakdown in the T&C.

Appreciate any reviews you add, above all the people on this forum are the ones who know where the best garages are!

thanks for all comments and all noted.:)

cbyrne

We currently ask users to rate a garage/service in one of four categories

* Customer Service
* Work Quality
* Cleanliness
* Value for Money

given the previous comments that some people may value these attributes differently, what would you rate as most important?

What other 'attributes' would you think are important when considering a garage/merchanic etc..

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Seth Brundle

Reliability?