Women in the UK are still passing on the responsibility of car ser-vicing to male counterparts, according to new research from car servicing network Bosch Car Service.
Only three in 10 women said they take their own cars for a service, compared with seven in 10 men. While neither men nor women expressed a particular ‘dread’ towards car servicing when asked to compare it with any other household chore, a significantly greater number of women (35 per cent) said they were not confident they would get a good experience from a car service, as opposed to only 24 per cent of men.
Commenting on the survey, Bosch Car Service Concept manager Howard Price said: “It is clear that there is still a feeling of discomfort among women drivers towards taking their cars in for a service, which could be why they are leaving it up to men.
“The majority of customers in general (70 per cent) already feel confident that they will get a good experience of getting a car serviced, and this is good news for the profession. However, there are still discrepancies according to gender and age; car servicing professionals need to continue doing all they can to build the same levels of confidence among all customers, regardless of whether they are male or female, old or young.”
The survey was conducted to compare drivers’ perceptions and to highlight any concerns among the public towards car servicing.
Almost half of the women asked stated that they leave car servicing up to the men in their families, with 36 per cent leaving it to husbands, six per cent to boyfriends and four per cent to dads.
The survey also revealed that three in 10 drivers under the age of 24 admitted to letting parents deal with the responsibilities of car maintenance, and just three in 10 took their own cars in for a service. This was significantly less than the other percentages – with all other age groups showing as approximately 50 per cent. In contrast, younger drivers didn’t express any greater con-cern about car servicing experience than any of their older counterparts.
Howard added: “With younger drivers, the reason for leaving it up to parents is most probably because of inexperience – as wellas cost – rather than not feeling confident.”