Consumer Choice magazine this week highlighted the differences between southern and northern Ireland when it comes to servicing your car. On average, it cost more than €100 more to have a car serviced in Dublin than in Belfast, a difference of 45 per cent. Quotes from Dublin garages varied from €135 to €270, while the Belfast quotes ranged from €53 to €91. The motor industry wasn't the only industry highlighted in the report but it's high time that the industry started to react a bit quicker to economic conditions.
It's easy sometimes in business to just keep the head down and keep working away while ignoring your pricing and economic / consumer sentiment around you. While MicksGarage is for the most part competitive enough on price, we've started to look how we can become more competitive on certain areas. We're facilitating more collections, saving people on the delivery charge; we've reduced pricing on items such as our brake pads and disks; we've implimented a lower price for delivery on smaller / lighter items such as bulbs and mirror glass; we slashed our roof bar prices before the summer; we reduced pricing on roof boxes; we're doing free fitting on some items. But most of all we're keeping a close eye on our overall pricing to try and make sure that we continue to offer good value as well as the convenience of internet shopping.
The fact is that it's not always possible to be the lowest price for every single product, especially when you're competing with varying levels of product quality in the market. But where we can, we are committed to offering keen prices which don't take the mick (excuse the pun). To do anything else is commercial suicide.