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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

CODE OF PRACTICE FOR WORKSHOPS?

The F1 Safety Car outside its garage in the pi...


The relevant Government agencies should introduce a code of practice for workshops to improve and regulate their operations in servicing and repairing vehicles in Sabah. This is to protect innocent consumers from unscrupulous workshop owners or operators.

The common problems that consumers are facing are workshops charge for work that is not actually carried out; malpractice by repairers such as stealing parts of vehicles for resale; spare parts are not genuine; short periods of warranty; charging more than the consumers might expected based on the information provided prior to work being carried out and work is done that is not necessary without approval.

Almost all workshop owners have better or more technical knowledge about cars. As a result, they exploit the gap in knowledge to make consumers vulnerable and fool them. They deliberately vague about what they do and they are charging for. There is a lack of transparency of costs, and many of them do not provide or have a copy of their standard terms and conditions.

The workshop owners association here should be more active in safeguarding their business and interests by working very closely with the relevant Government agencies by giving accreditation to their members so that it would bring back the confidence and trust of consumers to their workshops.

It is not easy to find or choose a reliable workshops nowadays, apart from personal recommendation or through word of mouth. Consumers have little information on the performance of workshops furthermore anyone can just open a workshop regardless of whether they are well-trained or qualified mechanics.

Bad experienced by consumers reduces their confidence and if the association with the help and assistance from the relevant Government agencies, could set up a reference agency or directory it would definitely help to overcome the problem.

With the rapidly increase of private car ownership, the relevant Government authorities and agencies should look into this matter very seriously. The consumers do not want these workshops to take advantage of the situation for economic benefits without considering the safety aspect of it.

Shoddy workmanship done on vehicles carries obvious risk to public safety. We don't know if poor workmanship and sub standards parts replaced on vehicles had contributed to some of the accidents occurring on our roads.

If this is so, the relevant authorities should consider introducing a new legislation covering this aspect.

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