RepairPal: Love your car?

For most people, the most expensive asset they own after their home is probably their car. If you add the cost of running it over a number of years to the original purchase price then I think you’ll see where I’m coming from. This site looks like it has a lot of features to help you make sure that you spend your money wisely when it comes to servicing and repairs and even goes a long way towards giving you some self-help tips. If you’ve lived this long in ignorance of the workings of the internal combustion engine then you can certainly catch up here in the encyclopedia section.

As well as explaining the technical aspects of the automobile the site has sections on things such as problem reports, broken down into ˈmost reportedˈ and ˈnewestˈ so you can check if your model has a recurring fault suffered by other users. You can also search under ˈAuto Care Adviceˈ to get hints, tips and how to’s.

With the expertise of motor technicians to hand, the ˈEstimatorˈ function should save you hours of telephone calls to different service centers. Just enter your care details and your Zip code then choose a repair or service from an extensive drop-down box. You will then get an estimate for the work required, and if you take the vehicle to one of the approved RepairPal centers you shouldn’t be in for any shocks when the final bill arrives.

The site does of course list participating repair centers for your convenience and there is a map showing the national regions covered.

You can use the site to keep a full service history of your vehicle and coming soon apparently is a feature that will email you at crucial times such when you should change your oil.

Used properly this one should help you avoid those worrying moments when the motor technician lets out a big sigh and then smiles at the thought of what he might be able to charge you!

Conclusion

I think we’ve all rather taken for granted the fact that our cars will cost us money to run and take it as a fact of life. This site however should certainly help people make sensible choices and you never know might even get more people changing their own spark plugs.