IT DOESN'T ALWAYS PAY TO SHOP AROUND FOR THE BEST PRICE

By Brian Turner, Ottawa Citizen - When it comes to proper and complete maintenance for any vehicle, one of the most important tools your service provider has is its record keeping system. Unless your vehicle has a history to review, it's very easy for a shop to over- or under-recommend repairs and or maintenance. The former can damage your wallet and the latter your vehicle's reliability.

If you wander from shop to shop with coupons and website discounts in hand and don't always stick with the same garage, it's impossible for any retailer to develop and maintain a complete history of your vehicle's repairs and maintenance. In cases like these, when a tech checks your transmission fluid or coolant, for example, the colour and condition won't always be a clear indication of whether either requires replacement. And with carmakers stretching their maintenance intervals to the extreme these days, missing just one service can have catastrophic effects. Or if during a past servicing some mechanical item was noted for re-inspection at a future visit because its condition was borderline and you're now at a different shop, that item may be missed. If it's something like a steering or suspension component you can easily ruin a set of tires or worse.

As vehicles age, the advantages of shopping different garages for service becomes smaller and smaller. Shops that see you as a regular customer are more likely to provide their best pricing and exceptional service because of your long-term value to their business. It's also much easier for their service consultants to prioritize needed maintenance and repairs because of their knowledge of your vehicle's distance travelled and type of driving it's exposed to. Of all the business relationships you will develop in a life-time, keeping your affiliation with a good auto service provider may save you more money than any other in the long term.
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Distracted driving has managed to stay on the radar of late, and that's a good thing. From just about every police service across the country we are hearing the same message: drivers continue to text, chat and be otherwise electronically engaged in open disobedience of the law. As long as this continues, everyone on the road and sidewalk is at risk. Some chat rooms and personal networking websites have suggested a civilian revolt against these distracted dummies by honking three times at the offender. While I'm all in favour of anything we can do to reduce the risk provided by these imbeciles, honking horns won't necessarily make things better. First the horns will provide their own distraction as surrounding drivers rubberneck to see what's going on. Secondly laying on your horn is the automotive equivalent of yelling and that never seems to calm things down, but usually serves to heat things up.

If driving with electronic distractions is really as dangerous as we are told by authorities (and the statistics and collisions and fatalities speak for themselves) then why don't we require carmakers to install a signal blocker in every vehicle to prevent cellphone or laptop or tablet use while the vehicle is in motion? For repeat offenders, why don't we retro-fit this type of blocker to their existing vehicles like we do now with ignition-lock breathalyzers for convicted drunk drivers? Don't be concerned with the cost: drunk drivers pay for their own devices now and the additional cost on new vehicles should be offset with an equivalent reduction in insurance premiums.