Just been watching Dragons Den and listening to the guys from Servicing Stop getting £100,000 investment (if I remember correctly) from Deborah Meaden in return for a 30% stake in the business.
It seems like a good idea but they are missing a big trick with their search engine marketing – the site is optimised (see the footer links) for things like Ford Service but there are no geographical pages!
They need to set up pages targeting “car service Leeds” in the natural search results and work with each garage to register with Google Local / Maps to get listed in those results too. There is so much local search volume around this industry that the potential is huge – I’ve worked on a friends garage site before and even a couple of good rankings in one small town can drive a steady stream of business. Multiply that across hundreds of locations and the potential is huge.
Search volume for servicing cars and models is small but if they can rank for the geographical modifiers across every town in the UK the site could drive thousands of leads every single day.
From the BBC overview (video highlights available too):
Essex brothers Oliver and Toby step into the Den with a spanner mascot who they hope will not put a spanner in their works.
Their pitch is for a nationwide car servicing network doesn’t stall however as they report a year one turnover of £1.5m based on their ability to undercut main dealers by between 30 and 50%.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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That is very true, I think people just seem to think that throwing money at a business is the answer yet there is so much you can do without breaking the bank. I think these guys will do well; at this time people are looking for ways to save money where ever they can. There are loads of people who drive used cars that a no longer in warranty who could do with the savings. Those who drive new cars that are still under warranty will obviously need to go to a main dealer or else they run the risk of making their warranty void.
More comments from NigellusFind me on Flickr | StumbleUpon | Twitter
Optimizing for your local market is getting more and more important nowadays. Strangely enough there’s still plenty of cities no one has optimized for, which gives you a great advantage.
More comments from StefanFind me on Digg | Facebook | Twitter
It always amazes me how rubbishly optimized some of these Dragon Den sites are. I remember Peter Jones (who I know has had some internet based ventures) asked a diamond retailer where he ranked with his company name on Google (UK). He was barely on page one.
Nevertheless they’re on Dragon’s Den and SEO’ers are not, so they must be doing something right!
More comments from rhyswynneFind me on Twitter
Looking through the websites source code, there a lot of other search engine optimisation tweaks that this website is missing in addition to the geographical pages.
No W3C Validation, Heading Tags, DIV’s, Title Tags, Alt Tags.
More comments from pete.campbellEither way, props to the company gaining the investment, but I would still highly suggest they invest in a extended search marketing campaign.
I have had first hand expiriance of Servicing Stop, just before Christmas my 1 year old S-Type Jaguar needed a service, after looking at my options I decided on Servicing Stop, sounded good, £249.00, collected, serviced, cleaned and returned, all warranty protected etc. Imagine my frustration when I did not get my car back for 3 months. They had franchised the work to a local garage who collected it and then subsiquently blew the engine up. The garage claim the turbo had blown, it went to Jaguar under warranty, Jaguar would not touch it under warranty as after many weeks it was decided the garage had over filled the oil, this exess oil was then forced up through the intercooler, through the turbo’s then the engine and back out both exausts, final diagnosis – Engine seized. Yeah fantastic.
after many weeks wrangling back and forth with the garage blaming Jaguar because they stated the engine was not seized when it went to them, Jaguar stating they had not even ran the car.
By this stage I was resigned to the only option left – legal action.
Fortunatly it did not come to that. Servicing Stop finally acepted responsibility and arranged for a new engine to be fitted. I did have the use of a hire car while all this was happening.
Now while I accept it was not Servicing Stop’s fault it was their responsibility and the fact that it took them 3 months to sort it out I feel was totaly unacceptable.
Having said that they did accept responsibility in the end and I ended up with a full refund, a brand new engine, compensation for the trouble and my next service free of charge.
Now you ask would I use them for the next service?
I would have to say yes, I understand the position Servicing Stop would have been in with their garage not accepting responsibility ( I wouldn’t want to admit that I had just blown up a very expensive engine) In the end it was sorted and I had a personal apology from Oliver and feel confidant when I call Servicing Stop next time and speak to Oliver to book my next service he will pesonaly make sure that my car has the best service in the world.
Local search SEO is important, especially for businesses going down the franchise model route. I’m currently finding a lot of keywords that do not trigger the Google local/maps to show in the UK SERPs – this can be frustrating.
More comments from SEO-DoctorPatrick,
I’m interested in your view of the pages on this site for each manufacturer. They’re very similar for each manufacturer, just with models changed and the manufacturers name changed in the text.
I think it’s unique enough not to trigger a duplicate content filter but others disagree with me. What are your thoughts?
I have marketed my business with the help of a company called Premium Solutions.co.uk, they tweeked my website to tidy it up and used SEO techniques and tags to get me to the number 1 position on google, which gave me higher positions on other search engines like MSN and Yahoo. I totally agree with all of the above, localised marketing is of upmost importance in the current climate and optomising your web presence is parramount or you might as well not have one. People are looking for your services, you have just got to make sure they find you straight away and before they discover your competition……..Good luck
Service stop will be picking my car up next week. Will keep you posted on their service. £156 (10% Aug discount) for a Seat Ibiza is not bad my last service from my local Seat dealer cost £235. lets see how it goes.
Can I suggest another service http://www.garages4you.com/ it is a company based in Edinburgh.
The customer service is excellent. If there is a problem they sort it out straight away for you. You can choose a time when they should contact you on phone to talk about the service you need for the car and they call exactly when you wanted them to do it! The prices is very competitive. Only downside is it is service mainly for Scotland and North of England.
This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest from my experience with these guys. I had 3 different people call me in response to my web-submitted enquiry, each of them lost the details of the previous conversation and I only got my originally booked service slot after considerable chasing and complaining. I had a phone call telling me that there were 3 things that needed attention, to the tune of £725+VAT, did I want to go ahead? I said I’d get the car back and get some competitive quotes first. The first dealer I called said the first issue didn’t need work at all, the second was a case of “you can fix it but it’s not going to affect your ride or safety” while the third was “You need to fix that asap. It’ll cost £70+VAT inclusive of labour”. Now I’ve got the car back with no log book stamp, no report on what they had discovered and while they’d vacuumed the interior the car was decidedly unwashed. A shambles at best, at worst a great example of why garages have such a poor reputation.
Servicing Stop Ltd is lacking. The garage my car was sent to was pathetic, they where late, did not do the work what was paid for, I had to send the car back to have them finish it off. Their customer service was rubbish. Would highly recommend you just search for a local garage. As all these people will do is sent it to any old place that may or may not be any good. Oh and the garage overfilled my oil by 25% on my dipstick. that would have killed my engine if I hadn’t noticed.
i pick cars up for servicing stop. all i say is cut out the middle man
Me again,
Well I took the plunge, my car was due for another service last week so I booked again with servicing Stop.
To be fair I did call Oliver Ritchmond directly, the last garage is no longer used, it was collected this morning by an approaved Bosh Service centre in leicester. I was given a promise that my engine would not be blown up this time.
I was called at about 15:00 to say i needed a pollen filter, price agreed and work carried out. By 16:30 the car was returned all serviced, book stamped and car cleaned.(have to say the wheels were not cleaned well but to be fair I used to own my own valeting business so am probably over critical.
As promised my service was done free of charge (apart from the pollen filter)
So all in all I am happy with the outcome.
No matter what goes wrong (and things do) the true test of any company is how they respond to the problem, in my case it took longer than it should but never the less the issues were dealt with.
Servicing Stop offer a good value product and as long as they keep tracking in the right direction will built a strong company with a good future.
just have a look at car craft auto centre site its alot cheaper and thay offer the same service free collection and wash and vac. service stop also use them.
service stop dont even look at the car we give them a price and thay just put a cut on it
cv
Had my BMW serviced by them, They picked the car up at the agreed time and and the guy who picked it up said it only going around the corner to car craft. They called at lunchtime to say it needed brakes and tyres done and they quoted me a price, I declined on this as I knew I could get it a LOT cheaper, and if you also look up carcraft reviews on google you would not want your car going there !! so they dropped the car back of to me. I asked they guy for sheet which showed what had been and he said it will be posted to me. Y
Had my BMW serviced by them, They picked the car up at the agreed time and the guy who picked it up said its only going around the corner to car craft. They called at lunchtime to say it needed brakes and tyres done and they quoted me a price, I declined on this as I knew I could get it a LOT cheaper, and if you also look up carcraft reviews on google you would not want your car going there !! so they dropped the car back of to me. I asked they guy for sheet which showed what had been done and he said it will be posted to me. That was two weeks ago and I have chased them everyday as I want to know what I paid for. Would I use them again, NO WAY, Use a local garage, dont use these cowboys !!
what car craft did it go to
Sheffield, And I am still waiting for a receipt and the sheet showing what work was carried out. I have now called them 7 times and sent 4 emails. I have never once received a reply from an email or been called back. I feel I have been fleeced and am being treated like an idiot by them. A message to Servicingstop… I am a customer, treat me like one, as good company’s do, I paid you a lot of money and feel I have had NO value for money. SORT IT OUT !!
to be fair ian car craft only do the work. servicing stop do all the rest like take pay ment , send reports off to customers and all that kind of stuff .
I’ve recently experienced Servicing Stop’s mind-blowingly bad customer service. My car had to go back to the garage twice after it was serviced, and the whole thing took a month from start to finish. I wrote to Oliver Richmond but he didn’t even bother to reply.
Full story here on my blog
http://incompetencetoday.blogspot.com/2009/09/review-of-servicing-stop-ltd.html
I have had the worst experience of a car service with servicingstop (still e-mailing them and telephoning them 4 weeks later). My complaint still hasn’t been dealt with and after the initial telephone call, to say my car was missing for 4 days (no-one told me where it was or how how long it would be gone) I have incurred a further charge of £90 in taxi fares while my car was missing. I WOULD ADVISE ANYONE UNHAPPY WITH THIS COMPANY TO CONTACT TRADING STANDARDS. Office of fair trading and trading standards have been great!
My Service was great!
It’s such a shame that a handful of people can give such a fantastic service a bad name. It is a classic example of when you upset 1 person they tell 5 people but if you make 1 person happy they are unlikely to tell anyone else – the ‘British Public’ full of enthusiasm! I saw the guys on DD on TV and had my service done yesterday, I thought I should post a review but I cannot believe the bad press from this blog. I felt the service was beyond my expectations! The car was collected early at 8:20 and it was returned around 17:00. The car has never looked so good and it drives like a dream!
Very Satisfied.
james where do you live
Wow, I agree James – I used Servicing Stop and they were excellent!!!
I read a bunch of reviews; good ones and bad ones, but decided to take the plunge
because they were totally cheaper than my usual garage….. my car got collected and delivered back when they said it would (same day), and the people on the phone were super helpful!! I would recommend them to anyone – AWESOME company!
Worst service I’ve error received from a car garage, wish I’d stuck to main dealer and that’s saying something!
Servicing stop give you a quote of the price when you book your service, don’t be fooled, read what it actually includes, and if you don’t know what your car’s servicing schedule is then you could get screwed.
Servicing stop’s “Full Service” is not specific to your car, its basically Oil & Filter.
My dealer quoted £260 for a complete 27k Service for my car.
Servicing stop quoted £165 for a “Full Service”
Great deal right? oh how wrong I was.
About lunch time I received a call from them saying the Garage said for my particular car it needs a gearbox oil change and a coolant flush, at an extra cost of £100! Making my new service £265, no longer a £100 saving it’s actually going to cost me £5 more than my dealer.
I provided servicing stop them with all the details of my car when I made my booking, why could they not have told me this then?
To further frustrate me they delivered my car back to me at 18:20 and its not even properly cleaned!
Lesson for today: Don’t bother with a middle man for serving, straight to main dealer or local garage.
Servicing Stop are rubbish! The bill came to £850, as they found a number of things wrong with the car (which may have been true) but I’m not sure it was a saving on costs. But the worse thing was the service. The car was returned at 8pm not the original 4 to 6pm that we were told. They then revised the time to 6pm and then again 6.30pm with it finally arriving at 8pm and them saying there was traffic (15 minute journey!)
We tried contacting Servicing Stop to complain and b asically they don’t give a toss as they never responded back. The garage told us they had received our complaint but didn’t give a monkeys, just wanted their dosh.
Definitely wouldn’t recommend it…. cut out the middle man and go to a trusted independent local garage!
rob. your the one that rang them so its your falt
I also had a bad experience of servcing stop. There was no consistency with who I spoke to. The people on the end of the phone changed their story a few times as what was wrong with my car, trying to charge me for things that were supposed to be part of the servcie. They were also rude and laughed down the phone at me when I was unsure about something.
I chose to not get anything done by them and took my car to a recommended local dealer who said half of the things servicing stop reccommended me to have done didn’t even need doing and they were charging me double what my local garage charged for tyres and a new cam belt.
Please do not use this company, they are a sham! Support local business instead. I don’t know what Deborah Meaden was thinking backing them!
I too had bad experience with them. I sent my Lexus for an Interim Service last week. It costs £100 less than what Lexus normally charged. While my car was with them, they called me and told me my coolant needs flush & top up (£49), the same with my brake fluid (£49), my wiper needs changing, my brake pads need to change (£95) and the same with my tire.
I begin to suspect a con as I just changed my wipers a month ago. I told them to just change the brake pads, but I wanted the old brakes pad left in the boot of my car. They then told me the brake pad can still last a few months and I could change it later with the tires. (They rang me at my work where all phone calls are recorded, so I have an MP3 file of the phone conversation)
Once I get the car back, I found the engine oil was 3 cm above the maximum level. Incidentally, Lexus rang me about a safety checks on my car’s power steering and I sent it in two days ago. Lexus also includes a free check and which I ask them to check the engine oil level as well. Lexus confirmed the oil is overfilled and they drain the excess oil for me. Lexus gave me all ticks in the green box on their check report, ie. no problem with Coolant, brakes, tires, etc…
I am keen to see how Servicing Stop and Deborah Meaden are going to do to regain our confidence on their services.
as an indepenent garage i relish your comments on servicing stop (except the positive ones)I have recently read the criterea for joining them as an authorised repairer and can only say that I am amazed that any garage has been desperate enough to join up,it seems that s/s are only interested in profit gained by screwing both the garage and the customer, by my calulations they will make over 100 pounds for a full service on an average family car,for a few minutes admin,the garage accepts all the liabilities and is not supported in any other way by s/s my advice to any potential victims is to contact local garages that are part of the good garage scheme,I am a member of this as well as another large organisation, and have been very impressed with their aproach to the garage and the customers needs.I also would like to point out that some of the comments made supporting servicing stop seem somewhat suspicious, it would not be unexpected to assume that certain people have a vested interest in trying to salvage this companys reputation.I feel that these type of companies do not deserve to succeed because they are purely profit motivated,If they provided a fairer deal to the garage and customer,invested in training & support for the garages then maybe my views would be different,as it is the only way the garage can profit is to spend as little time on your car as possible.to finish on a more personal note I am not a fan of dragons den nor can assume to know much about it,but I will say that I find the dragons are are greedy egomaniacs that are not happy with amassing huge fortunes they also require fame.
dont be taken in by these charlatans
Completely agree with Ferryman. We are a small independent garage trading for 16 years and have been recently approached by SS. We pride ourselves on our standard of service and the rates we are paid by SS are frankly insulting. Unfortunately there are still some cowboys out there who practise as motor engineers they are in the minority and give the rest of us a bad name. Any reputable independent will explain any issues concerning your vehicle and a full service will be exactly that! SS approached us as we are members of “the good garage scheme” but frankly they pick any motor engineers up who advertise and will use the ones who charge the least. Cheapest is not always the best! as the saying goes ‘you get what you pay for’. My advise is word of mouth ask friends neighbours who they would recommend. The good garage scheme is also a good start. One last thing please dont assume because you have a new vehicle you have to take it to the dealer for its service because of the validity of the warranty. WRONG! any independent garage can do the service as long as your service book is stamped and any parts used are recommended by the manufacturer. Good independents will do an excellent job without the price tag of a dealer. Obviously we declined to join SS we rely on our good reputation!
I recently did a FULL service on my Range Rover V8, took me half a day, changed oils/ filters cleaned spark plugs and set gaps, wheels off checked brake wear and cleaned sensors, carried out all the items on S/S checklist pdf from their website and cross referred to RR servicing manual.
Cost me about £50, a few grazed knuckles and used my own tools. I enjoyed every moment of it.
Got the car back on the road same day!
to be 100% clear, Deborah Meaden has no involvement with this firm, the investment did NOT go thro’
@cass do you have a citation to back your comment?
Either way, this company is still a waste of time, with or without Deborah Meaden.
@Rob, I have a blog where I’ve been writing about Servicing Stop and I contacted Deborah Meaden via her website a few days ago inviting her to comment on Servicing Stop. Cass, who is Ms Meaden’s PR, replied shortly afterwards, advising me that Ms Meaden did not in fact invest in Servicing Stop following the Dragons’ Den programme.
Given that Cass’s comments appeared immediately following my enquiry via Ms Meaden’s website, I have no reason to doubt that they are genuine. I linked to this thread in my blog, which explains why Cass also commented here.
See all my blog posts about Servicing Stop:
http://incompetencetoday.blogspot.com/search/label/Servicing%20Stop%20Ltd
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