Choice of Repairer progresses in NZ

View from NZ with VASA New Zealand Director Catherine Tocker

As the cost of living crisis puts pressure on household budgets in New Zealand, independent automotive repair shops are pushing for changes that could save customers money on vehicle maintenance and repairs. However, gaining fair access to vital technical information from manufacturers faces challenges due to the country’s complex market dynamics.

During the Australian Auto Aftermarket Expo in Melbourne, I spoke with Lesley Yates of the Australian Automotive Aftermarket Association (AAAA) who in her capacity as director of government relations and advocacy spearheaded the Choice of Repairer campaign in Australia for many years, culminating in mandatory repair information sharing between car-makers and independent repairers in 2022.

She is now a campaign adviser to NZ Choice of Repairer (NZCoR), formed by a coalition of New Zealand automotive industry leaders in partnership with the AAAA, that is lobbying for a similar outcome as Australia, but there are difficulties presented by NZ’s high percentage of imported used vehicles not originally intended for sale locally.

Around 50 per cent of vehicles on New Zealand’s roads were imported as second-hand, with many coming from Japan, so NZCoR is going for what Ms Yates described as “low hanging fruit” and that is vehicles which were sold new in New Zealand.

“Generally speaking, the legislation says what the dealers get, we get. If you, Ford [for example] are sharing this with your authorised Ford dealers then you need to share it with us on behalf of the Ford owner,” she said.

“It gets difficult if the vehicle was not sold through the dealership. The dealer is not getting that [information] because it’s not their car. That’s the hard bit.”

To understand workshops’ experiences, NZCoR began surveying larger aftermarket chains to establish a benchmark that can be shared with smaller independent workshops to find out if they have a similar experience.

She said that once politicians that are interested in NZCoR come forward, independent workshops in their electorate will be asked to help form a case study that will help prove there is a problem to parliamentarians.

With my own experience of operating busy independent repair shops in New Zealand I know that dealerships have long wait times, sometimes six weeks just to get a service appointment, which forces customers to seek help from aftermarket repairers. Even though we want to provide better customer service than those dealerships we can’t without the right access to wiring diagrams and other technical information.

Another issue is the time wasted trying to decipher vague fault codes without schematics showing which specific component needs replacement or, even worse, being unable to access Technical Support Bulletins (TSB) that can turn a diagnostic nightmare into an easy fix.

Ms Yates agreed. “It’s probably the best example I have of just sheer bloody mindedness that hurts our productivity,” she said, adding that some of the simpler TSBs – such as incorrect torque settings for wheel nuts – are a great example for explaining the issue to politicians who are not necessarily familiar with automotive technical terms.

She also said a good outcome in Australia has been manufacturers making TSBs available to independent repairers without having to pay for access to the full service and repair information portal. However, it is a different story across the Tasman. 

“Now that it’s unlawful in Australia to withhold data, why is that not happening in New Zealand? You’ve got identical models in both countries, you can get it in Australia, you can’t get it in New Zealand,” said Ms Yates.

Of course it is nothing new. She said during discussions with Australian legislators it was clear that manufacturers were sharing data in the United States for vehicles that were also sold on the Australian market.

“I was delighted when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said the car brands are never going to share data unless they’re forced to because it’s not in their commercial interest,” said Ms Yates. “There isn’t any mechanism in the market that would encourage them to share, so the government needs to create it.”

Moving forward, NZCoR plans to gather more workshop experiences, quantify costs to consumers, and pursue a government inquiry.

If and when a government inquiry takes place, the next challenge will be maintaining momentum and stoking political will through to legislation, then making sure any legislation that enters parliament is watertight.

As living expenses rise, fair competition that saves families money on essential transport costs has never been more important. Ms Yates said this will be a key pillar of the NZCoR campaign.

“We’re going to run a pretty solid cost of living argument in New Zealand and we know from the data that we’ve collected that we [independent repairers] are about 35-36 per cent cheaper than the dealership just for your average logbook service. It’s also about sustainability, it’s about waste, it’s about repairing and reusing and not discarding. It’s about refrigerants. There’s a whole lot of issues that we could run on, but we’ll start on that cost of living and consumer choice position.”