AutoMD Survey of Car Repair Costs

[MTI]

Ranking of 50 Major Cities

For the report, AutoMD.com mystery shoppers conducted a fairness check of over 600 shops in the top-50 DMAs* (including a range of dealers, independent shops, and franchises like Pep Boys) by requesting quotes on a typical auto repair job: a front brake replacement job for a Ford Focus. To measure pricing integrity, the mystery shoppers called back two weeks later with an industry standard price estimate. The best and worst list was then calculated based on each city‘s rankings for three critical factors, weighted equally:

Repair Affordability: The average cost-per-job for that city based on prices quoted by repair shops

Price Disparity Range: The percentage variance between the lowest price quoted and the highest price quoted in each market

Shop Integrity Factor: The percentage of shops that shifted their original quoted price by more than 5% when presented with an industry standard price estimate