RepairPal brings transparency to $150 billion industry

RepairPal (www.repairpal.com), a consumers’ source of auto care and repair information, launched today. RepairPal’s free service delivers objective, fair service price estimates, an extensive auto shop directory, and expert insights from certified mechanics. For the first time, consumers will benefit from proprietary industry data previously available only to professional automobile technicians. This new service gives consumers critical, unbiased information about specific repairs so they can make informed, timely, and cost-effective repair and maintenance decisions throughout the entire ownership cycle of their vehicle.

While Americans make roughly two million visits to an automotive service facility every day, they are no better informed about these major expenses than they were 20, 30 or even 40 years ago. “We’re bringing transparency to a huge industry, an industry that affects nearly every adult consumer,” said David Sturtz, CEO and Co-Founder of RepairPal. “Auto repair is fairly unique in that it remains completely non-transparent for consumers, even in the Internet age. The result of this information asymmetry is that pricing for almost all repair jobs varies widely, even for the same brand within the same city. Our goal is to minimize the anxiety and uncertainty consumers typically confront when they service their cars.”

RepairPal leverages a unique, patent-pending system which relies on multiple sources of difficult-to-acquire proprietary data to provide accurate repair price estimates for more than 20 billion unique estimates on 94% of passenger vehicles. “What Zillow did for home valuations and Kelley Blue Book did for used auto prices, RepairPal will do for auto repair. Auto repair is an industry where consumers lack basic information and pricing transparency,” said Matt Booth, Senior Vice President for Interactive Local Media at The Kelsey Group. “RepairPal breaks this paradigm by providing relevant information when consumers need it most.”

RepairPal’s key features include:

    * RepairPrice Estimator delivers unbiased, market-based price estimates specific to a consumer’s car brand, model, service type and location. To ensure accuracy, RepairPrice Estimates are constantly tested against user feedback data and with ongoing market surveys.
    * Smart Shop Directory is a comprehensive resource for finding a local auto shop by car brand and service specialty. The directory includes more than 286,000 independent shops and dealerships, tire, muffler and glass specialists, as well as collision repair facilities. RepairPal’s directory includes user ratings, reviews, and a unique feedback mechanism designed to assess each shop’s pricing practices and estimating accuracy.
    * Expert Advice section offers expert insights from our team of ASE certified and highly experienced mechanics. This arms consumers with the specific information they need to understand the services being recommended by their mechanic, and to avoid possible scams. It also tells them which parts and procedures are included before they bring their car in for a specific service, and if a particular problem is common for their make and model.
    * MyCar is a convenient maintenance and repair management tool for keeping all the records for each vehicle in one place. It also sends detailed email reminders for periodic services, like oil changes and scheduled tune-ups. Eventually it will allow users to schedule their repair visits online.

RepairPrice Estimate Methodology

RepairPal’s patent-pending RepairPrice Estimates are driven by multiple sources of expert and proprietary data on cars, parts, procedures and problems. The goal is to eliminate the two major risks consumers confront when they repair their cars: pricing risk and diagnostic risk. “We’ve conducted extensive real-world repair pricing surveys, including intensive studies of actual repair invoices, and have run statistical analyses to determine pricing patterns across geographies, brands and service channels,” adds Sturtz. “Our model forecasts labor rates for every brand, geography and service channel in the US, and generates a labor charge for each procedure using our proprietary database of the actual labor repair times used by the professionals.”

“Automobiles are incredibly complex and in these hard economic times, the incentives to take advantage of drivers through repair charges have never been higher,” said Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst for the Enderle Group. “RepairPal gives automobile owners the ammunition they need to protect themselves and better insure they aren't being taken advantage of when they have their vehicle repaired because, especially now, every dollar is important.”

RepairPal was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Emeryville, CA. For more information, visit: www.repairpal.com.