Editorial Standards: The Questions You Should Be Asking Us

Motoring advice is cheap, and that is precisely the problem. When a garage hands you a four-figure estimate for something invisible on a part you cannot pronounce, advice that costs nothing still has to be worth something. So you are entitled to interrogate our Motoring Guides & Advice before you lean on them. Here are the questions we would ask in your position, answered the way we would want them answered.

Where do your prices come from?

From sources we opened ourselves, gathered into ranges, in pounds, with the year attached. Labour rates vary from postcode to postcode and a clutch is not a pair of tyres, so we do not print single magic numbers, and every figure says whether VAT is included, because a consumer price without VAT is only most of a price. When the best available figure comes from an industry estimator rather than something we verified independently, the sentence names that source. You should always know whose number you are reading.

Says who?

For rules, the official source: MOT requirements from gov.uk and the DVSA, consumer protections from the law as currently amended, not from a forum thread that was right in 2019. An official-looking leaflet can lag behind the legislation it summarises; when the two disagree, the current text of the law wins, and that is what we cite. Then, before you read a word of it, every guide is fact-checked by someone who did not write it: sources re-opened, every number, name and date tested against them. Errors caught there die there.

Does this apply where I live?

Mostly, and we say when it does not. A car's first MOT is due at three years in Great Britain and four in Northern Ireland; city clean-air rules differ from one city to the next. Where a rule diverges across the UK, the guide names which version it verified. Where we have not checked your corner of the map, it says so and points to the official source that covers it, instead of rounding Britain off to wherever we looked first.

What about the dodgy ones?

Guides on overcharging, ghost repairs and bad garages are written to protect you, not to convince you that every workshop is out to get you; most are not. Each warning sign comes with its countermove: the itemised written quote to insist on, the old part to ask to see, the second opinion that costs less than the repair, and the trail to Trading Standards when it has gone properly wrong. We do not accuse named businesses, and we do not print what we cannot verify.

Are you just going to tell me to see a mechanic?

When the honest answer depends on what is physically on the ramp, yes, and we will say so plainly rather than guess about your brakes from here. What a guide can do is prepare you for that conversation: what must be inspected, what the paperwork should say, and what the Consumer Rights Act 2015 entitles you to when a repair is not carried out with reasonable care and skill or a fitted part turns out not to be of satisfactory quality. A guide is the rehearsal, not the diagnosis.

What happens when you get one wrong?

We correct it where it happened, in the guide itself, with a dated note, so the next reader gets the right number rather than an apology filed somewhere else. Every guide carries a dated "last verified" line, and the visible updated date moves only when the facts moved. We do not massage dates for freshness; an honest old date beats a dishonest new one.

Who pays for all this?

Not the garages. No workshop, chain, breakdown firm or parts brand pays for coverage, buys a kind word, or reads a guide before you do. There are no invented drivers or phantom mechanics either: if a guide relays an experience, it came from a source we cite. Guides are researched, written and checked by our editorial team and signed Preferred Mechanic Editorial, claiming no qualifications we do not hold. If your invoice disagrees with our number, or your council has changed a rule, tell us through the contact page: the guide, the line, the difference. If you are right, the fix ships with a dated note.