Our Standards

How we find garages, what we verify before publishing, where reviews come from, and how we earn money. No marketing jargon — the actual mechanics.

Last updated: 20 May 2026

In one paragraph

We source UK garages from public business records, cross-check the data with AI enrichment, and only publish a profile when there's enough real signal to make it useful. Reviews are either pulled from public sources (with the source named) or written by drivers who booked through us. Garages set their own prices — Fixaroo doesn't mark anything up. We make money on booking commission, not subscriptions or pay-to-rank.

1. How garages get on Fixaroo

The directory starts with the Google Places API — the same public business-listings dataset that powers Google Maps. We pull garages, MOT centres, body shops, tyre fitters, detailers, and car washes across every UK postcode area, then store the basics: name, address, phone number, opening times, geolocation, and the business categories Google has on file.

Every garage we publish is in the UK. We filter by ISO country code at the database level — if a record's not tagged GB, it doesn't get a public profile. (We had US records leak in early on; we explicitly noindex'd them so Google drops them from results.)

From there, an AI enrichment pipeline (built on ScrapingBee + Claude) reads the garage's own website if they have one, and tries to fill in: services offered, opening hours by day, business about-text, and a representative image. Every enrichment write is logged in an audit table so we can trace where a given fact came from.

2. What 'listed' means — and what it doesn't

Plenty of garage directories say "verified" without saying what they verified. Here's what we mean:

✓ Real address, real postcode. Every listing has a UK postcode that resolves to a known location. No PO boxes, no residential addresses tagged as workshops.
✓ Categorised by what they actually do. "MOT centre" isn't applied because the business wrote "MOT" on their homepage — it's flagged when their service data lists an MOT product. Same logic for body shops, detailers, tyre fitters.
✓ Quality threshold before indexing. Garages without substantive content (no about text, no photos, no reviews, no claimed owner) are marked noindex — they exist in the database but search engines won't surface them. We don't want to be the kind of directory Google has to wade through.
! What we don't claim: we haven't physically inspected your local garage, and we don't pretend to. We're not the DVSA, and we don't issue MOT-tester certifications. If a garage is listed as an MOT centre on Fixaroo, that means they market MOTs — confirm with them directly that they're still DVSA-approved before you book a slot (MOT approvals can lapse).

3. Where reviews come from

Fixaroo shows two kinds of reviews and labels each one clearly:

Trustpilot reviews

When a garage has a public Trustpilot profile, we surface a sample of their reviews with attribution back to Trustpilot. We don't author or edit Trustpilot content — what you see is what Trustpilot publishes. We don't selectively show only positive reviews, and we keep the source link visible so you can read the full picture there.

Fixaroo native reviews

Reviews left by drivers who booked through Fixaroo. Each goes through a lightweight moderation step (it must clear basic abuse and spam filters before it's published) and is tied to a real booking — you can't review a garage you never visited.

We don't pay for reviews, we don't accept review-tier upgrades in exchange for placement, and we don't remove negative reviews on a garage's request. If a garage disputes a review, the disclosure process is public — we record the dispute and our decision on the listing.

4. How prices work

Garages publish their own prices. Fixaroo doesn't mark anything up, doesn't bid prices against each other, and doesn't insert a service fee at checkout. The price you see is the price the garage charges.

For services like MOTs where the UK government sets a maximum fee (currently £54.85 for class 4 vehicles), garages can choose to charge less but never legally more. Some Fixaroo listings offer MOTs well below the cap — that's their own decision, not a Fixaroo discount.

When a service is genuinely vehicle-dependent (e.g. clutch replacement on a 2018 Audi vs. a 2008 Ford), garages can mark a service as price on request rather than publish a misleading flat rate.

5. How Fixaroo earns money

Listings are free. Every UK garage in our directory can be listed without paying us a penny. There's no subscription tier required to appear in search results, no "premium" placement that bumps a garage above its rivals.

We earn money on commission — a percentage of the booking value, only when a real customer books and the garage delivers the work. If no work happens, nobody pays Fixaroo anything.

This matters because incentives shape behaviour. A subscription marketplace earns more by hosting more garages regardless of quality. A commission marketplace only earns when drivers actually book — which means we're directly punished if we surface garages that are hard to reach, slow to respond, or overcharge. We make money by making the experience good.

6. Articles, guides, and tools

Our articles and tools exist to help drivers make better decisions — when MOT is due, what tax you owe, whether a recall applies to your reg, what a fair price for a service looks like.

Editorial content is generated with AI assistance and reviewed against UK source authorities (DVSA, gov.uk, manufacturer service schedules) before publication. We attribute every fact to a primary source where possible. If you spot something wrong, tell us — corrections get logged and the article carries a clear "last updated" date.

The vehicle-lookup tools call official UK data feeds: MOT history from the DVSA's open MOT API, vehicle tax + recall status from the DVLA's published endpoints. We don't store the personal data behind a registration — only the public vehicle attributes.

7. What we don't promise

Being clear about limits matters more than puffed-up claims:

·We don't guarantee a garage's pricing for parts — only the labour price they've published. Quality OEM parts cost more than aftermarket; ask before you book.
·We can't vouch for work after it's done. If a fault recurs, that's between you and the garage in the first instance.
·Opening times come from the garage — if a listing shows them as open Monday and they're actually closed, that's drift in the source data. Tell us and we'll re-sync.
·We don't replace official channels for serious complaints. The DVSA handles MOT disputes, Trading Standards handles consumer disputes; we'll point you the right way and remove a listing if there's a pattern of issues.

Tell us if something's wrong

A listing wrong? Pricing out of date? Review that shouldn't be there? We'd rather know than not. Visit our help centre or email [email protected]. We try to acknowledge within one working day.

For garages, see our partner page. For legal and data terms, see our privacy and terms.