The Motor Ombudsman’s Knowledge Base registers 33% increase in views in Q4 2023 versus the same period in 2022
The Motor Ombudsman’s online Knowledge Base, the reference tool designed to provide consumers with responses to some of the most common queries on car ownership, vehicle maintenance and dispute resolution, saw a 33% jump in article views during the final quarter of 2023, compared to the same three months the previous year.
For the period 01 October to 31 December 2023, content from across the 212 Q&A-style articles hosted on the resource, was consulted 148,108 times, rising a third from the 111,065 views registered in the fourth quarter of 2022.
The Q&A explaining the Consumer Rights Act and how it affects vehicle purchases (found in the New and Used Car Sales section), rose two places to top the table of the ten most popular reads during the last quarter of 2023, with nearly 11,000 views. After spearheading the leaderboard in the second and third quarters of last year, the article about whether a car can be returned within 14 days of buying it from the New and Used Car Sales category dropped a couple of places to third. However this topic continues to remain popular with readers, shown by the fact that there were nearly 10,500 views during the last three months of 2023.
After climbing one place between Q2 and Q3, the Q&A about a consumer’s legal rights when buying a car, continued to gain popularity, rising a further two places to emerge as the third most popular article between October and December 2023, with around 9,500 views. In contrast, the topic of what action can be taken if a consumer has been sold a faulty car, dropped a place despite gaining close to 7,100 visits during the last quarter, whilst the Q&A about how to complain about a car rounded off the top five for Q4 2023.
Mirroring the trend seen between July and September, the most visited Service and Repair Q&As were once again about what a vehicle owner is able to do if a garage was deemed to be taking too long to fix a car (circa 5,400 views), and when a consumer has grounds for a complaint if they are unhappy with the quality of the work undertaken by a repairer (more than 3,500 reads).
Furthermore, there was one new entry at the base of the table regarding what a vehicle owner is able to do if recurring warranty repairs do not solve the issues with their car, attracting close to 2,500 views during the past three months. This Q&A highlights the need to give a business their ‘one-shot’ chance to repair a car, and the remedies that may be sought if a problem goes unfixed.
Overall for 2023, there were 578,150 views across the Knowledge Base throughout the year, which was a slight decrease (10%) versus the total seen in 2022 (641,127). Nevertheless, this level of traffic was still 57% higher than the figure recorded for the full year in 2021 (367,444).
