The Motor Ombudsman’s Knowledge Base records over 215,000 views during the first quarter of 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, recorded 215,563 views across the 182 available Q&A-style articles in the first quarter of this year. This is more than double the volume seen in the same three-month period in 2021 (90,911), and is nearly 10 times the number of views witnessed in 2019 (25,166), the year of launch, highlighting the tool’s ever-growing popularity.
In terms of the top 10 classification for the most viewed articles, “Can I return my car within 14 days of buying it?” from the New and Used Car Sales category retained the no.1 spot seen in Q1 2021 with around 15,300 views, with “Can I get a car deposit refund?” also holding on to second place (10,260 views). The biggest climber was “Sold a faulty car, what can I do?”, up seven places from tenth in the first quarter of 2021, to third by the end of March 2022, with 7,464 views.
Staying in fifth position (the same position as the first quarter last year) was the only service and repair-related Q&A to make it into the top 10. This was around the suggested steps to take if a garage was deemed to be taking too long when carrying out work on a customer’s vehicle (7,179 views).
The final few places in the top 10 classification for the most read articles during the first quarter of this year were dominated by three Q&As from the recently-introduced mediation category. These namely provide information on the cost of the mediation process (4,587 views), how long mediation takes once both parties have agreed to engage in this form of dispute resolution (3,591 views), and the mediums of communication used by the mediator (3,366 views).
Furthermore, during the opening quarter of 2022, the volume of user searches reported a small increase when compared to Q1 2021 at just over 25,300. Amongst the most popular generic terms entered into the search bar were “warranty”, “faulty” and “refund”. Other topics being enquired about by consumers included, making a warranty claim for a vehicle without a full service history, a new car breaking down, and a vehicle developing a knocking noise.
