Motoring Discussion > paying for advice Legal Questions
Thread Author: Bellboy Replies: 15

 paying for advice - Bellboy
I remember on another forum that is currently closed there was an advertisement for members of the public to ask car related problems online to 4 mechanics,i believe you paid £5 for a response and the owner of the site probably got 25% of this.
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Question to the panel
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Have any of the panelists ie you reading this now used a service like this? were they happy with the service?,would they use one again? and the reasons why?
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I see a nice little online earner you see if you have an up and running website with a steady footfall from a well known newspaper advertising your site and instead of having a free forum where learned members openly give free advice you could tap into the resources of mechanics/techs who can be online at work and get paid say £1 a question to answer.
 paying for advice - -
Don't really see the point in this service apart from it being a nice little earner, asking a general question then a forum like this or another not dissimilar would elicit replies from a cross section of people of all experiences.

I'm a member of an MB and BMW forum both independent and both excellent for good advice for free, which as anywhere needs to be carefully weighed as opinions vary...BMWland in particular is a mine of very good info, their ongoing threads of thousands of posts about potentially disastrous swirl flap issues on BM Diesels has been very useful to us, would a general mechanic in such a service referred to in the OP have that specialist knowledge.
 paying for advice - car4play
This will be an interesting one to watch.

Some of you guys - along with the many thousands (that's hopeful .. !) of others that will join you - are pretty smart anyway. So some of the advice you are giving is pretty good. For example, if you have had a particular car for a while, aren't you the best person to know what you do and don't like about it and the kind of issues it has? The same is true if you have used a particular service (garage, insurance, legal etc). Nothing really beats personal experience.
Maybe you should be the ones being rewarded?
 paying for advice - Bellboy
My opinion of the internet is in the beauty that if you can use your brain and a keyboard all the information is out there you just need to know how to find it
(used the internet this week to buy various sundries for work available from my factors but in total ive saved nearly £50 and my nice friendly postman always looks after me)
To GB if the question was headed mercedes on the paid heading then the tech would see this as a heads up to pick the question up on say an rss feed? type thingy?
 paying for advice - -

>> To GB if the question was headed mercedes on the paid heading then the tech
>> would see this as a heads up to pick the question up on say an
>> rss feed? type thingy?

A quick search then reword your findings pass it on and pocket the lolly, makes sense, if the person making the original query can't think of that for themselves someone may as well make a few quid on the side by doing it for them i suppose.

I doubt any of our regular posters would use this service they've got more sense, not many of us regard our cars as white goods and most likely do our research before buying and not making snap decisions on what looks pretty in the showroom.
 paying for advice - Zero
>> research before buying and not making snap decisions on what looks pretty in the showroom.

tho your not going to buy one that is as ugly as a witches wart from every angle, are you.

The thing about getting tech advice form the internet, is not finding it - thats easy enough - but filtering and verifying your information.
 paying for advice - bathtub tom
If bb is to start selling his wealth of knowledge, I think he may have to change his inimatable style. ;>)

I personally wouldn't like to see him change.
 paying for advice - Hugo
I am also a member of a handful of Land Rover forums, MSE and a few others to boot some that I use for my work. I am also on a couple of Nissan forums that were very useful when we had the recent problems with the Almera.

I find that, as in real life, you get to know the posters who give sound advice. These pay per question sites are staffed by people who may be very good, but you don't know. My guess is that you can ask one guy a question, pay for that answer then you may get a completely different person the next time.

Forum members generally give much better advice as they usually have nothing to gain from such advice. A quick read through established forums identifies the experienced posters and those who have actually been involved in doing the very same sorts of things that you are looking for help over.

Also, forums win over these pay per question sites because very often your particular problem has already been posted by another member, and answers are out there.

I do 'pay' for advice, not with money but with trying to put back in what I get out. I hope I do OK.
Last edited by: Hugo on Sat 6 Mar 10 at 23:20
 paying for advice - Mapmaker
>>Maybe you should be the ones being rewarded?

Ouch!

Well, up pops the question.

Q: "My 1999 Vectra 1.8, how often does the cambelt require changing. Here's my £5."

A: "Thank you for my £1, car4play. The answer is 80k miles, it says so in my handbook, and here's a link to a pdf of the handbook."

Q: "Thanks, no need to do mine for 30k yet."

Some weeks later...

Q: "My cambelt has gone."

A: "Oh ^&*(%. Vauxhall changed it to 40k miles."

Q: "I paid for advice, the advice was wrong. I'm going to sue. Both C4P and A."

Oh dear...... That was an expensive way of earning a £1.
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Tue 9 Mar 10 at 11:07
 paying for advice - car4play
Ah but for you to be rewarded doesn't meant that others have to pay for advice. As you say that could be sticky ground.
 paying for advice - Screwloose
I was approached to contribute to the site in question with promises of riches beyond my wildest dreams. I'm very glad that I asked for time to consider.

The lack of details in the questions is laughable: "My car won't start - how do I fix it without spending any money?"

Speedily followed by: "I've paid my £18 and it's been 46 minutes without anyone telling me what's wrong - I want my money back!!"

When you look at how the technical responders get paid; that settled it for me. One poor chap had given 247 very full and excruciatingly polite answers - mostly to questions that would have got very short shrift from me - and he had garnered a mere 6 tiny payments for his trouble.
Last edited by: Screwloose on Sun 14 Mar 10 at 02:16
 paying for advice - -
Screwloose, it's very good to see you here...let me say welcome as all will soon.

Interesting to see the view from the other side of the thread.
 paying for advice - BobbyG
Screwloose, you have made me think.... and I may have picked you up wrong on this.
But was it the "ask the mechanic" site that contacted you or HJ himself?

You used to provide so many good answers in Technical, including when I was asking re my dad's 806 diesel, that maybe HJ could see a little money making scheme from your knowledge?

Or maybe I am totally wrong in my conclusions?
 paying for advice - kensitas
The problem I'd foresee with a paid for service as described, is that would in some way be affected by & fall under the terms of the various Sale of Goods & Services acts.

That being so, and with the 'duty' to provide a good or service fit for purpose etc., it would be a very brave 3rd party mechanic/whatever who would stick their metaphorical neck out giving a diagnostic for a vehicle they hadn't seen or had their paws over - especially for a couple of quid or so.

If the mooted service had a disclaimer to the effect 'caveat emptor' (which, I think, in itself would contravene the various selling acts) - who would then want to pay money for 'pot-luck' advice?
 paying for advice - Screwloose
BobbyG

Any matters that may have been discussed between myself and the HJ organization - now well in the past - will always remain confidential.

I can, however, reveal that the unsolicited approach came from an unknown person appearing to be connected only with the scam-site and having no connexion to HJ.


As to liability; it cannot be long before advice freely given on an open forum will be tested in a court case. I'd think that anyone known to be, even tenuously, connected to the trade could already be subject to "Duty of Care" legislation when giving advice.

This matter has been discussed at length on trade-only sites and there are now very strong - and growing - opinions that all shared inter-trade information should be considered "privileged" and never given out on public sites; regardless of time elapsed.

With 7,000+ "indiscreet" posts on HJ; if certain people ever find out who I am - I'm a dead man....
 paying for advice - BobbyG
Screwloose, thanks for clarifying.
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