An auto repair shop that does the right thing

July 31, 2014
The real legacy isn’t in this shop's name or its owners, but in the family’s principled approach to doing business.

The Guidos are a legacy in the Arcadia neighborhood of Phoenix. Tony Guido Sr. opened his first full service station there in 1958. Following his father into the business, Tony Jr. eventually started his own company in 1988, naming it Tony’s Auto Service Center, partly in honor of his dad, all of which was mentioned when Motor Age first profiled the shop back in 2011.

But the real legacy isn’t in their name, but in the family’s principled approach to doing business. Tony Sr. lived and worked by a strict ethical code, which he passed on to his son and daughter Catherine, the company’s general manager. “At home, that was just the way it was,” she recalls. “Our parents taught us about money, but also about treating people fairly. We feel that if we do the right thing, customers are going to come back to us. We still have customers from my dad’s station. We don’t know how to do it any other way.”

Their integrity is so renowned they’ve actually won awards for it: in 2013 the Better Business Bureau (BBB) Business Ethics Award, and the 2014 BBB International Torch Award for Ethics. And this isn’t just automotive, this is for any business in their size category in the world. The BBB describes the purpose of these awards “to promote and foster the highest ethical relationship between businesses and the public through voluntary self-regulation, consumer and business education, and service excellence.”

Tony Jr. has stated that the company will take no shortcuts, sell no inferior parts, employ no untrained or unscrupulous technicians and offer no “shady deals” or “bait and switch.”

“Ethics is communication at a heart to heart level,” he writes. “It goes beyond logic and beyond dollars and cents.  It runs far deeper than common sense because ethical practices affect the well-being of people.  There is no double talk and no pretending. Ethics is a bond of trust, person to person, that can be depended upon.”

And the staff doesn’t rest on their laurels; they have ethics classes and reviews throughout the year. “We chose to do it the ethical way instead of trying to make the most money,” Catherine Guido states. “Obviously we’re a business, we want to make money, but we want to make sure no one goes away from here saying they were ripped off or pressured. That’s a big thing — we do not pressure our customers to buy; that’s where our ABCs come in.”

This triage technique has the staff prioritizing repairs for customers so they don’t have to buy everything all at once. “You can have a leaking rack and pinion for a year before you have to actually go and replace it,” Catherine points out. “So we have them come in every few months, check their fluids, make sure that they’re full. They’ll fix it when they can, and they always come back and do it.

“If we make a mistake, we fix it,” she continues. “We go above and beyond to fix something that wasn’t even our fault; oftentimes we’ll give the customer a break and fix it for them anyway. If they have a problem and they can’t afford it, we find a way to make it affordable for them, either by helping them ourselves or putting them in touch with someone else who can. We could sell like some shops, but our customers come back to us over and over again, so we’re not afraid of not getting the sale.”

Then there’s the company’s community service, where they aggressively pay it forward. “We do a neighborhood program where we have a few elderly customers who live alone,” she explains. “We have extra house keys here, and a deal with the mailmen to check up on them if their mail’s not picked up. We have another customer who has to have a certain amount of (health) tests done; we drop him off and pick him up a couple times a year.”

Other community projects include helping the Detour Company Theater, a non-profit organization offering performing arts opportunities for people with physical and mental handicaps. “We bought them a 19-passenger van to help them get to their shows, which are sometimes out of state,” Catherine explains. “Besides maintaining that for them, we also help move their sets.” Likewise employees and their families pitch in for celebrations like the Detour’s annual Christmas party.

And with 10,000 neighbors in their zip code alone, Tony’s Auto Service Center helps a lot of schools in the area. For fundraising auctions they donate $50 to $100 gift certificates to be used at the shop, as well as conduct car care clinics for high school and college students.

“We have kids come in here and we teach them the basics,” Catherine outlines. “How to change a tire, check oil, know what the warning lights mean, when to pull the car off the road so they don’t ruin it before they know it. We also have car care clinics for adults — mostly women, not too many men come in. They may not want to learn how to change oil, but they want to know if they’re being ripped off.”

And finally there is their matching funds program. “Even though there are only 10 employees here, Tony matches every employee who gives to charity,” she states. Once an employee opts for a certain amount of money to be taken out of their weekly paycheck, at the end of the year Tony Jr. matches that fund.

“We live and work in the community, and we want to make sure it survives,” Catherine explains. Of course Tony’s does the average amount of the usual marketing: coupons, mailers, fliers, newspaper ads. But what really seals the deal is the reputation they’ve earned; the only place their altruism is publicizing is on the company’s website, but word gets out probably just through sheer volume. Now that’s a legacy.

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