Exercising your Right to Repair: Do indie shops have equal repair rights?

In Part 1 of our series on Right to Repair, we provided an update on federal legislation being considered in Congress. The gist is that R2R provisions that would codify existing agreements between the aftermarket and OEMs and set enforcement have made it past the subcommittee and will likely be part of the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act, or perhaps the next surface transportation reauthorization bill (Building Unrivaled Infrastructure and Long-term Development for America's 250th Act).

The lead sponsor of the REPAIR Act, Rep. Neal Dunn (R-Fla.) argued in the markup session that the main reasons his legislation was introduced—consumer choice and data protection—remain unaddressed. The political football here is telematics. Dr. Dunn is determined to power the issue into the endzone, while his colleagues want to punt.

Emily Poladian, President of MEMA Aftermarket Suppliers, warned this could end up increasing maintenance and repair costs for taxpayers and businesses:

"If Congress does not act, 155 million Americans will have significantly fewer choices to repair and maintain their vehicles. This will lead to increased costs of over $200 a year per vehicle and result in delayed repairs and diminished consumer power over their vehicle and its data."

Fellow REPAIR Act backer Justin Rzepka, CAR Coalition Executive Director, noted that American vehicle owners "are paying 48% more for repairs since 2020."

Take anything a lobbyist or politician tells you with not a grain, but a boulder, of salt. Since 2020, everything is more expensive, though. About half that 48% can be attributed to overall inflation, and tariffs on imported parts and supply chain issues may account for a good chunk of the rest. Then there's the steady increase in techncian pay based on low supply and high demand.

It's a complex issue dealign with complex vehicles, but they beg a simple question: do independent shops truly have equal access to make safe and effective repairs, thus providing U.S. vehicle owners with appropriate choice and fair pricing?

Many say "No."

Anecdotally, we’ve heard from some shop owners, such as Shari Pheasant of A Master Mechanic in Sparks, Nevada, say technicians can complete “75 to 80%” of certain jobs, but then must send the vehicle to a dealer to clear certain codes. When we spoke to her in November, she said the dealers in her area were backed up six weeks. That lack of access prevents her shop from helping the customer immediately, “because I have to take it to the dealer and wait for them.”

A survey by ACA of independent repair shops found they forward up to five vehicles to dealers per month.

Those costs at dealers are “on average, 36% higher, and repair wait times are significantly longer,” testified Bill Hanvey, the ACA’s CEO and president, earlier this year.

On the other side, though, shop owner Gerald McNee, a member of the Society of Collision Repair Specialists, submitted written testimony that his shop invests in all the tools specified to repair vehicles to OEM standards and that the lock-out narrative is a “myth.”

Bridging the data divide

According to Peter Yorke, co-founder and CEO of VoyoMotive, work is outsourced to indie shops “for things that they cannot handle—particularly if you have a lot of sensors on a window or there’s a broken mirror or something like that.”

VoyoMotive was built on giving fleets more access to vehicle data, specifically via its VOYOLink solution. Using a small module that plugs into the OBD-II port, VOYOLink retrieves and sends OEM data to platforms such as Mitchell 1, Fleetio, Getoab, and Shop-Ware, enabling older vehicles to gain telematics insights and remote diagnostics.

But it’s one thing to get basic telematics access; it’s another to get universal access through any aftermarket diagnostic tool. The root cause is that many all-makes tools providers lack the bandwidth to program protocols to get through every OEM’s security-enabled modules, explained Ben Johnson, vice president of the general automotive repair segment at Repairify. These modules serve as firewalls between the OBD-II port and vehicle computer systems to prevent theft and tampering.

“Generic tools often cannot replicate OEM‑level capabilities, particularly when dealing with security-enabled modules,” he said.

It’s not for lack of effort, but more for lack of standardization.

“A variety of OEs have enacted their own ways of doing security,” he said, “and the reason I bring that up is it just eats into that innovation budget of any aftermarket developer. They budget every year for how much time they have, how many developers they have, and how much budget they have for licensing, etc.”

He posited that some scan tool vendors have to triage which makes and models they can cover, which will be the more popular vehicles that come in.

“While many original equipment suppliers comply more effectively on the automotive side,” Johnson said, “it’s been very difficult to get an aftermarket non-dealer shop access to OEM diagnostic tools for commercial vehicles.”

Repairify has tried to make this easier with its asTech software for the collision sector. It provides access to dozens of OEMs’ info, and its rules engine can tell a shop if an aftermarket tool can replace the standard OEM one for various jobs, with hundreds of certified technicians available to provide remote support.

Pay as you go

The industry has an established intermediary solution through the National Automotive Service Task Force, which comprises nearly 60,000 members, including 8,000 vehicle security professionals. The non-profit exists as a mediator and watchdog to guarantee the right to repair and serves to identify and correct “gaps in the availability and accessibility of automotive service information, service training, diagnostic tools and equipment, and communications,” the organization states.

One way they do this is by resolving technician complaints around diagnostic access by getting direct assistance from the automakers.

According to a letter to the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade written by NASTF Executive Officer Donny Seyfer, the organization receives around 140 requests annually and has a 90% success rate in resolving these issues.

Yorke noted this solution will get vehicles back on the road far faster, at the cost of $100-150 per scan.

Seyfer said when techs add their experience with diagnostic access problems, it helps the OEMs better understand how big an issue it is. Also, NASTF has specialists to identify issues “so that we can take them to the appropriate brand before they cause significant downtime for the impacted technicians,” Seyfer stated.

Because accessing the IT/cybersecurity portions of a vehicle require techs to have a “unique skillset,” he argued to Maine’s legislature—now in the midst of creating a R2R working group to navigate the freedom vs. security paradox that R2R creates—that these questions may be better answered by a certified technician.

He wrote: “The vehicle security professional registry has nearly 11,000 participants who perform over 300,000 security transactions per year in a secure and monitored environment with permission and transparency to the vehicle owner. We also have over 30,000 members who participate in our Diagnostic Professional Role which is a lightly vetted role that automakers are currently using to provide validated access to secure vehicle gateways to ensure that the vehicle connection is a live human and not a cyber attack.”

Seyfer also noted in that Congressional testimony that NASTF offered to help techs and shops who have told the ACA they have had trouble accessing info, but the ACA declined.

We asked the ACA about this directly. Lisa Foshee, the ACA’s SVP of government affairs and general counsel responded: “With respect to NASTF, based on NASTF’s testimony in Maine on the right to repair bill, it appears that NASTF is trying to monetize the issue for its own benefit rather than help independent shop owners fix vehicles.”

In part 3 of this story, we will dive deeper into how fleets currently overcome diagnostic obstacles to make effective repairs.