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The company i work for just launched or is going to launch a GSM enabled OBDII dongle that people can install in their cars. If/when the car tosses up a fault code or report an error a message will be to sent to my employers. They in turn contact the customer and notify them of the issue or a potential issue arising as well as potentially send out a technician if its an issue severe enough. In a sense the idea is good, but then again a lot of the fault codes are too generic to really be of much use to the average person. Well other than to serve to suggest whether its a problem you can probably keep driving with, or one serious enough to warrant pulling over and waiting.
But returning to the subject at hand. We actually have a company here in Denmark, which does something similar or at least close to what OpenBay are offering. They don’t give you a dongle to install in your car or anything like that. What they do however is at least in some part pretty clever.
Say a car owner is aware of a preexisting condition with his vehicle that he wants to get rectified, or has experienced a weird noise or feeling when driving. That will at least be our baseline. What he would do is logging on to their website or use their mobile app and fill out a detailed description, or as detailed as he/she can make it report detailing what is wrong or what he would like to get fixed.
Said report is then sent through their system and various shops both official and independent can then bid on the assignment, and the 3 lowest bids are then presented to the person. Naturally with a disclaimer in the event that the shop actually has to perform test and diagnosis etc, or with recommendations in the event of “routine” mechanical work (ie suggesting that the waterpump be changed together with x item due to such and such reasons) and other things like that. They are not that big yet, but they are slowly hitting the ground running as more people have started to realise they are around.
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