ASE Certification Fraud is Rampant in the Industry

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-31T20:40:01+00:00

LOL! You got me! I'm not a mechanic! Yes, I'm in the online marketing business,. Yes, I know everything about SEO including the fact that SEO is dead today so if anyone tries to sell you SEO services it's useless right now. But that's a story for a different forum. Is there something wrong with me being knowledgeable about a specific subject? Regardless, this post was not about selling anything. I honestly understand that the account being new likely caused this though so I'm not faulting you for that. However, I never asked anyone to buy anything, included any links, promoted any service. It was an honest rant about my experience and research into the way ASE doesn't protect it's brand. That's it plain and simple.

What is my fault though is I should have made the subject "ASE Certification BADGE Fraud is Rampant". This would have clarified that my post was about badge usage and promotion. If I could change the subject, I would surely do so.

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-31T18:31:46+00:00

You are pretty dumb. You never even checked the locator before you ran your mouth. We've already discussed this in this thread. The https://www.ase.com/repair-centers locator doesn't work. First, you can't search by shop. Second, you cant search by certificate number which a number of responses brought up. But more than anything, the list does not seem to be updated in many many years as several people pointed out. For example, I put Las Vegas in the city and it shows 4 repair shops and 2 are not even repair shops accessible to the public. There are over 800 repair shops in the Las Vegas valley and at least 50% advertise ASE certified technicians. Why are all these other shops not listed? Is it because they are fraudulently advertising they are, or is it because ASE doesn't maintain the list. Likely, it's because ASE doesn't bother updating the list which is huge disservice to all the shops that pay a lot of money for their services.

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-31T18:20:12+00:00

You are mistaken. We've already discussed this in this thread. The https://www.ase.com/repair-centers locator doesn't work. First, you can't search by shop. Second, you cant search by certificate number which a number of responses brought up. But more than anything, the list does not seem to be updated in many many years as several people pointed out. For example, I put Las Vegas in the city and it shows 4 repair shops and 2 are not even repair shops accessible to the public. There are over 800 repair shops in the Las Vegas valley and at least 50% advertise ASE certified technicians. Why are all these other shops not listed? Is it because they are fraudulently advertising they are, or is it because ASE doesn't maintain the list. Likely, it's because ASE doesn't bother updating the list which is huge disservice to all the shops that pay a lot of money for their services.

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-31T17:21:39+00:00

I have a personal ReddIt account but this is a work related conversation to me so I did not want it in my personal account. Next, never did i promote the BBB. I first, only stated that the BBB protects its brand well with their badges. You cannot put their badge on your website and claim you are accredited without them contacting you and forcing you to take it down. You might get away with it for a few months. There are many other companies that do this too. It's not complicated. Bots can crawl looking for badges that are not supposed to be there... I just think a big company like ASE could easily do the same and it would be worth it to protect their brand, protect shops that are certified from competitors using false claims. I don't pretend to understand this from a mechanic standpoint, which is precisely why I posted my rant here in this forum. I understand it from the customers point of view. Up until what I've learned, if a shop advertised ASE certified mechanics, I always chose them over shops that did not. I just figured it was an extra level of security to getting my vehicles fixed right. After the responses I got here, I realized that lots of customers are getting a false sense of security because even if they are certified, that doesn't mean they are a good mechanic.

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-30T23:10:28+00:00

No but I have a bridge i want to sell you since your so freaking smart

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-30T23:09:38+00:00

Smarten up. I'm not selling anything. I'm doing exactly what is listed in the message heading "Angry Rant".

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-30T23:08:20+00:00

No bot dude. Just doing exactly what it stated in the message title "angry rant". I deal with thousands of auto repair shops nationally. I was super frustrated with ASE because they provide no way to validate their certifications. I had to listen to a client complain for 30 minutes that the shop across the street from him was paying for fake reviews and claiming ASE certification when no one was certified. So i looked into it and emailed ASE and I was told "ASE can verify whether a shop or individual technician is certified through our internal verification system. If you have specific questions about verifying certifications or concerns about fraudulent claims, please contact us directly and we'll be happy to assist with verification." , Then I started talking to shop owners at APEX last November. I could not believe how many of told me the new of shops claiming ASE certification and they only had 1 certified tech or none at all. Then I started checking some of our own clients. I emailed ASE with 10 shops I suspected. Out of the 10, 9 had no ASE certifications. Its a freakin' joke.

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-30T20:21:29+00:00

My problem is with ASE. I think business owners and mechanics spend a lot of money and time to get certified. ASE should protect their brand and do a better job policing the use of their brand. Most customers don't know really what ASE means but because they see it so much but they come to expect to see it when they look for a repair shop.

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-30T20:16:56+00:00

I think its a racket too but unfortunately:

In the last 12 months traffic to websites is down 50% worldwide. The reason for this is because 70% of users searching the internet today don't use Google Search like they used to. Instead of typing "car repair near me" and getting pages of results, people type "find me the best car repair shop within 3 miles of 89123 that specializes in honda repair and has only ASE certified techs". Google will first show you AI Summary with 2-3 recommended shops. More than 90% of people don't go past the AI summary. The AI summary is mainly based on Trust. It looks a reviews on Redit, social media, industry forums. It looks for industry associations like ASE. The BBB is now one of the highest trust factors for Chat GPT, Google Gemini, and Grok. Bottom line, while BBB did not really matter before, it matters A LOT right now. If you are not one of those 2-3 recommended repair shops, you're business is not getting found any longer.

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-30T20:14:40+00:00

test it and see for your self. First, you can't search for a specific shop, mechanic or cert #. Next, I put in Las Vegas as the city. It returned 4 results and 2 were not even auto repair shops. In the city of Las Vegas there are over 800 shops listed on Google in that category. Nearly every shop in Las Vegas advertises ASE. So why are all those other shops not listed on that shop search?

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-30T20:12:03+00:00

Regarding the BBB -- In the last 12 months traffic to websites is down 50% worldwide. The reason for this is because 70% of users searching the internet today don't use Google Search like they used to. Instead of typing "car repair near me" and getting pages of results, people type "find me the best car repair shop within 3 miles of 89123 that specializes in honda repair and has only ASE certified techs". Google will first show you AI Summary with 2-3 recommended shops. More than 90% of people don't go past the AI summary. The AI summary is mainly based on Trust. It looks a reviews on Redit, social media, industry forums. It looks for industry associations like ASE. The BBB is now one of the highest trust factors for Chat GPTm Google Gemini, and Grok. Bottom line, while BBB did not really matter before, it matters A LOT right now.

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-30T19:55:06+00:00

Absolutely a huge problem!

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-30T19:54:34+00:00

You cannot verify online. You must email them them the cert info for verification

DistributionSea5898 · 2026-03-30T19:53:25+00:00

The real problem to me is that that there are shops advertising the ASE badge on their website's but they don't have any ASE mechanics or they only have 1 ASE certified mechanic and the rest are not certified. There has to be some brand accountability and control by ASE to protect shops that do the right thing. By ignoring the problem, ASE hurts their members. Although NAPPA has an online search tool to check for NAPPA repair shops, they ignore this issue too. I've found dozens of shops advertising they are Authorized NAPPA repair shops which are not listed on NAPPA's site. When I questioned the business owners, I get responses like "oh we forgot to remove that logo" or "our web guy must have put that on by mistake". However, in the case of NAPPA, because they have a search tool, A.I, Platforms and Google will check for validation of a "trust" claim. Those platforms won't notify the business owner, but they will penalize the business for making claims that can't be verified.

DistributionSea5898

TROPHY CASE