Refund season is repair season for auto shops

Every repair shop has a list of customers who heard a noise in November and decided it could wait until after the holidays. Most of them were not waiting for the holidays. They were waiting for money, and the IRS publishes the date it arrives.

By law, the IRS holds refunds on returns that claim the Earned Income Credit until mid-February. For everyone else, the IRS says an e-filed refund typically arrives within three weeks of filing. Put those two rules together and the shape of the next six weeks is clear: a trickle of deferred work in late February, then a wave in March. The shops that win March get ready in February, while the bays are quiet enough to think.

Why the refund wave lands on repair shops

The cars coming in are old, and getting older. S&P Global Mobility’s 2025 report put the average age of light vehicles on the road at 12.8 years, with passenger cars at 14.5 years and light trucks at 11.9. A 14-year-old sedan does not get a new set of struts on a whim. Its owner waits until the money is there, and then wants it done that week.

The industry is not short of that work. The Auto Care Association’s 2026 Factbook, released last June, said the light-duty aftermarket grew 5.7% in 2024 to $413.7 billion and expected about 5.1% growth for 2025. The question for one shop is not whether the demand exists. It is whether the driver with a refund in the bank finds your shop or the one two exits down.

In our experience the March mix in four-season states leans toward work winter caused or exposed:

• Alignment, tires and suspension after a season of potholes.
• Brakes that started grinding in December.
• Batteries that survived January but barely.
• The check engine light that has been on since Thanksgiving.

Each is a search with a specific word in it, and each deserves a line on your profile and a section on your site.

Fix the profile while the bays are quiet

Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and popularity, and that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Relevance is the part you write. Before March:

• Check your primary category and add the secondary ones that match real work: brake shop, transmission shop, tire shop, oil change service.
• List every service you do in the services section, in the words drivers use, not the words on your labor guide.
• Correct the hours, including Saturday, and set holiday hours now for Memorial Day so they are not forgotten.
• Add recent photos of the bays, the service counter and the team. A tidy shop floor answers a question the driver will not ask out loud.

If you are in California, compare the name on your profile with the name on your Bureau of Automotive Repair registration. The two drift apart over the years, and the ads you run in March should carry the registered name.

Get the reviews moving before the rush, not during it

A driver with a refund and a 14-year-old car is choosing between strangers, and the review list is the closest thing to a recommendation they have. The shops we see struggle in March usually have a decent star average on a review count that stopped growing a year ago.

Start asking now, while each customer gets your full attention at the counter. Send a text at pickup with the direct review link, to every customer, not only the ones who smiled. The FTC’s rule on fake reviews, announced in August 2024, bans buying reviews and offering rewards tied to a positive one, so the ask has to be the same for everyone. Then reply to every review in your own words, including the one complaining about an estimate. A plain, calm reply to a complaint does more for a nervous driver than ten thank-yous.

Plan for the phone you cannot answer

March is when every tech is under a car and the service writer is on the other line. For a shop, an unanswered call in March is usually a refund-season customer who rings the next name on the map instead.

Decide now what happens to the calls nobody can take. A text back within a minute of a missed call, a voicemail that promises a return call within the hour and then keeps the promise, or a phone agent that can book an appointment into the shop calendar. If you run Local Services Ads, Google’s own ranking help says missed calls can count against your responsiveness, so the phone affects where the ad shows as well as whether the lead turns into a car.

If you run search ads, run them by repair

Repair searches convert well. WordStream by LocaliQ’s 2025 Google Ads benchmarks, covering April 2024 to March 2025, put the Automotive - Repair, Service & Parts category at a 14.67% median conversion rate and a $28.50 median cost per lead, against 7.52% and $70.11 across all industries. That is a good reason to advertise in March and a poor reason to run one broad campaign.

Split the account by the work you want: brakes, alignment and suspension, diagnostics, batteries. Each gets its own ad group and a landing page that names the repair, says what your warranty covers and shows the reviews. Schedule the ads for the hours someone answers the phone. A brake lead at 7 pm that reaches a voicemail is money spent for nothing.

April is already on the calendar

The Car Care Council runs National Car Care Month every April, telling drivers to get tires, brakes and wipers ready for spring driving and summer road trips. Its October counterpart, Fall Car Care Month, comes with the council’s advice to test the battery every fall and consider replacing it once it is three years old or more.

Those two months are the natural reasons in the year to contact every customer you already have. Write the April message now and send it in late March, so the refund wave rolls into the spring check instead of stopping when the money runs out.

What to do this month

• Reread your Google profile against the work you want in March: categories, services, hours and fresh photos of the shop.
• Start a pickup text with the review link for every customer this week, and answer every review already waiting.
• Decide who or what answers a missed call during bay hours, and test it by calling your own shop at 11 am on a weekday.
• Split any search campaign into brakes, alignment and suspension, diagnostics and batteries, each with its own page.
• Pull the list of estimates customers declined since October and call them once refunds start landing.
• Draft the April car care message to your customer list now, and schedule it for late March.

We have written up how we approach independent shops, from state ad rules to the year’s demand, on our auto repair marketing page. If the profile is where you want to start, here is how we set up and maintain a Google Business Profile.