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Partner referral program

You're already inside the car. You just don't fix what you find.

Detailers, tow operators, tire shops and trades with work vans see failing brakes, weeping leaks, dead batteries and warning lights every week, and hand the car back without a useful answer. This is the answer: one tracked link you can hand over, a mobile mechanic who goes to the customer, and written terms so nobody has to trust a handshake.

This page is the actual proposal, not a pitch deck. It says who owns the customer, how referrals are counted, what you get, what happens when something goes wrong, and where Cars With Fares genuinely is right now, which is small, new, and honest about it. Read it and decide.

The zone is exactly five cities: Mississauga, Oakville, Milton, Brampton and Etobicoke. If your customers are outside those, this doesn't work yet, and it's better to say so on the first screen than three weeks in.

One tracked link, no paperwork Service credit, never a cash finder's fee No contract, no term, no fee either way Five cities, we go to the customer
Pilot, first three partners

Put your business forward

This goes to Fares directly. He reads it and gets back to you himself, one-man operation, so it's him, not a team.

No list, no newsletter, no sales sequence, none of that exists here. Or skip the form and call or text 647-450-0406.

That's with Fares.

If you'd rather it landed on his phone right now, send it yourself, everything you typed is already in the message.

Text it to Fares Call 647-450-0406

Why this is worth your time, and not just ours

A referral is only worth making when it makes you look good. That's the whole test, and most referral programs fail it, they're a favour dressed up as a partnership, and the person doing the favour gets nothing except the risk of the recommendation going bad.

Here's the version that passes. A detailer finishes a car and the owner asks about the squeal they've been ignoring for four months. Right now that detailer says "you should get that looked at," which is worth nothing to anybody. With a link, they say "here, he comes to your driveway, he'll tell you what it actually is, and there's fifty off because you came through me." The customer gets a real answer, the detailer becomes the person who solved a second problem, and nobody had to leave the driveway.

Same shape for a tow operator whose customer is standing beside a car that won't start. Same shape for a tire shop with the wheels off that can see the pads are at three millimetres but has no bay time this week. The referral has to be useful to the customer in front of you. If it isn't, don't make it, and this is built so that never costs you anything.

Who this is for, honestly graded

Fit isn't the same for everyone, so it's written out rather than glossed over. Green means the fit is real today. Amber means it depends on how you're set up. Grey means the honest answer is not yet.

Strongest fit, detailing

Detailers & mobile detailers

You're inside hundreds of cars a month with better light and closer attention than the owner has ever given the thing. You see the leak on the driveway, the ground-down pad through the wheel, the light on the dash. You fix none of it, and you never will.

Zero conflict. Fares doesn't detail and won't start. Nothing he sells overlaps with anything you sell.

Strongest fit, towing

Tow & roadside operators

You meet people at the exact moment of failure, no-start, dead charging system, overheating, a car that quit in a plaza. That's precisely the work Fares does fastest in a driveway.

It closes your loop. A tow that ends with the car fixed at the customer's house makes you the operator who sorted it, not the one who dropped it somewhere and disappeared.

Conditional, tires

Tire shops

You've got wheels off constantly, so you see pads, rotors, worn links, leaking struts and seized calipers more clearly than anyone. The honest catch: plenty of tire shops do brakes and suspension themselves, and if you do, that's a straight conflict and you should pass on this.

Where it's real: you're tire-and-alignment only, or you're booked solid through the changeover rush and turning that work away. Fares does not sell, fit, store or dispose of tires, and does not do alignments. That line is written into the outline.

Strong fit, work vehicles

Trades & delivery businesses

Landscaping, HVAC, plumbing, courier, small delivery outfits, vans and pickups where a day off the road is a day of lost revenue, and dropping a vehicle at a shop costs more than the repair.

Two doors here: your vans become fleet work at your own yard, and your crews' personal cars are a natural referral. Both run on the same link.

Not yet, property

Property managers & condo boards

You control whether anyone can work on a vehicle on the property at all, which makes permission, not referral, the actual product. A sanctioned, tidy mobile mechanic is a genuine resident amenity.

The blocker is real and it's ours. Most boards require a certificate of commercial garage liability insurance before anyone touches a car on site, and Fares doesn't carry one. Townhouse and low-rise boards without that requirement can go ahead now. Everyone else: this is a later conversation, and pretending otherwise would waste your time and burn the relationship.

Not in the program

Who this is deliberately closed to

Used-car dealers, permanently out. That's reconditioning work bought on price, and it's the opposite of the customer this business is built for.

Other repair shops and mechanics. Fares isn't a broker. He won't route work to other shops and he won't take yours. There's no middleman role here in either direction.

Body shops, a straight customer referral would be genuine, but what body shops actually want is sublet mechanical work invoiced to the shop, and that's a different business that's closed. Not worth starting a relationship that has to be walked back.

Insurance and warranty programs, out, on purpose.

What each side actually provides

What Cars With Fares provides

  • Your own tracked link and short code, carswithfares.ca/r/YOURCODE.
  • A landing page on that link built for your customer, with a short form that reaches Fares directly.
  • $50 off their first job for anyone who comes through your link. Published, not negotiated.
  • $50 service credit banked to you for every referred job that gets completed.
  • Printed referral cards carrying your code, and wording that hands one over without sounding like a sales pitch.
  • The same flat published pricing your customer would get walking in cold, from the published range card. No partner markup, ever.
  • A straight answer in advance when a job is one Fares turns down.
  • A written scope list of what he will never sell into your territory.

What you provide

  • Hand the link or the card over where it genuinely helps the customer. Nothing more.
  • No quota, no minimum, no monthly anything.
  • Don't diagnose on his behalf and don't quote a price, "he'll tell you what it is" is the entire script.
  • Tell him if a referral went badly, before the customer tells the internet.
  • Permission, or a clear no, before he uses your business name publicly anywhere.

What neither side provides

  • No fee, no retainer, no invoice, no monthly cost in either direction.
  • No exclusivity. Refer three other mechanics as well if you want.
  • No customer list changes hands. Ever, in either direction.

Who owns the customer, the part everyone leaves vague

The repair customer is Cars With Fares' customer.

From the moment they use the link, Fares quotes them, invoices them, and carries the work and the warranty. You are never the contracting party, you never invoice anybody, and you carry no liability for the repair. If it goes wrong it's his problem and he handles it with the customer directly.

Your customer stays your customer.

Cars With Fares doesn't sell detailing, tires, alignments, towing, or whatever trade you're in. Your customers don't get added to any list, don't get marketed to, and don't get pitched anything outside the repair they asked about. There is no list to be added to, no email or text marketing exists in this business at all.

The introduction is the entire relationship between the two businesses.

Not a joint venture, not a vendor agreement, not a subcontract. Neither business is the other's agent and neither can bind the other to anything. That's stated plainly in the outline so it never has to be argued about later.

How referrals get tracked, without either of us doing paperwork

The tracking is already built and running. Partner codes ride the same rail the customer referral links already use, rather than a second system bolted on beside it. Nothing here depends on Fares remembering to log something, which matters, because a system that needs daily attention is a system that dies.

  1. You get one code. Six characters with no confusable letters, printed on your cards, living at carswithfares.ca/r/YOURCODE.
  2. Every visit to that link is logged. So "did anyone actually use the cards" is a number, not a feeling.
  3. Every lead through that page is stamped with your code in the database, on the customer record and on the job. Attribution is a stored fact, not a memory.
  4. When that job is marked complete, your credit is earned. Calculated off the same rows, nobody totals anything by hand.
  5. You can see the count any time, links opened, leads created, jobs completed, credit banked. It takes seconds, because it's a query rather than an admin job.

The customer can also just phone instead. If they mention your code on the call, Fares stamps it on the job manually and it counts exactly the same, which is what the attribution rule below exists for.

The credit, and the unit economics behind it

Every completed referral banks $50 as a service credit against mechanical work Fares does on your own vehicle or your work van. It's never cash, and that's a design decision rather than a way of being cheap.

Cash per lead pays you for volume, which quietly pushes you to send everybody, including the customer who was never going to spend a dollar and the one who'll haggle for an hour. Within a month that turns a good relationship into a tap producing junk, and then it gets switched off and the relationship is worse than before it started. A credit against your own repair bill pays you for sending the right ones, and it lands as real value on a bill you were going to pay anyway.

Published range across the work he wants sent, no-start and charging, brakes, cooling, suspension$180–$1,500
Off the first job for the customer who came through your link−$50
Service credit banked to you when that job completes$50
Cash paid out per referral$0
Cost to you to join, ever$0

Being straight about our side of it: that $50 credit costs Fares parts and his own time rather than $50 of cash, which is exactly why it can be offered with no volume requirement and no cap. And a referred customer arrives already half-trusting, so the job closes without the long convincing a cold web lead needs. That's the actual trade, you get real value on your own vehicle, he gets customers who don't need selling to.

The ranges above come from the published range card and are market context, not a quote. Every job gets one flat number agreed before any work starts. No hourly meter, and no tax line. Fares isn't HST-registered at his volume.

How the quality of your name gets protected

You'd be lending your judgment. That's the thing actually at risk here, and it deserves more than a promise to do good work.

Before the job

  • One flat price agreed before he drives out, and it doesn't move afterwards.
  • The jobs he doesn't do are named out loud on the trust page: timing chains, timing belts, clutches, head gaskets and internal engine work. Send him one and he'll say no and explain why, rather than take it and struggle.
  • Your customer gets the identical published pricing anyone else gets.

After the job

  • Every completed job gets its own service record page, what was done, what parts went on, what to watch.
  • The warranty and liability positions are written in public on the trust page, including what is not covered.
  • If a referred job goes wrong, you hear it from Fares first.
  • Any partner can end this in one message and keep any credit already banked.

Real reviews live at /reviews/. There are two of them, both genuine, and there will never be invented ones padding it out.

When there's a disagreement

"That was my customer", attribution

If the code was used, it counts. If the customer phoned instead and named your business, Fares stamps your code on the job and it counts the same, as long as it's within 30 days of them being in front of you. If two partners claim the same customer, the code actually recorded on the job wins, and if there's no code on the job at all, the credit gets paid to both rather than argued over. It's fifty dollars; the relationship is worth more than that.

Something went wrong with the repair

It's between Fares and the customer, and you don't get pulled into it. He tells you what happened and what he did about it, whether or not it makes him look good.

You want out

One message. The link keeps working for anyone still holding a card, so no customer of yours hits a dead page. Credit already banked stays valid. There's nothing to unwind.

What the first pilot looks like

Three partners, ninety days, one of each of the strongest-fit types, all inside the five cities. Small on purpose, the point is finding out which partner type actually produces before printing anything at scale.

  1. A ten-minute conversation. In person, at your place, whenever suits you. Fares brings the one-page brief and the cards.
  2. Your code gets created. About a minute of work; the link is live immediately.
  3. Cards go on your counter or in the van. Hand one over when it's genuinely useful. That's the whole job.
  4. Ninety days, then the numbers get looked at together, links opened, leads, completed jobs, credit banked. If it produced nothing, that gets said out loud instead of quietly continuing.

Everything gets better as more partners join. Which types convert becomes measurable rather than guessed at. The wording that actually works gets passed between partners instead of each one inventing it. And once a few partners are active, with permission, and only with permission, being able to say who works with him becomes real proof rather than a claim.

Where this business honestly is, right now

You'd be putting your name on a recommendation, so here's the unvarnished version.

If you need an established vendor, this isn't it yet. If what you want is someone who picks up, does what he said he'd do, and writes the terms down before there's a problem, that's the trade on offer.

Questions people actually ask

Do you pay a cash referral fee?

No. Every completed referral banks a $50 service credit against mechanical work on your own vehicle or work van. Cash per lead pays you to send volume; a credit on your own car pays you to send the right ones. It also keeps this out of finder's-fee territory, which is where these arrangements normally go bad.

Whose customer is it after the referral?

The repair customer is Cars With Fares' customer, he quotes, invoices, and carries the work and the warranty. Your customer stays yours: he doesn't sell what you sell, and nobody's list changes hands. The introduction is the whole of the relationship between the two businesses.

How is a referral actually tracked?

One short code and one link. Every visit is logged, every lead through it is stamped with your code in the database, and the credit is calculated off those rows when the job completes. Nothing depends on anyone remembering a conversation.

Is there a contract, a term or a minimum?

No term, no minimum, no exclusivity, no fee in either direction. One message ends it and banked credit stays valid. The written outline exists so nobody is guessing, not to lock anyone in.

What jobs do you actually want sent your way?

Brakes, suspension, no-starts and charging faults, cooling and water pumps, CV axles, belts, tune-ups, straightforward oil leaks, and pre-purchase inspections. Not timing chains, timing belts, clutches, head gaskets or internal engine work, those need a hoist and a full shop day, and he turns them down.

What if my customer is outside your five cities?

Then don't hand them the card, because the link would waste their time. They can still use the free quote checker to sanity-check an estimate against published GTA ranges, which costs nobody anything.

Do you carry commercial garage liability insurance?

No, and it isn't implied anywhere on this site. Sole proprietor, working in the open. It matters most for property managers and condo boards, who usually require a certificate before anyone touches a vehicle on site, if that's your requirement, this can't meet it today.

Will you contact my customers directly after the job?

Only about their own repair. Every completed job gets a service record page the customer owns, and that's it. There's no marketing list, no newsletter and no text campaign, because none of that exists here.

If it's a fit, the next step is a ten-minute conversation

Not a signup and not a demo. Fares comes to you with a one-page brief and a stack of cards, and you decide at the end of it. Nothing here costs anything to try, and nothing has to be unwound if it doesn't work.

Put your business forward →