Hello Peter,
Thanks for making us aware of this article , here is my response to it.

To whomever it may concern,
I am very shocked and disappointed to read your article titled, "Garages in fault code confusion".
The article that has been written is so damaging to the automotive trade, because it has obviously not been researched properly.
If you think that it is so easy to just "plug a computer into a faulty models's ECU & download the code"& "crossreferencing this number to a data base reveals the exact problem, and fix, too",then I would like to offer you the opportunity to visit my garage & try your hand at diagnosing these easy to fix problems that we regularly come across & if you find it as easy as you say ,then I would also like to offer you a job, but I would think that if you could write such an idiotic,mindless article, that you will not stand a chance of even knowing where to start diagnosing most of the problems that we come across.
I am amazed that you can write such an article, especially after being advised by the Autodata spokesperson that "Even if a garage does get the details,the fault codes aren't flawless."They can be misleading , causing technicians to replace components believing they are faulty". "
You are tarring all independant technicians with the same brush & making us all look bad in the process.In reality even though the main franchised dealers have the equipment to diagnose problems ,they are usually the ones that just keep fitting parts , because the computer told them that it was faulty & usually get away with it because either they take parts off the parts department shelf, borrow them from another vehicle or just fob the customer off , telling that all the parts that they had fited were needed when they were not.
I think that you need to publish a huge appology in your next publication of your magazine, stating that you have mis-informed your readers, because you have not actually experienced the difficulties of trying to diagnose the quite often very complex faults that modern cars have nowadays.
I look forward to your response.
Regards,(a very annoyed )Andrew
Ps trying to deal with mis-informed customers is bad enough with all the information available on the internet without you having to add to it.
Kind regards,Andrew