Re: Repair Fraud?


"Pete C." <aux3.DOH.4@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:43402F2C.5CE5A95E@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Scott Dorsey wrote:
> >
> > In article <433FE438.F20B9EC7@xxxxxxxx>, Pete C. <aux3.DOH.4@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> > >
> > >I'd really like to see basically three charges:
> > >
> > >1. Parts and consumables at essentially fair market cost.
> > >2. Shop time i.e. use of shop/lift/tools/etc.
> > >3. Labor
> > >
> > >Would just seem to be a more honest way of accounting for the actual
> > >costs to me. I'd still expect the labor cost to be fairly high since it
> > >would be the cost to the employer, not what the mechanic is actually
> > >paid (benefits, etc.).
> >
> > I would agree. The problem is that when you do this sort of breakdown,
> > you find the labor cost and the shop cost cause customers to balk.
Nobody
> > out there wants to be charging $100/hr. for labour, because the customer
> > won't pay it. So they juggle costs.
>
> That's why I'd like to see the shop time separate. If the labor cost is
> just labor, it shouldn't be $100/hr unless you only work on exotics. I'd
> expect $40-$60/hr would be about right for most labor which should
> equate to $20-$30/hr for the mechanic. Shop time would be perhaps
> $20-$40/hr for shop bay, lift, diagnostic gear, tools, etc.
>

Hi Pete,

It looks like the OP was a troll, as he's not commented on whether the
discussion helped him or not.

Just a comment on the breakdown. When you have a shop do the work
and supply the parts the shop is warranting the -entire job- both labor
and parts. Thus it is really pointless to break out labor and parts costs -
both figures are pretty much funny money.

If your shop issued a warranty that was something like "5 years warranty
on parts, 90 days warranty on labor" then a separate breakout would
make sense. And in this situation a high parts markup would help the
consumer vastly - because if the part fails within warranty, then the
shop eats the inflated markup and gets peanuts for the labor to R&R the
part.

But my experience is that most shops issue a single warranty that covers
both parts and labor, and that is it. And, it rather sucks too - many auto
repair parts you get directly from the auto parts store are marked
"lifetime warranty" but few to no shops issue the same warranty to their
customers. In these situations, the sky-high parts markups neither
help nor harm the consumer under a warranty claim.

> I balk at $20 for what I know is a $5 part, I don't balk at reasonable
> shop and labor costs. It's really a customer education issue. Perhaps a
> big sign in the waiting area with a industry average breakdown of costs
> so that the customers can see the real numbers. I've seen similar
> stickers on gas pumps showing the cost breakdown with the wholesale gas
> cost, taxes, more taxes, still more taxes and then the few cents/gal the
> retailer makes.
>

I don't think most customers care, when they are calling around for
auto repairs they are asking for lump-sum quotes for comparison purposes.

Unfortunately also these days a lot of shops are tremendously underbidding
phone quotes, and tremendously overpadding written estimates. And I've
never heard of a customer ever getting charged LESS than the estimate
unless they had a long term relationship with the garage - and in that case
those
customers usually don't get written estimates for work they need done,
thus it's a moot issue.

An estimate is after all an estimate - if the garage
knew what they were doing, then 50% of their estimates would be too low,
and 50% too high. But garages don't want to deal with customers screaming
so they pad estimates so that most estimates are too high.

Since all the other shops do this it makes it pretty impossible to
comparison
shop to get "the best deal" on a repair.

And to make it worse from a comparison shopping standpoint, if you regularly
frequent a repair shop, your costs to get a repair done -drop- sometimes
tremendously, as the mechanic starts to recognize you and you move into
the "valued customer" category.

And this holds for every service industry. For example 2 weeks ago I
needed an aluminum bracket welded. I normally never have this situation
so I have no ongoing relationship with a welder.

I went to a hole in the wall welder and had him do it. When I picked up
the part he charged me $50. At the same time another customer who
he obviously knew was picking up some welding work that he had done,
which appeared to me to be somewhat similar, if a bit less complex.
That customer got charged $20.

I said nothing of course, although I'm sure if I bitched about it I could
have
got $10 knocked off. But what was the point, it's not like I regularly
use this guy, and a brand new replacement bracket would have cost
more money than the welding job, plus I would have had to spend time
grinding it to fit. I can eat an overcharge like this every once in a long
while.

The root issue here is that purchasing service work is not like purchasing
an item. 1/2 of what your paying for is the skill of the person doing the
work, and 1/4 of what your paying for is the ability of that person to
support a warranty claim, and only 1/4 of that is any hard parts or shop
parts cost.

Most average people are taught from childhood how to make comparison
shopping decisions based on item costs. That is why in fact that the
state of Retail in the United States just sucks rocks - because very few
people comparison shop for the service and skill portion of a retail
purchase,
most comparison shop for the item cost alone. For example, men
will walk into a department store where a sales associate will spend
20 minutes helping them pick out the best set of shoes for them, then
they buy the shoes and 2 years later when the shoe wears out they
will go to Costco and buy the exact same make and model of shoe,
to save money. Women are a little better in this regard, but more than
make up for it by being holy terrors on comparison shopping for
grocery items.

But, most average people are NOT taught from childhood how to
make comparison shopping decisions based on SERVICE costs.
People routinely will switch mechanics based on giveaways like
free oil changes, which cost practically nothing, despite the fact that
the previous mechanic had been giving them years of excellent
service, and on more than a few times caught a problem early which
prevented their vehicle from later disintegrating.

If someone really wants to save money on auto repairs, and they do
not want to work on the vehicle themselves, the best way they can
do so is to find a mechanic and take ALL their vehicles there, for
EVERYTHING, on a repeated basis. And they need to kind of
do an impromptu interview of the mechanic - spend a few minutes
talking to him or her, get a feel for the person. A garage is only as
good as the owner, and an owner that is a total *** to talk to in
person when you aren't even a customer yet, and he has a vested
interest in being nice to you to get you to be a customer, is going to
be a terror to work with in any kind of warranty claim situation.

And, once you have that relationship going, then pay attention to the
quality of the work that they do. And you must maintain that relationship,
follow a service regimen for regular service, report any change in
vehicle behavior, follow the instructions of the mechanic. And above
all, make yourself a desirable customer - don't argue over the bill
over piddly crap, understand that nobody works for free,
don't get mad and bitch at them, follow instructions
that they give you, don't try to second-guess, be friendly, try to
be educated enough about your own vehicle to understand what
they are doing to it, don't waste their time yakking for 20 minutes
about the latest Make Money Fast scheme of yours to sell beachfront
property, and thank them for the work they do. And if
you aren't happy with what they are doing, tell them in a nice way
what your not happy with and give them a chance to make it right.
And if they make you happy, then send other nice people to them
and tell them to tell the garage who sent them. And if they don't
make you happy then find some other garage and make sure to
tell people about the problem and who caused it - remember, the
well-run garages are in competition with the poor-run garages,
and don't like the poor garages taking business away from them
any more than the customer likes getting cheated by the poor-run
garages.

If you do all that then you will end up saving money because
garages value that kind of customer above all others, and
will bend over backwards to keep you. And then your vehicles
will last a long, long time and you will not need to be hairsplitting
on the cost of vehicle repairs.

Ted


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