Repair Authorizations & Cancellations

[CAautogroup]

How do you deal with authorization of repairs when a vehicle is left for the diagnostic and a customer agrees to fix the vehicle over the phone? Do you ask the customer to come to the shop and sign off on the estimated costs of the repair? Or take the verbal agreement over the phone? We have had problems in the past with customers "claiming" the price we told them and which they agreed to over the phone is different than what we are charging them, which is not true.

 

Also, we had an incident the past week that a customers brought in their vehicle for a diagnostic. They filled out the work order form and left. The customers husband comes in about 20-30 min later and demands that we don't touch the vehicle and does not want us to diagnose anything, yet my techs have already spent a considerable amount of time searching for the problem. How would you approach this sitation? Would you still charge the full diagnostic fee?

 

Thank you in advance for your thoughts and opinions.

[xrac]

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[Jeff]

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[phynny]

Touchy situation. Almost all of our repairs are authorized over the phone and we do not have the customer sign anything but a receipt and we have never had an issue. Possession is 9/10's of the law right?

 

In your situation if they are not a good repeat customer which I'm sure they aren't I would charge them time involved. Why should you pay to have their vehicle looked at? I'd rather choose my charity.