mspecperformance

Kukui is awesome. I have been using it for 20 months or so. Please PM me if you have any questions, I can give you a lot of details about their program.

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PAPShop, what do you charge for your alignments and how many do you do per day/per week/per month? I have an alignment machine currently but I don't really care for it (Bosch). I am always gauging when it is time to get a new aligner.

Keep the warrantee work coming .They take time and you have to learn how to negotiate. Its a give and take.

 

We only accept warrantees that we have copies of the exact policy.

 

If you are a very small shop i can see how it could affect your workflow.

 

I have a policy no inspections till after 1pm .This way the waiters don't get pushed aside and the tech can explain the failure as per the exact contract.

How do you deal with the limited amount of money they pay out as well as the non covered items? It is a huge waste of time and customers don't ever have a good feeling about coming out of pocket for repairs but if a warranty company will not cover the full labor rate, full cost of parts, and cover all the items on a repair order then it lands on the owner. I have a $4300 job on an 2009 4.8 X5 for oil leaks from gaskets, a leaky water pump, some other stuff and the warranty ended up covering the water pump for a grand total of $301 after the deductible. Tell me how this customer benefited from forking over thousands of dollars to this company for "coverage" and "peace of mind"

These extended warranties are the absolutely worst! Every chance I get I bad mouth them to any person who has one or wants to buy one. After the frustration my customers go through they always end up telling me how right I was.

Oh absolutely. I liken the dealers to the Imperial Empire. Us independents are the rebel alliance. We totally get to jump in our X-Wings and give them hell before they blow up Yavin IV and we are all out of a job!

Talk about vent. I have a problem customer that is a first timer, challenges our integrity at every corner, wants a discount, and demands his car be worked on once he authorizes work however will make us wait 1-3 days before deciding on what he wants to do. Most recently his vehicle was parked right outside of the shop on the street and a boot was placed on it by the city for unpaid parking tickets. COMPLETELY not my problem. Made the customer aware of the issue. He does nothing about it. 3 days later tow trucks comes to take the car. I box the car in with another car and I notify him. He scrambles to pay the tickets. Here is the kicker. He has to come down with a code provided by the city to remove the boot and it is his responsibility to return the boot. I believe it is thursday at this point last week. Of course irresponsible POS person that he is doesn't do anything about after I even called to remind him. Come in this morning, car is GONE. city probably took it for the tickets or the boot. I notify this guy and he replies back via email that the city doesnt have it and the car must be stolen so its my responsibility. LOL I blew on this guy. I told him the car is probably in some city lot, go take care of your tickets, you owe me money i have your parts here bring it back and let me finish the job dont call me until you find your car *CLICK!

Really???? interesting!

Update on Yelp and my experience. I have currently 33 reviews and a 5* overall rating. We are in the higher range of reviews for most shops around me. I have seen a BOOM in business and a very high frequency of customers coming in and commenting on our Yelp reviews. Nowadays if say you send out a direct mail campaign a lot of these folks are going to do some research on you. Once they see my reviews its the final push to get them to buy. Now I just have to figure out how to keep my production up!!

Encountering this crap is part of the job. What helps is your gut feeling. We are getting really busy as of late. Busier than I have ever been. I am getting a lot of customers that need stuff done right now right! Well the fact of the matter is that yes people have choice however if they want to do business with you because you are competent and honest (very rare these days any customer will tell you) they will understand they have to wait. The ones you don't want as customers are the pushy ones that don't understand that you have a shop full of cars and they are not god's gift to your shop. I learn this lesson every day as a shop owner I want to intake as much business as possible. That is my heart talking to me. My brain is telling me RED FLAG DON'T TAKE ANOTHER ONE OF THESE TROUBLE CARS! Usually my heart wins out. Then when things go south I feel even worse.

Welcome to the club!!!

Pros are its way faster to get a car on and off the lift. Also any vehicle no matter how low will be no problem. If you are performing a lot of alignments daily and you can save maybe a few minutes on each car. End of the day/week/month/year it adds up to a lot of time savings.

Cons are it costs more, there might be permits you need to pull to do it, if you don't own the space make sure you are allowed to modify the property. For instance I got quoted 5-6k for installation of a flush mount lift which included cutting the existing floor, excavating and pouring in a foundation for the lift. Did not include wiring it up.

alfred how many lifts do you have now?

what are these "changes"?

I still don't see what they do. I am pretty much a hawk when it comes to anything auto repair business related on the internet and this is the first I am hearing from them. I am just curious as to how their service actually helps with SEO. I understand how back links work however what is this service specifically doing that you can't do yourself or a full marketing suite from an auto related marketing company can't or is not doing for you.

Also from my perspective I have no seen any repairpal, automd, etc etc sites have great results or good ROI. What works is yelp, google+, organic SEO and adwords. If there is a service to boost these avenues of marketing then I'd be interested. Otherwise if its a site built on promises of driving more customers I don't believe it.

What do they do that is different from the other pay to advertise sites like automd.com and such?

All of those sites claim to help with SEO as well.

Let's hear so,e thoughts

facvabeach, would you be willing to share your SA matrix?

What percntage of gross sales or gross profit do yr service advisors make? as i understand it works out to about 6-8% when all said and done for gross sales...

Trending toward 1mil a year. In the 80-100k range however ive seen an explosion in cars, calls, web appointment etc these past several weeks after focusing on marketing and online reputation for the past 6 months.

What can you afford? A great service advisor will cost. It is worth it to pay them a little more upfront, so they aren't pushy and pissing off your customers. The SA is the face and voice of your shop. He/She will either make your business prosper or drive it into the ground.

I would like my pay plan in close ratio without too much deviation from my overall profit. Basically a close to set % of profit. I an trying to see what everyone else does. I do not like the idea of straight salary. Either 100% commission or small guarantee + incentive.

Please share some of your pay plans. I an deciding on what pay plan works for me as i am looking to add people to my team. Thanks!

EXCELLENT POST. Wow. I am truly impressed!!

Digital inspection system solves this problem fairly well.

This is a touchy subject. The pros will tell you that you have to most certainly be compensated for your extra time which I whole heartedly agree. The problem happens when you menu price jobs such as alignments and tires. In the case of tires I would increase the price of your menu to compensate for the BS. In the case of alignments I would charge appropriately and make it absolutely clear that the cost of the alignment may increase due to seized components. The pros will tell you how profitable alignments can be. So very true if you have consistency when it comes to easy to loosen tie rods and adjustment points. In the northeast as well as anywhere that sees lots of moisture, rain, snow, etc it becomes hell when you get that 1 car that is now stuck on your rack because you have a seized tie rod.

welcome PAP, great looking site. The only recommendation I have is that it is hurts my eyes to read a site with a black background. Just some constructive criticism, not sure if anyone else has that same problem. Bright background colors work best IMO.