phynny

Nah, I believe I will call him out every time he links something to his site in which he wants to sell things to us. I get enough of this during the day and certainly do not want to have to deal with it on here. The old "bait title, to bait link, to his site" is ridiculous and I will say so every time.

You always post things that lead back to your site where you want to charge people for helping them make money. I could be wrong but this isn't the place for your sales pitch. This site is for shop owners, current or future to get real world advice from people that are currently in the trenches making a living. We are here to share stories, give advice and support one another in our real world struggles and/or success. You make these vague comments that seem to always lead to your site and it's annoying. You may have a good service but this isn't a place for it. You have to understand that we get a dozen phone calls a day with everyone wanting to sell us something or some service and it gets sooooo tiresome. We want a place to kick back and just share things with others in our same field. I could be totally off base but this is how I feel.

What color should you wear on every 3rd Wednesday of the even months . This is a question I believe we all struggle with and I just try to be as efficient as I can and take car of myself and customer. Here's an example of what I'm talking about last week. I get a customer that brought in a Ford Ranger that he wanted replacement shackles put on the rear, diag ABS light and a noise in the front end. Normally this would be 2 separate diagnoses since it's 2 issues but it can easily be done by 1 30 min diag. I replaced the shackles then went for a test drive to ensure all was good and at the same time hooked up the scanner to monitor the wheel speed sensors. After hearing no squeak but find the wheel speed sensor had failed in the front I through the truck on the lift and pulled the tire to replace the wheel speed sensor. As the WD-40 was doing its job I shook down the front end and then replaced the wheel speed sensor and sent the vehicle on its way. I made a plan of action and then followed it and everyone won. I know that there are a million different scenarios but IMHO if you just take a minute to create a plan of action it will make you more money and keep the customers costs down. I

Here's just a couple recent ones, I love to read them and laugh http://indianapolis.craigslist.org/aos/5261800661.html http://indianapolis.craigslist.org/aos/5254737633.html http://indianapolis.craigslist.org/aos/5245567225.html

I love it, people will be banging down my doors when dealing with these clowns. As soon as I saw "craigslist mechanics" I lol'd. At least once every couple weeks I got on CL and laugh at the "mechanic ads." I personally wouldn't worry for a second about this hurting business.

If it takes an hour I also charge an hour but that is very rare. Sure, when a car comes in and it's been to 3 different shops I am very clear to let them know that I'll charge time involved. But how many times do we actually have to yank a diagram out and start tracing x harness from the engine bay to behind the dash? Though if you do, I feel pity for you .

Okay man, I've held my tongue long enough. Not sure about everyone else but I don't care about your site so stop trying everything in the world to get us to click on it man. You haven't provided anything useful to the current or future shop owners that I have seen but you continue posting links and/or misleading us to end up at your site. -Had Enough

IMHO if you start at an hour then you need better techs. You should easily find 95% of the issues in under 30 mins. I charge .5 and if I need more I call the customer to authorize more times.

If you pay less than $10/hour at a shop then you have already have issues at your shop.

Too hard to read in all caps...

Recruit. Ask around and after you locate the guy you want then you go directly to him and make him an offer he cant refuse.

I'm still stuck on the $10 oil change, I wonder if its watered down cooking oil from McDonalds and they just wash the filter

skm it's an easy question to answer, shops do not pay near well enough and now we have a shortage. I like identifix, mitchell and the other programs to help easily find known issues but IMHO this can hurt shops in 2 ways. First being that the techs get rusty as they are dependent upon others doing the work for them and the second being the owners don't want to pay more because the computer is doing all the work. I'd rather have my guys spend the extra 15 minutes and diag it for themselves to keep them sharp and have others copy their work on identifix. Remember guys, I said I like the programs I just don't like guys getting dependent on them.

Like xrac said, those are great numbers.

I ALWAYS tip a tech if I'm having something done, even if it's just a couple bucks to get a drink and I'd be pissed if I found out he didn't get to keep it.

I know when I was looking for tires for my car all the quotes were $900+ for 335 30 18, Nitto 555R Drag Radials. I bought them on sale and had them installed for $500, people always shop around and I like to think if it's pretty close they'll buy from you, the problem is that isn't normally the case. I had it happen again recently on a different car of mine and since I was out of town I got ripped off and had to buy it.

WV requires you to pull wheels and put her on a lift for $10, PA is just a tad more. Yes, you are forced to because the customers HAVE to have it done and we HAVE to please our customers. That's be like saying a doctor isn't forced to see patients, sure he doesn't have to but then he doesn't have a business. And please, you think courts are fair and just?, it's all about who has the better attorney or pulls on some heart strings the best. Fine the guy, don't put him in prison for 15 years. I'll bet if it was a friend or family member of yours you wouldn't have already convicted him and neither would you be so callused about it. I'm not disagreeing with you that we need to do our jobs but I certainly do not think we are at a point where the money nearly covers the risks. How can a guy making $10/hour or less be responsible for something that could put them in prison for years. And since you are a state inspector you know the "state inspector license" is a joke that an 8 year old could pass. That tells me they care more about the number of inspectors they have than the quality of inspectors. If this guy was a lick-it-stick-it clown then he'll deal with his consequences but I haven't seen anything to suggest that yet. I suppose I'm speaking on a broader issue than this guys case, to me this whole system is flawed.

But you know what they say about assumptions right. When has any state needed proof to "prosecute" someone? And what you say is misleading, this car didn't come in because the customer wanted to make sure her car was 100% correct, the lady was forced by the state to take her car to a shop that is forced by the state to do a full inspection for $10. In my opinion all these state inspections do is take the blame from the owner and place it on some shop. I have a strong opinion of this whole process as I'm sure you can tell. As far as I'm concerned if the states are going to dictate what we can charge then they can find their own inspector, and guess what, if that state inspector didn't do his job I'll guarantee you'll never be able to prosecute him. It boggles the mind that if you are pulling your camper and hook it up wrong and it results in a death you are going to prison for manslaughter but if you drive a POS and find some desperate/idiot to slap a sticker on it then it's his fault.... Merica.

Wow what a great ending.

Oh please, I don't for a second believe that you, me or any shop out there does a perfect inspection 100% of the time. We are humans and whether it's just an over site or we just feel bad for someone down on their luck so we maybe let them slip by with something that isn't 100% right on their vehicle. We've all done it and something could have happened to every one of us. What we should be asking ourselves is how to doctors kill so many people every day due to incompetence and the insurance company just pays out yet a mechanic scraping buy is going to jail over a mistake. IMHO that's the real travesty here.

I was a supervisor for Consol Energy and my company was HUGE on sending us to all kinds of "supervisor and leadership training". One thing they always taught was about how to deal with your employees problems and you were never allowed to just shrug it off and tell them to return to work. We literally had to semi, get involved and help the employee work through his problems. That being said, I don't think smaller employers like a repair shop could ever do something like that as it's way to performance based.

I would have walked long ago. That's definitely not the norm. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Flat rate + percentage

It would be a huge PIA to get a signature for everything, what you can do is just have a blanket statement on the paperwork saying they are agreeing to all repairs. I haven't ever seen a judge take money from a shop for work that was done correctly.

Such a shame for all involved, the inspection "laws" are completely broken IMHO. In WV you can only charge $10 for a complete inspection.... You literally have to pay to inspect peoples vehicles and then you are trying to rip them off when you say, "mam, your brake lines are rusty and need replaced".