ATLAuto

The shockwaves look great in terms of speed. However, I am nervous about their batteries wearing out long term. We got our 7 rotary lifts (SP10's) slightly used for $3800/ea installed. I was thinking the shockwave speed would be a big sell ... however, unless you are blasting through a LOT of quick oil changes on that lift, the additional cost didn't make sense.

I got a call from a customer this past Sunday. Conversation follows from the customer. "Hey, I'm at the dealer, and they're saying I need a new computer for my car. Can I get my car towed to yall to look at the fuel injector on cylinder 2?" "We would love to serve you. Can you give us a bit of background on the issue?" "Yeah...uh, my car's been misfiring a lot, and I'm getting a cylinder 2 misfire code. I took at to 2 different shops in the area and now the dealer. They all said I need a new computer, but I think my fuel injector on cylinder 2 just has a lot of carbon on it. I want you to look at it and clean the injectors." "Ok, that is a valid complaint. Injectors can get carbon built up on them sometimes. Have the other shops inspected the injectors for you already?" "No, they refuse to inspect them, that's what's ridiculous!! They say it's the computer, but I know it cannot be the computer causing the misfire. I'm pretty sure the injectors are just covered in carbon." "Ok, well, if 3 shops have all made the same conclusion, it is likely an issue with the signal from the computer not reaching the injector. We can certainly clean the injectors for you, but I'm going to put my bets on this not fixing the issue." "How much is it? I just watched a YouTube video on this, and the injectors are just right under the manifold. It's only a few bolts." "I'm not in front of the computer right now, but why don't you call back Monday, and I can get you a price." Never heard back. Some of these conversations just leave you absolutely bewildered....

Posting, so I get emailed when this story unfolds. Looking forward to hearing what went down. We ask to see the paperwork / estimates from the other shops. This typically sheds a lot of light on the situation. We have never gone so far as to call the other shop ... but we also have not run into this more than one or twice.

Sounds like something funky is going on with your Autel over night. It should not lose any charge when not in use, or very little. I think there is a section under settings which shows where all the battery is getting used. Take a look there. In any case, you can leave a lithium ion battery on the charger all night with no issues. This is old advice for last gen batteries. See here... http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/do_and_dont_battery_table

Wow. Thanks for posting. Going to grab a few more fire extinguishers on Monday.

Ouch! We are in a dense urban downtown (100k people in a 3mi radius of our shop). Most customers only need to go 1-2mi from our shop, which is typically only $5-6 on uber. In rural areas, uber costs a lot more, and customers travel further. Double whammy.

Drill it down slightly to remove the taper. Lugs are pretty soft. I'm more interested in hearing how yall deal with charging for this. We give this stuff away ... Probably too much.

Scott, we have the same Autel scanner and see the exact same problems with Volvos. Apart from the VIDA, I do not know of a good aftermarket Volvo tool. Actually, I think we pull out the G-Scan unit now when we need to do some Volvo work? With that said, the Autel is an absolutely rocking tool for the price. I mean, can you really complain about it when the thing costs what it does??

Yes, every single day. We book appointments 2-3 days out in most cases. It is extremely rare that we take in a drop-in waiter oil change. Our business model simple cannot support it. Thankfully, there is a phenomenal Express Oil Change in our city that I can actually recommend. We send folks there if they absolutely cannot wait another 2-3 days.

The way credit card processing works (to my understanding) is the following: Card gets swiped -> 3rd party company processes transaction (fee) -> 2nd party processes the transaction (fee) -> major CC company receives (fee) There are 6000+ third party companies. We use Merchant Partners, since they have an unlimited flat fee every month (not a percentage fee) There are only 3 second party companies (I believe). Merchant Partners uses World Pay, which have very good fees. And then there are the major CC companies. Visa, MC, AmEx. Unless your 3rd and 2nd party companies are killing you (which may be the case), the majority of fees that you pay are going to be to the CC companies. We get a fee statement every month. AmEx is absolutely brutal on fees. Best is debit cards with no/little fees.

Thanks, Alfred. I have been considering hiring a guy to shuttle drive, clean the shop, wash cars, etc. This would be another task to add to his list ... a monitor-readiness drive after every CEL repair. Once we move from 4 techs to 5 this spring, I will pull this trigger.

This is really the best way to do it. We offer a shuttle service within 3mi of the shop. For 98% of all customers this is enough. The other 1% use Uber, a smartphone-based taxi service that is HUGE in urban areas. The other 1% use rental car, which they pay for themselves. The only time that we provide a vehicle for the customer is when a repair goes south, and it is our fault. In those rare cases, we offer to pay their Uber fares all over for the night (typically only $20) or get them a rental car for the night. I highly recommend downloading the Uber app and taking a look at it. You can get a customer a LONG ways for $5 on this thing ...

Yuck. Haven't seen that one yet, thank goodness. We just had a Volvo in with extended warranty. Entire steering rack approved @ 60% margin. Called the customer, and he was ecstatic. Granted the job was $2300, and he paid $3000 for the warranty, so....

Also, I love extended warranties. That 45min on hold translates to free $$, since all the work will likely get approved.

Get a wireless headset for your shop phone, so you can do work and walk around the shop while waiting on hold. I just got one, and our service manager has had one for a long time. Big time game changer to allow you to leave the counter and not miss phone calls too.

We are not currently doing this, and it bothers me. Verifying via readiness monitors is the right way to validate a repair. Do you keep the car overnight for this? Do you have someone drive the car 5-20mi to set O2's and Cat?

This is excellent. Agree 100%. No discounts, just an added service and a chance to look at the suspension. We did a $10 oil change when we opened shop. It really got the momentum going at our location. However, it really, really, really brought in the wrong kind of customer. We sold very little work on these oil changes, and the customer interactions were typically unpleasant. "Just gimme my oil change and hurry up wit it."

I completely agree with this. It is only a matter of time before reviews for his work start showing up on your review pages. What you want is a clean, consolidated brand name in the customer's mind for you location. i.e. "Let's go down to Pearson's on the corner, they do great work." Instead, you are going to get, "Let's go down to that spot on the corner where they do transmissions and some other auto work." Believe me, I know. When we bought our shop, 3 bays were an auto shop, 2 bays were smog inspection, 3 were a window tint shop, and 2 were a car wash. Try to reconcile that in in your mind ............... the outside of the building looked like someone barfed a rainbow of vinyl logos against it. 4 competing brand names with multiple offers for every service imaginable. I'd love to hear some stories on this one.

Any time I lend money to family or friends (essentially what you're doing if they do not pay upon delivery) I treat it as charity money. If they pay, great. But if not, it is fine, because I had already made it up in my mind that they would not pay. Doing it any other way will lead to grief, frustration, and fractured relationships.

I remember it being a few hundred with a few years worth of labels. Give them a call in the morning - their sales reps are awesome.

Zebra Printer from: http://www.rscsales.com/PROD_printingsystem.htm We crank out 5-10 oil change labels a day, and this printer has been great. The only issue is that the LCD screen on it will only work if it is warmer (40+ F). Before the shop has warmed up in the mornings, we have to guess what the LCD is saying. Also, RSC will custom design your labels for you to say and print whatever you want. Ours look really nice and professional, in my opinion.

Oakville, we actually did the same exercise a few weeks ago. We called the dealer parts department and got a price. We then called the service department to get a quote using that part. Turned out that most dealers in our area are using the dealer list pricing when pricing the part for a job. Therefore, if we matrixed the dealer parts, we would not be anywhere close to competitive, which is unfortunate. Anyone else have insight on this?

I should be more honest. They were not 100% free. However, we got them really cheap, and they were basically new having only been used for one or two lifts up and down on the movie set...

They are all 100% legit. All came in OEM boxes with OEM paperwork. All were new when we bought them with the exception of the Tech2, which was a refurb. We actually had to swap that one out under warranty, and the seller sent us a brand new one to replace it. Exceptional service. We have ongoing subscriptions to most of them. The ones that we use rarely, we just grab a 1 day subscription when we need it. All of these tools have saved us on multiple occasions when we reach the end of the Snap-On capabilities. There are just so many things an OEM tool can do that a generic cannot. Curious why you ask on whether we bought cracked vs. legit? That is a bit of an offensive question, I must admit. If we wanted cracked software, I would have gone on eBay and bought it all for well under $15k...

To get customers in your front door as a startup, there are 3 methods that come to mind: - Get a great location with a lot of visibility - Market like crazy - Wait for word of mouth to do it for you Waiting for word of mouth to work takes a looooong time. Additionally, I would argue that in the city, word of mouth is less valued than in a small town. So, you are left with the first two methods. Both cost money. A great location is expensive. Marketing is expensive. Both work. If you don't have a great location, expect to spend a lot on marketing to make up for it. Is 30k the magic number? No. It is the minimum number. I looked at minimum traffic across various industries to get this number. Go to the IHOP or Meineke webpages and look under "start a franchise." It will show you minimum stats for choosing a location. Or just buy into a franchise, and they'll do all that hard work for you. http://www.ihop.com/about-ihop/franchise-opportunities/usa#05 http://www.meineke.com/about/