lmcca

how do you guarantee it? your post says, pay you 10$ or whatever the price and you give the information. So, if they dont show, you give the money back? plus, what they think is wrong with the car is not something allot of shops go by. the customer has no access to testing equipment, repair information etc and generally lacks the skills to diagnose their own car problems.

What market are you trying to get? The majority of people dont care how a car works, they just dont want to pay allot to fix it and i cant imagine there would be such a giant list of people wanting to learn how there car works. Targeted adds on facebook and google would seem to be a better market, cause so many are already on the website.

hmm, well, not very much as its just a number. Keep one thing in mind, the people on your website most likely dont have much money, thats why they are there. The ones with money, google, find a shop, see the reviews, decide which ones seems to fit them, see if its a nice shop then go to it. The ones on an actual website are looking for a low cost repair so for me i would have to becareful as to what i pay for that information. Plus, the biggie, so we pay you for this info then the customer is like, thats way too much, click. So now, i paid you and i got nothing. I know its advertising but " I " feel that its advertising to a lower end customer or one that is looking for the cheapest repair they can find. my 2 cents.

revised: repairpal and openbay. They do that. But to answer you question, maybe. You got to show that customers will come to your site, if its a monthly fee. If its a per customer or per job then i guess it would depend on what that fee is and how it is applied, flat, percentage etc.

repairpal, carfax, openbay, autozone to name a few.

we have had it for a while, we actually stopped the dvd's and just use the menu board now. The programming is very good and seems to get people to watch it, we found ourselves watching it too, weird.

nope, we are in it too. Look, i know you old heads (no offense) dont want to see this and i have seen your reasons and they are valid. You cannot stop this, the consumer is tired of the guy that is ripping them off and they want answers. It just so happens that these "online" companys are doing what we want, gathering customers. Why would you not want to be apart of this? I am signed up with repairpal (he you cant get your pricing in between there scale then i wouldnt be taking my car to you anyway), openbay and other thing that i can get our name out there on. I give our price, if they dont want it then they move on, but we are participating. We just recently signed up with openbay and have done a few quotes, nothing has come of it but i didnt sign up to expect it. TBH i dont know what to expect from it but the internet is going to be changing things in EVERY industry and it will continue, so, again, adapt or die.

Adapt or die

haha, awesome

well, the key word being "good". They will delete anything that is not good praises of mitchell1 so it kinda gives you a false hope. While we had good stability with mitchell and it was indeed a good program it does have its limitations. They dont care too much about the customer, they let us go after 12 or so years and didnt seem to care at all. i have another post around here with the crap that came from them. Basically if they get in over there heads they will just stop helping and leave you in the mud. But the program is pretty good and above all to be usefull there should be a forum that is NOT controlled by the company.

glad to hear that, i always thought they were not charging enough to ignore you

lmao, Mitchell1 helping its customers? lol, thanks, i needed that......

i agree with this, gonna be a challenge to get people to use it. To do that it has to be something they are really interested in. However, your on the right track, what you need to do is find a web marketing company to promote you on the web, smart phones are starting to overtake desktop computers as the main medium to the internet. Research is finding people are NOT looking for stuff in the community in front of their pc's as much as they are in their cars looking for it on their phones. Google is moving to this with pushing, promoting websites that are mobil optimized, meaning they are setup to cater to smart phones, we have all seen this, some sites are super easy to read on your phone, which are mobil optimized and the others, you have to zoom in and out to read the info, which are not mobil optimized. As seen here: http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/21/google-mobile-search/ google search will favor a site that is optimized for mobil phones. The carfax app or others would be the "apps" people install like mycarfax stated, gives more functionality. Good luck!

to me its a free perk. They cant have it too loud and cant be a distractor, never have had a problem with it.

geez, cant be right unless they are doing mostly 10 oil changes.

i hear ya, and yes, there are hacks out there and we dont like them and agree good techs are getting harder to find. Im actually not the owner, im the general manager but thanks!

you didnt hit a nerve, im not upset, i dont care what you do, i was merely pointing out your level of thinking is flawed. i hope you change that type of thought process when you open a shop or you just might be here asking why your failing have a good one!

its not that we found this guy in the gutter and said, here, log into this website, your a tech now. You should climb up out of the dark ages, i understand you dont like technology and it has made you feel cheated some how but it is a tool same as your wrench, not using it because its a computer that has prior technician experience and knowledge collected on it is just dumb to me. But hey, to each his own, i prefer a collaboration of things for a diagnosis, you want only whats in your head, my monies on the guy that can verify his work. Seeya.

why would you want to do it that way? i disagree with most of what you said. I have seen great techs use identifix etc to form their diagnosis, your stupid not to if you have it available. A good tech knows that information is power and if you can shave of 15 minutes, 20 minutes or whatever off of your diag time then your are an even better tech. Why should a tech waste the time to set up a smoke machine when a production vehicle comes in with a engineering problem. Thats the beauty of production cars, most of them have the same problem. Case in point, the best tech i have ever had was an identifix king. He would pull the code, identifix the problem, verify that problem look for maintenance and move on to the next one all the while our "seasoned" old school guys are wasting their time piddling around with the other stuff. He always ran more hours, INCREASED HIS ACCURACY and increased his productivity way more than the others. Why wouldnt you want EVERY bit of information to help you give a better, more accurate diagnosis is beyond me. Enjoy.

i do, to a degree. If you turn them into a business only thing then its asking for problems. Humans are naturally social, (look at the crap facebook) and they NEEED to talk it out sometimes. How many times have you heard in your life, "dont keep that stuff inside man, you gotta get it out...." Well, maybe these guys have no other avenue to get it out, maybe they need you to listen, give insight, a pat on the back, share a similar life experience (that worked out) with them. Sounds kinda funny but its a needed thing to do. Employees have to be maintained just like a car, never change the oil in your car and see how long it lasts, never be social with your employees and see how long they last.... Anyway, my two cents..

an added note, you could base a bonus of THEIR performance. If they reach a certain number of hours then a bonus. Allot of times techs are given bonuses based on the overall shops performance but if one tech is not pulling his weight then he still gets a bonus because the shop did great or the other techs picked up the slack and the service writers did good, so why reward that person?? We use a bonus for techs based on hours, they reach 45 hours in a week and we start to bonus them, its simple and straight forward, we dont show them our p&ls as their is no need and its not their business. I know successful shops that dont pay any bonuses too.

hell no. This guy needs to know his place. I would sit him down and find out what his problem is. If he wont tell then i would tell him his attitude is not appreciated and toxic to the other employees and that if it continues he will lose his job. There is nothing worse than toxic employees, some you can fix, great! and some you wont, such is life.

sounds like your techs may be managing you? this is a hard issue in some cases and we had our share to. We had one guy that complained like no other that if he was going to look at something he should get diag time. Then i guess one day he wrote up something and the service writer sold it and now he is my best guy at looking for maintenance etc. He saw the hours it was producing him and he does good with it now. My advice would be to write down what you would like to see. Put it to paper in an easily understandable way. Have weekly meetings explaining the importance of this to them, the customer and the shop. Notice i put "them" first? Keep harping on it, dont be overbearing but be consistent. If that fails to work then you will need to be more firm. It can even lead to replacing someone, as harsh as that may seem it sounds like the shop could be running down a road to a problem and you cant let your techs dictate how to steer it back. They can help but its you that is in charge. The simply are NOT doing what you ask of them, you may have to make them.

Having freon levels drop over several years is normal and doesnt mean there is anything wrong, it will permeate thru the seals and is nothing to worry about. Add dye, top it off and, come back if it gets warm again, that way, you will know its something more.

We do