xrac

Great story Gonzo. As a franchisee we get mystery shoppers once each quarter. They come into the shop and either have us check a fictious brake problem or check it over for a trip. It is usually a waste of our time although occasiionally we sell something off these. You would expect it to be a waste of time because they only pay the shoppers something like $10 to go to this effort. Anyways we had a girl come in that wanted us to look at the brakes. She was a mystery shopper. We found her front brakes almost metal to metal. When we told her she didn't believe us and when we took her out and showed her what she had she said her dad would fix it because he had just put pads and rotors on it a few months before. Not being very diplomatic I told her that her dad might know how to put pads and rotors on but he didn't know how to recognize a caliper problem ( I think the slides were sticking). If he didn't fix that the same thing would happen again. She didn't like that and we got a bad mystery shopper report because I was critical of her daddy's work. Go figure.

It was much easier to maintian that type of margin with Midas was strictly an undercar shop. Now that you do everything how has that affected your margins?

Whew! I thought you guys just didn' want me on there.

Alex, I know this is the first Father's Day you have had without your Father. I hope you had a great day with great memories of your dad and not too many tears. I had a good day and spent some time with one daughter and my son.

I tried a long time to get onto the live chat tonight but could not do it.

Gonzo, some people are nuts. A few months back we had a guy tell us he had looked his car over from top to bottom and we had lost is well lock key. I apologized and got all the info from him and order a new key. About a week later he calls me up and says he found it in a vary obvious place where he failed to look. Now I am stuck with a week lock key I can't send back. I told him that but he didn't apologize or offer to pay for it. Fortunately it was only about $15.00. There was also a time a woman accused us of putting a different brand of tire on her car while it was in our shop. I swear we did not touch the tire. While would I want her USED tire. Eventually I had to call the police to get her to leave. It was absolutely crazy!

I don't know about this live chat with someone named Gonzo hosting! You can't tell what that might lead to. He sure has some strange things happen to him.

When we don't charge enough we find ourselves working 6-7 days per week at 10 hours or more per day. When we are doing this and just scrapping by we find ourselves tired, exhausted, and burnout after a few years. We suffer and our families suffer because we are selling ourselves and services too cheap.

The biggest mistake new owners in this business make is not charging enough for labor and not marking up parts enough. People just do not understand how high the cost of doing business and overhead can be. We have been in business 12 years and my biggest concern right now is my margins are not good enough. I do not just want a job but also a return on my investment. If people want to pay the prices that Auto Zone or Advance charges for parts they are not going to be my customer. Most of the time we do not install customer supplied parts. However, we do make occasional exceptions especially in dead times.

Welcome to the forum and good luck on your new venture.

Cool beans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The one about the wipers that wouldn't turn off!

Gonzo you have a really good article in Brake and Front End this month. Nice to see you man up!

I hear that all the time. Have you also noticed how that no matter how many different things are done on an invoice that it is aways I spent $XXXXX to have this fixed when the issue in question was only a portion of what was repaired? I had this recently with a window regulator that failed. This woman said that she spent $500 to have this fixed ten months ago. Boy was she giving me down the road! However, I explained to her that: (1)we don't make the parts, (2)it was still under warranty and we would take care of it, and (3)she actually only spent about $200 and the rest oif the ticket was other repairs.

It is harder to find someone now than any time in my 12+ years in this business. I lost by best technician last week. It was necessary. He was undermining my service manager and creating unrest. What he really wanted was the service managers job. Needless to say it has been fun to say the least. The employee you are talking about reminds me of someone who worked for me a few years ago. He had about 4 years experience and came to us from Pep Boys. He worked for us three days and I let him go. If he had worked for us a whole week he would have bankrupted us with mistakes, combacks, and goof ups.

Gonzo, I never served in the military but appreciate those he have. Gonzo in my book you are a hero. Semper Fi, Gonzo, Semper Fi. God bless you! God bless America.

God bless America! God bless our military on active duty. God bless the families of our military for their sacrifice. God bless all our wounded military who have suffered and scarificed on my behalf. God bless all those and their families who paid the ultimate price. God bless you all. I salute you and I thank you.

It is not only from the internet but we get it all the time from so and so told me. 90% of the people calling to our shop for a price on a thermostat to fix an overheating problem do not have a thermostat problem. Some will listen to us when we talk to them but some are convinced that all we are trying to do is sell them repairs they don't have to have. The truth is we are wanting to help them fix the problem and if we replace the thermostat first they may not have enough money left to do the needed repair. It often goes like this, my brother-in-law who works at Toyota told me. Then you find out that the brother-in-law does cleanup and detailing or he is a salesman.

Gonzo have you ever had people come in an tell you what they think is wrong with their car because they read it on the internet. When it is all said and done you find out that the problem was nothing closed to what they were talking about. Those are some of the worst customers of all.

Joe, that is a tough one. You do not want to turn away customers because you are spending advertising dollars to get them in the door and new business is essential to replace customers attrition. However, if you overbook you do not do adequate time to inspections or customers and you do not have time to do the repairs or maintenance that you could sell. If you try to staff up to handle the walkins you may then find yourself with too much overhead. We also find ourselves with a building too small (7 bays) to handle the traffic we can generate at certain times. We try to schedule as much as possible and to not take walkins if it overloads our schedule. I try to be very apologetic and to schedule them for a future day. In our case this works about 70% of the time but we still probably lose 30%.

Great comeback and answer Joe!

My best score, third time, was 41,000.

Last September we had a car towed in that needed about $100 worth of repair. This woman called occasionally but then dropped off the face of the earth. I started mechanics lien paper work a month ago. Week before last she showed up to pick up the car and paid the bill. After sitting for 9 months the car wouldn't start and now needs a fuel pump. We diagnosed and gave an estimate but we have no word on it. My guess is another six months. I would much prefer she just come and tow it home.

After church I am taking my wife and two of our children and seven of our grandchildren to the famous Moonlite Barbecue for lunch at my treat. They all love to go there and we will have a nice time.