xrac

Ain't gonna play golf with you. You are too good for me.

Gonzo, how do you find the time to write, play gold, and occasionally fish?

Gonzo, this is just the reason that I always like to keep a jockey size technician under the age of 40 working for me. It is always nice to have someone you can stick into those tight places or have little hands to get to the spot no one else can reach.

For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow, which nobody can deny! Happy Birthday Joe!

Anyone know anything about VAST Enterprise retail? http://www.aftersoftna.com/vast_retail

We had one full of trash that stunk to high heaven. When we started to work on it we found live maggots. We told the woman she had to clean it up ands bring it back before we would work on it. She did!

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We follow the OE schedule except for oil changes.

That was a pretty sharp crook on that one or a used car dealer telling an unscrupulous tech to just fix it where the light didn't stay on. You see a lot of shenanigans from some used car dealers. There are a few in our town that will not let a customer bring a used car to us for a pre-purchase inspection. Guess why? We had one used car salesman start insulting us when we found problems on Porsche he was trying to sell and my service manager almost physically threw him out.

It don't make sense does it! We had this case in our town:

How do you have no smokers. I can hardly ever find a tech that doesn't smoke. I am the only non smoker among my employees.

I don't make the tech's pay for this kind of stuff unless I know they were negligent. For example a guy who bust a tire on a lift arm because he was pulling in too fast pays for the tire. However, this guy has been with you a long time. That should count for something. Maybe you ask him what he thinks is fair. Perhaps you buy the parts and he does all of the labor on his own time or you split the cost of parts and he does the labor.

The techninicans story sounds a little fishy. He may have just made up the dog part of it to make it sound good. If you can fix it and that is acceptable to the customer than I would fix it.

I haven't pulled the trigger on them yet but I intend to give them a try. Their stuff looks really good and is industry specific.

You did nothing wrong as far as I am concerned. All of our employees should be on the open market. They are not our chattel. Besides I have never had an employee leave me that was happy. If my employee can better himself elsewhere than so be it and he has my blessing although it may mean some extra work and adjustment on my part in the short run. I have hired employee from competitors on three occasions. On a different note is anyone having a hard time finding technicians. It has always been hard but it seems to be harder now for me than ever before.

Joe, I think that is really good advice. I think of a couple of times when we had screwed up that I asked the customer this and the customer actually asked for less than I would have offered if I had been the first one to speak. It is the old adage (I think I learned it from Harvey Mackay) that whoever names the first price loses.

We try to make $20 per tire on tires that cost us from $0-$80 and $25 on tires costing us from $80-$100. Tire costing us above $100 we mark up $30.00. We then charge $16 for mounting, balancing, wheel weights, valve stems, etc. If I am dealing with phone quotes or walk ins that have never been in our store I will usually trim $5-10 off per tire. We sell on average about $14,000 in tires per month. This has worked fine for us. We have great flexibility on the brand of tires we carry and I try to have what is the best value for the buck. We stock about 200 tires but have access to three major warehouse overnight and local hotshot delivery from four locations. As a rule the local pricing is not as good as our overnight warehouses. This works well for us as I compete by offering some brands that are not what the competition is selling (Kuhmo, General, Continental, Yokohama, Summitomo, etc.) and snag alot of special pricing tires. We have a PepBoys, Walmart, Sams Club, Goodyear dealer, Firestone Dealer, Sears, and two large independents within one mile of us. When I quote prices I quote an installed price plus tax.

How many times have I had someone tell me you just did this work to my car only to look up the invoice and find out it has been 2-3 years.

Maybe we should all develop a disclaimer form for the customer to sign if they need tires and don't replace all that are needed or if they want new tires mounted on the front instead of the rear.

Congratulations, and we can all say we new Gonzo when he wasn't famous! Just keep working on the standup stuff. I predict great things. You may have to hang that multi-meter up.