xrac

Competitor offers insights that can benefit your business. http://www.moderntiredealer.com/Blog/Lori-s-Listening/Story/2010/06/Competitor-offers-insights-that-can-benefit-your-business.aspx

Man Arrested for Stealing 14 Catalytic Converters in Broad Daylight Sorry...

Lucky Dog!

Our building is steel frame with a stud wall and fiberglass batt insulation with brick veneer exterior. The bottom eight feet of the shop interor is painted plywood and the upper portion is painted steel siding. The walls themselves are never that hot but our air temperature the last few mornings has been 92 degrees when we enter the building in the morning and that is with our exhaust fan running all night. That is because we are very well insulated and retain the heat. We have a east west orientation with one overhead door in an one overhead door out. This allows for good air circulation when there is a breeze. Lately it has been in the mid to high 90's and very humid. We run about four fans in the shop. There is not much we can do to change anything at this point in time. However, if we ever build a new shop I will seriously look at the cost of air condition and see if it is feasible. Do any of you have air conditioned shops?

It is not nice that he is sick but it is nice that you guys could be there. I am sure that meant a lot to him. Your father will be in my prayers. Hope that everyone had a nice Fathers Day. I did!

Joe, I loved that story. A few years ago I had a lady in her late seventies come into the shop. When we check out her 93 Saturn we found she had ran over a parking stop and had badly bent her subframe. She was going to have to have it replaced and didn't have the money and she was in hysteria. I talked to her and told her we could install a used subframe and if she would pay me $300 now that we would let her make payments on the rest. She did and we did and she became a very loyal customer. The last time I saw her was when she had a blow out about 1/2 mile from our shop and was again in hysterics. She had AAA and I told her to call them and I would be there to pick her up. I picked her up and got her and her car to the shop and we put a couple of cheap tires on it for her. Her old tires were dry rotted. A couple of months later I saw her death announcement in the obituaries. Then a week or two later I had a woman come in who introduced herself as this woman's neice who was handling her affairs. She asked me if her aunt owed us anything (she did not) and said she wanted to be sure that we were taken care of if her aunt had owed us money because she knew how kind we had been to her and how well we had taken care of her.

Cool! Your wife is to be commended. Amazon.com: Loose Change: Quilts from Nickels, Dimes, and Fat Quarters (That Patchwork Place) (9781564778253): Claudia Plett, Le Ann Weaver: Books http://www.qovf.org/index.php?page=cmspage&id=63 http://www.persimmonquilts.com/

Joe, that is a very good point. We have seven bays and five techs. If we give up an hour of time percentage wise that is not as great as a 1-2 mjan shop giving up an hour. In addition our labor rates and parts markup is also usually higher than the small shop which is also an advantage if using a lose leader.

Gonzo, I am really glad you are on this forum because I enjoy what you have to say. You are spot on! There is a segment of the population that is terrified of a repair shop. There is a segment of the population that let's their wallets talk. They tell me all they want is "their AC charged" but I tell that what they really want is "cold air". and there can be a big difference. Yesterday I had a woman looking for "free diagnosis on her AC". I told her we didn't do free diagnosis but we had a $29.95 AC check or if the we found the AC chargeable we had a $109.95 AC special that included the check, evac, recharge, up to 2 pounds of freon, and adding dye to find the leak. She walk out on the hottest day of the year still looking for something for free. What I couldn't figure out is if on a day with a 103 degree heat index she could not afford to spring $110 to get cold air what good was the diagnostic going to be to her anyway?

Shots Fired By Customer During Dispute Over Repair Bill Shots fired...

Thieves Steal 500-lb. Engine from Parts Store Sorry...

Yes! I would do it again. I am the type of person that if you let me borrow your truck I will leave more gas in it when I am done with it then when I borrowed it. That is just they way that my poor, Kentucky, farm family taught me.

If we get into the more complicated stuff we charge accordingly and we will sometimes ask the customer to authorize a certain amount of time upfront. Examples of where this applies is diagnostic engine tear down or chasing an electrical problem. Other times we tell them we have no idea how long it will take and we will have to charge accordingly but we will be fair. Of course our guys don't like it and gripe some but it is not a deal breaker. The way our compensation works it is not bad since our guys are paid a percentage of parts and labor with a base guarantee.

Today I had a woman approached me at the service counter telling me she thought she was out of gas and di I have a gas can. The car was at the Sonic Drive-in which is next door. Of course I had a gas can and funnel available but no gas. There is a station about two blocks away. I was busy but thought it was too hot to have the woman (about 55) walk to the station, purchase gas and walk back to her car carrying the can. I took her to the gas station, she paid for the gas that I pumped. I brought it back to her car, pumped it into the car and we got the car started. I then learned that while all of this was going on her grown son, his girlfriend and their two kids were feeding their faces at the Sonic where the car had been pushed when it ran out of gas. This grown son was doing nothing while momma fixed the problem. I spent about 20 minutes of my time when I was busy working. I used my car, my gas, my gas can, and my funnel and all I got offered from the woman was a thanks. That was it. I got no offer of anything for my time or my gas or the use of my stuff. Now if the woman had asked me if she owed me anything or if she had offered me $10 or $20 for my efforts I would have politely declined. But my point is the way I grew up and was taught you would have ALWAYS asked if you owed anything or would have ALWAYS pulled out some money and offered. I basically supplied her with a $20-$30 roadside assistance call for free. My gripe is a lazy son who would let his momma try to solve the problem while he did nothing. There is no way in the world I would have ever done that to my mother. My other gripe is the lack of courtesy and respect that was shown by not offering some compensation or asking. The woman had money because she had to get change to pay me for the gas and she was on her way to Wal-Mart. Am I just crotchety and old fashioned? Should this have bothered me?

Trust is earned, the way you earn respect. So, how do you earn it? A little bit every day. It's all a part of what we say and do -- how we treat the customer, handle a crisis, deal with the media. Here are seven ways to build trust. 1. Deliver top quality customer service; it reflects the brand and the culture of your company. 2. Make good on all promises and guarantees. 3. Make it personal; make the customer feel like a real person, not a number or sale. 4. Be truthful in all marketing and PR communications; don't over-promise and under deliver. 5. Seek honest feedback and reward those who give it (discounts, coupons). 6. Go the extra mile to resolve a problem, and then go even further (free meal, free stay, discounts). 7. Follow-up with appropriate questions, suggestions or offers to help in the future. Build trust one customer at a time.

It use to be that a lot of AZ parts weren't very good and CQ and NAPA's quality was superior. We would not buy AZ parts and we bought a lot of CQ stuff. However, honestly anymore it seems to me that the quality at AZ and Advance has improved and the quality at CQ and NAPA has declined. We now do quite a bit of business with both AZ and Advance and we have used O'Rielly a lot in the past. The stores carry many of the same brands such as Wagner, Cardone, Monroe, Felpro, Borg-Warner, or Dorman. So if I buy a Felpro problem solver gasket set it really doesn't matter where they come from. Our AZ, Advance, and O'Reilly stores all have experience commercial sales people and dedicated commercial phone lines. This has not always been the case but is true currently. Currently we do a lot of business with Advance, AZ, and a local independent jobber who is a distributor for AC Delco and Motorcraft.

This is interesting. Is it a glimpse of the future? My link

Joe, I support the right to repair act. From experience I know that there are too many times that vehicles have to be returned to the dealer. This is especially the case where body control systems are involved. It is good to know that you were one of the speakers at the hearing. It is not flattery to say that based upon the body of your work that I have been privileged to read and learn from on this forum I would conclude that you are as strong an advocate for the independent repair shops as could have been found. Thank you for talking your time to speak for us.

This Life Insurance needs calculator may be a planning tool that will be useful for some. Planning ahead is something we all need to do. Life Insurance - Insurance needs calculator results - LIFE Foundation

We sell a lot of used engines and transmissions but 9 times out of 10 we buy them from LKG and they give us a 12 month 12,000 mile parts and labor warranty. The only time we don't use LKQ is where the price difference is large and the labor time is small.

Nice Machine! How much? Shops in our area seem to favor Coats what influenced you to buy Hunter?

No-Brainers for Success: Own Customers for Life http://www.tirereview.com/Article/74143/nobrainers_for_success_own_customers_for_life.aspx

Top Sales Strategies to Win Over Customers http://www.tirereview.com/Article/71005/top_sales_strategies_to_win_over_customers.aspx

Those are tough situations. We had something similar recently on an 1989 Volvo. It wouldn't run and the people towed it into the shop and didn't talk to us ahead of time. If we had spoken to them on the phone we would have told them we couldn't work on it (we know better) but because it was already here we took a look at it. We found a problem and got it where it would run (about a $375 repair as I remember). Lo and behold it came back in the next day still running but with intermitten problems of losing power and missing. We spent the next week and a half off and on working on it. We replaced a lot of parts and the funny thing was everything we did made it run a little better but nothing fixed it completely. As old as it was and with limited diagnostic information on it we finally gave up and told them it would either have to go to the dealer or to a specialty shop we have here in town. We removed all the parts we installed on the second go around and didn't charge anything for our time on the second go around and shipped it. The owner was understanding because they knew all the time we had put into it. As far as the SRS light is you might try checking the charging system voltage. Some time ago we had an SRS light on on a Honda but no codes. The dealer had also been unable to determine what was going on. We found the charging system was charging one volt over which was triggering the SRS light but no codes. What you could do is sit the owner down and have a long talk with him. Tell him you are not refunding any money because everything that was done was needed and even more work is needed. That you would call this car a mechanics special and that the car in two more years will be old enough to have a beer. If he is not a mechanic it is not EVER going to be special but it is going to be a money pit. Ask if he has ever seen the movie "The Money Pit" with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. If he hasn't he should go rent the movie and watch it because that is what he has bought.

This is a good article. Is anyone using email effectively? Service Zone Story