xrac

Our business greatly improved when we quit advertising cheap oil changes and did more value added offers. Of course, we did wind up firing a lot of the old clientele and converting others over.

Gonzo you have been working on cars too long.

Alex, my son had three girls but then finally had a boy who will be four next month.

You are better off that this happened than if you had sold her a set of tires. She is the type of customer one does not need.

Agreed. If the customer gave your service advisor the wrong information it was her mistake not his.

Wow! What wonderful news. Congratulations to Alex and the missus.

Sounds good to me. Find out to what point the r611 is updated. Hunter is soon going to stop supporting these older machines.

Hook up with some tire wholesaler who has on line ordering. You will find vehicle tire figment information and perhaps plus sizing as well for free. If no where else go to Tire Rack and you can also find that info.

All one can do is be very strong in explaining the possibilities that that can happen. You do that disclaimer up front. Hopefully we never have to go there and we would probably cut the customers some breaks should it occur. This is also where one can pull up information from the internet and show it to the customer. This allows them to know up front that you are not blowing smoke and that this is a known problem.

My top dog tech is a lover of Ford engines and a master at doing these tuneups. We price them at the cost of the plugs with our standard markup plus book labor which will be somewhere between $450-$475. Any broken plugs are an extra $50 with a maximum of 4 or $200. So far he is batting 100% on doing these tuneups and successfully extracting any broken plugs. Of course if we couldn't remove a broken plug then a head job would be priced and sold.

We keep spark plugs including separated ones at the front counter to explain the problem and what can happen on the Ford engines. If this woman thinks she can get it done for $200 she is not a customer you want anyways. Usually by the time they come in they also need a coil and who knows what else. You will have $100 or more dollars in plugs cost alone. If she finds someone to do it for $200 it will be someone either ignorant or starving. Either way her results probably won't be what she seeks.

Gonzo it was a good one. Reminds me if the guy who wanted us to find out why his daughter's Beetle was blowing black smoke out the tail pipe. The answer was he screwed up the installation of the mail order turbo he installed 2 weeks ago.

Keep looking for techs. Ask around. You may have to hire one away from somewhere else.

Do you mean just a grease monkey?

I am not Joe but I have a few customers who swear by a certain brand if oil and will bring it with them. We will change it and charge labor and a filter. I don't see this as the customer being cheap but picky about oil brand. You know that was a big thing when I was growing up.

Anyone else use Winworks?

We have a disabled 1971 Toyota Landcruiser FJ40 in our parking lot. There was no steering box available so we pulled it and sent it off to be rebuilt. It will take 3-6 weeks to get it back. People who take on these vehicles often have no clue as to cost and time.

I just read this articled by Joe in Ratchet + Wrench. It is a really good article. I don't think Joe has posted it here yet. http://www.ratchetandwrench.com/RatchetWrench/August-2014/A-Bad-Review-Ends-Up-a-Boost-in-Morale/

Welcome! Glad you joined us. There are a lot of good people on this forum with lotas of useful input.

Same to you Joe.

The problem is people who want cheap easy answers where there are none and a business (Autozone) that wants to sell parts regardless as to whether they are needed or not.

The cars that require the full synthetics are always either newer or high end cars. Why spend $30-$50 thousand and then refuse to spend an extra $30-$50 bucks on an oil change to protect that investment. In my mind there is only one word to describe that and that is STUPID.

Good article Gonzo! Many cars that people value really have almost no value other than for parts or scrap but it is hard to get people to see it. We recently did about $5,000 of work on a vehicle that probably isn't worth $1,500 because of sentimental value. The guy spent the money but now I think he regrets it and I wish we had never gotten involved with it because it has been a big headache.

I am currently demoing a Hunter Hawkeye system. The costs is about $28,000 as we will use it with our existing drive on Rotary Lift. We currently have an older Hunter machine and average about 1.5-2 alignments per day. Currently alignments are too cheap in this market and we only average about $60 per alignment not counting suspension work. The bulk of our alignment business comes from Discount Tire referrals. We discount alignment work by $10 to their referrals. I would like to buy the machine as it will increase our ability to do cars that we are turning away now including steering angle resets, vehicles with bigger tires than our heads will handle now, and vehicles with custom wheels that we do not want to clamp to due to potential damage. I will expect that this would increase our alignment count by at least 20% plus the new machine will be faster to set up and should shave 15-20 minutes off our time per car. To make this investment profitable I see the need to increase the price of alignments and increase the number of alignments that we do. However, that will raise other issues such as do I have a dedicated alignment technician? If I do that I probably add a technician. How do I handle suspension work where a drive on rack is needed? Currently we often use the alignment rack for suspension work. We have seven racks: fIve two posts and two drive on. One drive on is pretty much for oil changes and the other is the alignment. Unfortunately we are pretty much land locked and unable to expand. I don't want to relocate because this is the best location in our city in many ways. Any thoughts in general about how you would approach it? Have any of you dealt with anything similar? I am just brain storming!

Do you guys have a minimum charge and does it go on every ticket?