Never leave a shop without checking all their work first.
- Thread starter Who
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The problem with running a "good" shop with well trained mechanics that like doing there job is charging the price to do it right. Most people getting quotes for there repairs don't know any better or care about the quality of the repair. So they use the shop with the lowest quote. The biggest factor for in making money at shops is having the work to do. so the faster/cheaper the more work you get because there are far more people out there that, like I said before don't know any better or care about the quality of the repair to there car.
I bid in home construction "painting" and its the same thing, we do top notch work and we bid it that way. We lose a lot of work to other bids over $5K of over the top work, on a $100K bid. We have fond that if you kill them with info on the bid braking it down to the hr of work then your more likely to get the work.
Maybe if these "good shops" did the same they could do better work, and charge to do it. If a shop tells me "ya we use crimp clamps not worm clamps" and "we heat shrink tube not tape and if there's any problem we will contact you." Then they got my work, shit cars on the way.
but every shop that has ever worked on my cars was cut corners in some way. Even a friend from church his shop messed up a caliper bolt and did not tell me. Come on a nut on a caliper bolt not the best.
sorry long rant, but if i could figure out how to run the best repair shop ever and still make money I would do it now.
I bid in home construction "painting" and its the same thing, we do top notch work and we bid it that way. We lose a lot of work to other bids over $5K of over the top work, on a $100K bid. We have fond that if you kill them with info on the bid braking it down to the hr of work then your more likely to get the work.
Maybe if these "good shops" did the same they could do better work, and charge to do it. If a shop tells me "ya we use crimp clamps not worm clamps" and "we heat shrink tube not tape and if there's any problem we will contact you." Then they got my work, shit cars on the way.
but every shop that has ever worked on my cars was cut corners in some way. Even a friend from church his shop messed up a caliper bolt and did not tell me. Come on a nut on a caliper bolt not the best.
sorry long rant, but if i could figure out how to run the best repair shop ever and still make money I would do it now.
Im the lucky one then I guess, Ive found a shop that does excellent work, and if something does need repair or they cant get something off they call you before hand and make sure its ok for them to continue. They are awesome. Im sorry for everyones mishap with the shops. Im sure its a pain in the ass.
Only once have a felt that money I paid a shop for work was justified... I had an alignment done that cost $300. Fairly pricey? Perhaps, but they charged so much because it took an extra two hours to get it into alignment because some components were completely frozen with rust. Looking at the bottom of my car, that's not shocking, lol. So, $100 extra instead of paying for replacements for the rusted parts and labour to install them was a pretty good deal. And damn did the car ever drive and handle so much better after. Eventually the parts will need replacing, but atleast it's been deferred until I get around to restoring the subframes.
They also told me parts were buggered up and did nothing to fix them and charged me an agreed upon amount for the inspection. Exactly as I asked. I replaced the parts myself with parts from Driftmotion. The shop was SmartAuto in Airdrie, for any calgary area people... they're good.
They also told me parts were buggered up and did nothing to fix them and charged me an agreed upon amount for the inspection. Exactly as I asked. I replaced the parts myself with parts from Driftmotion. The shop was SmartAuto in Airdrie, for any calgary area people... they're good.
I consider my self lucky. When I can't figure out something or when I can't an answer here, I have a shop where they service Lexus and Toyota's only. The owner of the shop he has had four Supra's. They never once tried to "pull the wool" over the eyes, they have always proved to me why I needed the work. They have a number of times not charged my for service's that they could have easliy charged me for it. They don't charge for little things. They once fixed my "Air bag light" for free. Very, honest,reasonable shop indeed.
I drove around this weekend and it looks like there are no leaks but I cant stand to look at those worm clamps. It looks like the mechanic overtightened the one on the heater core inlet nipple and deformed the piping. Guess I should leave well enough alone. Its hard to believe the same shop has a dyno in house, a mk4 for a daily driver and two custom made drag cars that they race. They were working on a highly modified corvette, a old school hot rod Chevy Malibu and the owner can fab and weld just about anything you can imagine. I guess I got the oil change guy to work on my car.
Lesson learned. Read your tsrm, browse the forums, ask for help, respect the elders on the forum and try and fix it yourself!!! Worse case scenario is having your failure towed to the shop to be fixed......Excuse me, maybe fixed!
Lesson learned. Read your tsrm, browse the forums, ask for help, respect the elders on the forum and try and fix it yourself!!! Worse case scenario is having your failure towed to the shop to be fixed......Excuse me, maybe fixed!
Koenigturbo;1407070 said:
Air bag light takes a sst or a home made light wired to 3way switch and 10 secs. I hope they did not charge anything. I would think most shops would try to charge out the ass to make more money on a way easy fix.
so that is a good shop you got there:bigthumb:
staticpage;1408452 said:
yep, this guys is pretty generous, H'e done a couple of things for me not just the light. I had another problem that he worked on (can't remember) that he spent alot of time on, but only charge me for maybe about 2/3 of the time he spent on it, he let a couple of hours "go" because I guess it took longer than he thought or was having trouble. This guy has a lot of "Thank you cards plastered all over his bulliton (spell check please) board saying what really good service he has...I agree