Listen to THIS!!

mak2 said:

If I ask how much brake shoes are and they say 340.00 then I find out the shoes are 39.99 and the installation is the rest I could be PO'd about it.

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Well it could go the other way, if you ask for how much are the brake shoes and they tell you 39.99 and then when you get the bill it comes to 340.00 then you would really be pissed. The fact still remains one should ask. Sushi is in the computer business. In our area they are the worst at giving quotes and that only are for product and not labor. In fact for the most part they won't even give a quote for labor because they don't know how long it is going to take. And the other thing you talk about mark ups.

Get this, I have to buy a 20K van, by the time I fill it up with parts and tools I have almost 40k in that van. Competition only allows me to charge $70.00 an hour.

I have a computer guy come into service my server. He comes in a small car. Has a small briefcase with all of his tools in it, carries no parts and then charges me $125.00 an hour. And he probably only gets paid $15.00 an hour versus my guys getting over $30.00 an hour.

Each person just has to be more careful about getting prices. Markups are what they are, business's are not out there just to rip people off. They are struggling right now right along with everyone else.

murph

Like CB said, Sushi crossed the line when he took the filters to the mechanic. Implying he wants the mechanic to install them. This incurs a labor charge.
Had Sushi taken the filters and put them in his trunk and installed them himself later there would be no issue and no confusion over the charges.

Perhaps the dealer rep wasn't clear in his pricing of the filter cost in installation fee, but at least he gave the correct total price.
Sushi on the other hand was not totally honest with the mechanic he gave the filters to. If he had asked him to install them for free what kind of answer do you think he would have gotten?
The man was nice enough to tell you about filters and maintenance needed that you were not aware of, and still you won't pay him a penny for his knowledge or time.
Don't be surprised if they never point out anything needing maintenance on your car ever again. Then if it breaks because of no maintenance on items you didn't specifically request will you blame the dealership Sushi?

Okay, lets put it another way. You take your computer in to the shop for a tune-up, defrag and cleaning. They look at it and say to you "The power supply is going bad and it costs $89 to REPLACE it". Sure you can go right over and pick one up off the shelf for half that but the tech won't install it without a labor charge being paid.
The reason I used replace in bold was a direct quote from your first post

Deadly Sushi said:

Anyhow they quoted me FIFTY SIX damn dollars to replace the cabin air filter alone

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bobpierce said:

etarred and efeathered. I like it.

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A bit more litterally, we could try this:

Sorry Sushi, couldn't resist. My appologies to everyone else for posting a crappy paint-shop job.

Deadly Sushi said:

HA! This is where I think all of you have gotten it all wrong. Again..... there are TWO parts to this filter. Hard plastic thingy and the filter thingy. I ask Service guy how much for a NEW one. her said $56. NOTE: he did not say part plus install. I went to the parts dept. and ask not how much the WHOLE thing cost. Just the FILTER. I though Service guy was telling me the cost of the WHOLE thing (both parts).
This is where all the confusion is, along with MINE.

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It seems our pal Sushi is still in denial, which in this case is not a river in Africa.
I'd smack him some more, but my arms are getting tired.

ARgh! Once AGAIn.... I thought the price was for the TWO filter pieces together. I didnt even IMAGINE that they would charge to put the freakin thing in. I RIGHTFULLY assumed that it was part of bringing your freakin toyota back to a freakin toyota dealership after plunking down $31.00 beans for a oil change. I thought it was a 'value add' because of being a loyal customer.
They SHOULD include it in the price. Other dealerships have NEVER charged me for labor on having a look at your filter!! Thats bullshit! Its part of their FREAKIN JOB! They made money off of me from me BUYing extra parts from THEIR parts shop! I could have gotten the shit from the internet or some other place. :frustrado Whats next?! They going to charge me for driving the car out of the stall when they are done?!?

Deadly Sushi said:

:frustrado Whats next?! They going to charge me for driving the car out of the stall when they are done?!?

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Still in denial eh? Give us a shout when you get back from Egypt.

And just be glad there's not a dumbass tax, Sushi!

I personally think those that sell software are way overpaid. Heck, why should a salesperson be paid when all you are buying is the software? A salesman adds absolutely NO VALUE to the functionality of the software. Only the programers added value, and if the software needs a start-up team, then they add value, but salespeople do not. So they should not get paid. Simple. They should sell for the love and excitement of the close.

At least the mechanic added value.

I used to own a service station many years ago. I had to deal with frickin mooch creeps all the time. My time costs money. The mortgage keeps ticking along. The electric meter keeps turning. If you don't want to pay your fair share of the overhead, then buy $15000 of tools, put in a $5000 hoist, buy a $30,000 to $10,000,000 garage big enough to do this work in, pay $15,000 a year in insurance, etc etc. Or just get over it and pay the bill.

waybomb said:

pay $15,000 a year in insurance, etc etc. Or just get over it and pay the bill.

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Fred, I really hate to say this but that comment above has dated you something terrible. If I remember right the last time I paid $15,000 for insurance was back in 1987. Today with work comp I am paying well over 95K and that is way down from 2 years ago after I had some bad accidents that took my mod up to 1.34. It is now under 1.0 and am doing my best to get it back down to .73 where it was 5 years ago.

I was thinking a 1 bay shop, 1 lift with owner being the worker, as if Sush opened shop and actually had to make money. The guy hasn't a clue on what makes the world go-round.

Ya, mod rate really screws you up for 3 years. Helps make safety #1. I'm up over 125k now just on comp, Mod at .81.

But you are correct -1979 / 1980 timeframe for me working on cars and pumping gas for a living. Back when the big deal was the new-fangled electronic ignition and how to interpret what was being displayed on the scope. No more watching the points open, coil voltage spiking, dispating, etc. Ah, the good ol days.

And $15,000 worth of tools is dating myself too. Jeesh, just a good size box is about $10,000 these days. I bet there are plenty of techs out there with $60,000 just in tools and storage.

I remember a local parts house sponsored a tech session with an AC Delco guy on the electronic ignition systems. He had a HEI distributor hooked up to a battery, with one plug wire and a plug, and showed how strong the spark was compared to points distributor. He'd spin em and the spark plugs sparked and yes, there was a big difference.
So, he starts talking about troubleshooting. He pulls the wire off the cap to show how that was different. As spoke to us, he held the HEI distributor in his hand, forgetting it was still "live" and hooked up to the battery. So, while he's talking and holding the distributor, he spins the shaft! I about shit my pants it was so funny. He must have spun it at a few hundred rpm, and he got zapped a few hundred times in a very short time. He dropped the whole thing and danced around for awhile. I certainly learned from that!

Oh, ya Sush - any idea what it costs these days for a punk kid to go to UTI to learn auto repairs? Somewhere in the $60,000 range. And then if you are worth anything at all, you constantly sign up for training sessions, wasting nights just trying to stay ahead of your game,

Well the jokes on you! Everyone on this side of the monitor agrees with me.
I was not purposly out to 'screw' them as you all suggest. They alone shot themselves in the tailpipe.

• They didnt set proper expectations
• They didnt tell me what the filter was worth when asked. In fact it was like they were hidding the true value of the filter so they could make an extra buck off of me. Thats bad business
• When I came back with the part the service guy wasnt there to give him the part.
• The mechanic said it was fine if I gave the parts to him.
• After I gave the mechanic the part and then TOLD the service guy what I did they were upset. Upset at their own poor practices maybe??
• After NOT explaining the expectations in the first place, they decided to do that AFTER the fact.
• If they were listening, setting expectations, explaining properly and basically doing their JOB then they wouldnt have to look like fools AFTER the fact. Plus they lost a customer.
• Their FINAL mistake was being caught in their own game. Not revealing the TRUE prices when asked and having an intelligent (thats me BTW ) consumer look at options which they never expected, then becoming angry because they 'lost' on trying to trick, lie or be deceptive to a average joe.
• The Shop managers daughter is HOT!!!! And she always smiles at me.

There! Now if you dont see it MY way by now... even partially... then I have seen solar charged patio lights brighter than you.

Oh, ya Sush - any idea what it costs these days for a punk kid to go to UTI to learn auto repairs? Somewhere in the $60,000 range. And then if you are worth anything at all, you constantly sign up for training sessions, wasting nights just trying to stay ahead of your game,

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Try going to DeVry and getting a degree. Its a lot more then taking shit from customers AND studying and keeping up with the latest technology, how it works, what the costs are, how to integrate things into an environment youve never built, keeping your costs lower than your competitors, spending hours and sometimes days on a quote only for the other competitor to out bid you by a few dollars so your client can turn you down, PLUS learning hundreds of new SKUs per week, trying to haggle for the lowest price with your distributor and attempting to get shipping for free when the damn thing needs to be there the next day. And then everything goes wrong and you have to spend hours to fix it and then kiss your customers ass and appologize for something that wasnt even YOUR fault just so you can make $100 in profit to move a freakin piece of hardware. Oh and then you have to battle internally with accounting to get the customer either financed or have enough credit at Net 15 days! Then there are the times where your client wants something obscure and its NOT in the damn system and you have to fight 3 different departments to get the F-in thing in the system with a NEW SKU. Plus you juggle your time at the office doing everything and as soon as you go and head out to a client all hell breaks loose and youre not there to fix it becuase YOU have to deal with heavy traffic and horrible weather because youre on your way to kiss another customers ass. And that customer is going to expect our company to come to a screaching hault just to appease the assholes order for 3 ORANGE colored patch cables that cost $7 each!!!!!!

Waybomb, I respect you, but you wouldnt last a week doing my job. Oh yeah! and dont forget that youre on commission and your value to the company is based MONTHLY because you have a quota. The stress between MANAGER, CLIENT, DISTRIBUTION CHAIN, INCOME, SHIPPING and INTERNAL DEPARTMENTS plus INDIVIDUAL COWORKERS, ENGINEERS, YOUR OWN TECH KNOWLEDGE and QUOTING THE RIGHT PRICE TO THE RIGHT CUSTOMER AT THE RIGHT TIME is unbelievable. So I have no sympathy for a mechanic. Then I go home and hope my commission that month is enough to pay the FREKIN BILLS!!!!

Two of our claims dropped off last year so we cut 15K off our comp insurance. We are way down on employees right now but when we had 93 we were running around 150K for everything: comp, business and vehicles. We also have learned that having "Errors and Emissions" is a good thing. But you have to watch the "Errors and Emissions", some of them out there don't cover you worth crap.

How many employees do you have that your comp is so high. We have about 40 employees right now and I would have to look it up but thinking we are running around 9 per hundred. I would have to look it up to be sure.


murph

thcri said:

We also have learned that having "Errors and Emissions" is a good thing. But you have to watch the "Errors and Emissions", some of them out there don't cover you worth crap.

murph

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Hey Murph....what kind of "errors and emissions" you talkin'about? These kind of emissions?>>>>>>

Or did you mean "Errors and Omissions"?

mak2 said:

If I ask how much brake shoes are and they say 340.00 then I find out the shoes are 39.99 and the installation is the rest I could be PO'd about it.

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How much does a good scalpel cost?

In the hands of a man who knows how to use it, it's priceless when you're the one that needs to be cut open to save YOUR life.

thcri said:

How many employees do you have that your comp is so high. We have about 40 employees right now and I would have to look it up but thinking we are running around 9 per hundred. I would have to look it up to be sure.
murph

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Fluctuates, but average this year is 124. Our DART is 0.65. Incurred costs are at only $8,670 this year. Not bad for 124, eh. FY is calendar year.

Cityboy said:

Hey Murph....what kind of "errors and emissions" you talkin'about? These kind of emissions?>>>>>>

Or did you mean "Errors and Omissions"?

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HaHa real funny Pretty good at catching that. Yes Omissions

waybomb said:

Fluctuates, but average this year is 124. Our DART is 0.65. Incurred costs are at only $8,670 this year. Not bad for 124, eh. FY is calendar year.

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I see your employees sit around and not do much also. With that many employees and only that amount of incurred costs they can't be doing much Just kiddin. I would think your mod would drop at that rate by a lot. Think about all that money you put into work comp and the insurance company dishes out $8600.

thcri said:

I see your employees sit around and not do much also. With that many employees and only that amount of incurred costs they can't be doing much Just kiddin. I would think your mod would drop at that rate by a lot. Think about all that money you put into work comp and the insurance company dishes out $8600.

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Had a bad year a few years ago. We got serious about safety, but mostly case management. Premiums were up to 180k at one point with only about 100 payroll and a couple of 100k incurred. Next year should see a nice drop in rates. Supposed to meet with FGCH soon about new mod and costs.

But what the heck do I know, Sush has the most difficult job here. I certainly couldn't do his job. Sush needs a major outlook change. Seems like a real nice guy, just really missing something somewhere.

dzalphakilo said:

How much does a good scalpel cost?

In the hands of a man who knows how to use it, it's priceless when you're the one that needs to be cut open to save YOUR life.

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Then ask how much the surgery is, not the knife. I just took Shushi's side on this one because he asked how much the filter is. Not how much to have it installed. That was shushis point. From there I would have stopped by the parts store and bought one and installed it myself. Actually I just say change it so I dont have to mess iwht it.

Deadly Sushi said:

Waybomb, I respect you, but you wouldnt last a week doing my job. Oh yeah! and dont forget that youre on commission and your value to the company is based MONTHLY because you have a quota. The stress between MANAGER, CLIENT, DISTRIBUTION CHAIN, INCOME, SHIPPING and INTERNAL DEPARTMENTS plus INDIVIDUAL COWORKERS, ENGINEERS, YOUR OWN TECH KNOWLEDGE and QUOTING THE RIGHT PRICE TO THE RIGHT CUSTOMER AT THE RIGHT TIME is unbelievable. So I have no sympathy for a mechanic. Then I go home and hope my commission that month is enough to pay the FREKIN BILLS!!!!

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Ya, yer right, I don't do any of that. NOT! All of that, plus USDA, EPA, OSHA, receivables, IRB servicing, office women, local bureaucrats, coordinating a complete computer system upgrade-finally, making sure the customer is always happy, making sure my team does the same, and on and on...

One more thing. Customers are not assholes. They are livelihood. Change your focus, or you will go nuts and broke.What goes around comes around. ALWAYS.

Oh ya, one more thing, I'm sorta on commission - no sales, no money.

waybomb said:

Ya, yer right, I don't do any of that. NOT! All of that, plus USDA, EPA, OSHA, receivables, IRB servicing, office women.
<snip>

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Ooof! I see a harassment suit in your future.

It was tongue in cheek. I'm the one that gets harrassed there! I can't walk into the office 5 feet without them ganging up on me and having fun at my cost.
I get no respect!

Customers are not assholes. They are livelihood.

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Thats why the service guy should have told me everything up front at the dealership. irate: The whole misunderstanding would not have happened.
And just because I think a few clients are a pain in my ass doesnt mean I treat them with less respect or professionalism. Even though Im bombarded with unprofessional customer service and sales reps a few times a week.
You on the other hand sound like the type I would LIKE to do business with. Alas, the owner/manager isnt always there. And thats usually when you get the black sheeps of the company that mistreat clients that WANT to pay fairly for fair, honest service(s) and/or product(s).

Last night I went off in a rant about the titanic amount of stress that happens daily. It was not my intent to try and prove whos job is more difficult. But I have met people that think their job is sooooooo tough, and to me its a walk in the park. So I appologize for comparing your job duties and stress to mine.

waybomb said:

It was tongue in cheek. I'm the one that gets harrassed there! I can't walk into the office 5 feet without them ganging up on me and having fun at my cost.
I get no respect!

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I had a temp programmer file on me once. We hired her to do a six month job. She was hitting on me pretty hard the entire six months, but being otherwise engaged, I wasn't going for it. At the end of the six months, her position no longer existed. It was a government contract and there were no two ways about it, times up.

Anyway, our company is required to present all female workers with a form to fill out stating whether or not they felt they were being released due to sexual discrimination. So of course she went for it. Didn't get anywhere, but I still feel like there is that stinking little piece of paper in the back of a file cabinet somewhere in the corporate bowels.

Sushi,

There was a company that made "Widgets" on a production line by the thousands. One day the machine quit working and "Widgets" were flying all over the place as the machine threw them every which way unassembled.

They called the company that sold and seviced the machine, the repairman showed up and after looking the machine over, leaned over into his tool bag, pulled out a screwdriver and turned a screw... The machine began to produce the "Widgets" again in proper order.

The Repairman handed a bill to the company Manager for $2,000.00. The Manager started screaming that the Repairman was only there for a few moments and how could he justify that price for something he could have done with a screwdriver himself.

The Repairman looked at him and said, the screw turning was only $2.00, knowing which screw to turn cost you $1,998.00....

Anyone can cut you open when you are sick for $2.00, but wouldn't it be nicer to have a doctor do it for the
$1,998.00 instead...

Knowing where the filters are located on a car is worth something too...

In a dealership, the parts department sells parts over the counter to the public, they sell the parts to the shop also, the shop then marks them up again to cover their expenses also... nobody was ripping you off, they just run the different departments as seperate stores, shops, or whatever under the same roof. When sales department sends a new/used car into the shop to have something done, the shop charges the sales department for the work done to show that they are making their own way also.

In my shop, unless you ask first, I won't install your supplied parts, period. There is no warranty or profit in installing someone elses parts, so why should I install something that I didn't make a profit on that may or may not be bad. If that part failed, that customer comes back demanding that I change it out for free... ain't going to happen. If I sold them the parts and they were bad, I will change them out at no cost to them.

In the case of the air filters, it doesn't matter either, could have been a engine oil seal, same thing. The shop was in complete compliance with marking up a filter sale for profit. If you don't like the markup, take your business elsewhere, that is proper.

There are plenty of shops that will rip you off for real, I.E. charge for parts they didn't change, and your car may not run and you are out the money to boot...

In my shop, unless you ask first, I won't install your supplied parts, period. There is no warranty or profit in installing someone elses parts, so why should I install something that I didn't make a profit on that may or may not be bad. If that part failed, that customer comes back demanding that I change it out for free... ain't going to happen. If I sold them the parts and they were bad, I will change them out at no cost to them.

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I agree. Thats 100% fair.

The Repairman looked at him and said, the screw turning was only $2.00, knowing which screw to turn cost you $1,998.00....

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Agreed! But when we are talking about air filters, that changes. I'll take the toast out of the toaster to see if you think its done. If not I'll charge you $36 to put it back in the toaster.

Well taking the filter out to show you that it is bad, is just a teaser to get you to change it out.

"Most" people that take their car to a shop to get an oil change go through the same thing all the time. Nothing new, when I take my car/truck in for an oil change because I don't have the time to check it myself while being on the road, I tell them to just change the oil, don't do anything else.

Many times over the years they have brought a new filter that I installed with a little dust in it and still in very good condition, telling my wife it needed to be changed.... She politely told them it was only a few days old and will keep it for another week or two.... (that is said with a straight face).

You have all sorts in all sorts of business, so just be aware of what you want....

Deadly Sushi said:

I agree. Thats 100% fair.



Agreed! But when we are talking about air filters, that changes. I'll take the toast out of the toaster to see if you think its done. If not I'll charge you $36 to put it back in the toaster.

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Is caining legal in the U.S.? Just kiddin Sush! Do you take eggs and bacon to the restaraunt and ask them to cook em for free Sush? DOGPILE ON SUSHI!!