Quote:
Originally Posted by fistpoint
Yea, I've heard all that before. The solution is simple, raise the price on the hourly rate rather than lying about how long it took.
And here's why your statement is false: has anyone here actually gotten a "refund" on the unspent labor hours when the job did in fact take multiple times less than the book quoted? I think the answer is going to be a unanimous NO.
They claim it takes 3 hours, they call you back with the car ready to pick up after 1 hour...you still paid for all 3. Obviously it didn't take 3 if it was done in 1...so why do they charge the full amount? Because the book is full of shit! It was written with a first time mechanic using hand tools AND taking both a shit and lunch break in mind...working out of a broken garage.
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It's a standardized labor time. If you do a job 100 times you're going to get
really good at it. Why should you punish the skilled technician working on your car for being good at what he does?
Real world example: It pays ~3.5 hours to change the timing belt on a lot of Toyota cars/trucks/vans/SUVs/etc. If I set you up in my garage at home with the factory repair manual and all of my tools (yes, even air tools), do you think you could change the timing belt in my Camry in 3.5 hours?
This includes:
- walking to the back yard to get the repair order (like walking to the office in a professional shop)
- walking to the front yard to get parts
- going across the street and halfway down the block to get the car, pulling it into the garage
- doing all the work, not screwing it up or getting the car dirty
- road-testing the car
- filling out paperwork
- walking back to the garage to begin your next job
I can do most Toyota timing belts in under an hour. Because I've done them a zillion times before. Does that mean I should only charge an hour of time for my expertise?
And for the record, when it comes to diagnosis, I often don't use up the full estimate when it's something ridiculously fast/simple like a loose gas cap. YMMV, everyone's different.