Quote:
Originally Posted by Conor
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.
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People think labor means the amount of time spent -- it takes into consideration the expertise that the person working on your car has. If the work is averaged 3.5 hours but the guy puts in 4 hours -- he's only allowed to charge 3.5 hours. If you have done it in an hour, just consider yourself lucky that the person can do it faster and you didn't waste your time twiddling your thumb.
Since i've been doing work on my own car, I look at mechanics with a whole new point of view. Though I still hate the stupid ones.