And to add to what db stated so well, that lucky to see 1/5 part is usually by the flat rate system which does not mean that a mechanic will actually make 30 dollars an hour. If he spends 1.5 hours on a 1 hour job then he’s already down to 20 an hour and there’s a huge amount of time going over paperwork, waiting on authorizations, test driving cars, waiting on parts, etc, etc, etc; all of which either pay nothing or has to be considered part of the job.
Working for dealers and having to wrestle the greasy warranty pig kills that total even more.
@ok4450, that’s why I left the dealer and now work as a fleet mechanic for a very large city
It’s not as glamorous.
I don’t work on expensive automobiles anymore
Now I work on anything from a Ford Focus all the way up to a class 8 Peterbilt with air brakes
But . . . no more BS and I always know what my paycheck’s going to be
@db4690 After thinking about it I need to correct my statement of never running across a crook. I guess I had blocked it out of my mind. Rollie ______ at the transmission shop was and probably still is surely a crook. Story below if you care.
I needed a trans overhaul on my 86 Riviera and went with Rollie because he had a year warranty, was $200 cheaper, and promised a one week turn-around. After a week car wasn’t started. Through the seven weeks the car sat in pieces gathering dust with a number of excuses for the delay. I’d go over there about every other day and always something. The next to the last problem was the wiring harness inside the trans. I said I wanted a new one along with the solenoids which he charged me for. So finally after seven weeks I got the car back, but the 4th gear code kept coming up. I took it to my normal shop who discovered a bad wire harness and had to order it from Detroit, so Rolly lied. He’d never replaced it. Cost me another $700 to get that done. Plus he wrote the bill such so that I paid more sales tax on the parts and decreased the labor cost. I found out from the State that he also owed $500,000 in back sales taxes. (yup half a million in sales tax). At any rate the trans lasted less than a year and ended up having it overhauled at a good shop for another $1800. Heaven only knows what he did for his money. Probably just slapped clutches in and put it together. He told me if I wasn’t happy with his work I should just sue him. Naw, wrestle with a pig and you get muddy yourself.
Oh yeah, I confronted him. Claimed a credit on the credit card, notified the Attorney General and the sales tax division for tax fraud. We aren’t friends for sure. He lied through his teeth and weasled out of it. Thing is the part required pulling the cover on the trans again which required half pulling the trans down on a FWD car so the $100 part cost $600 to put in.
There’s no way though that I would let him have the car again even if he was willing to fix it. Once they have the car and its torn apart, there’s nothing you can do. He even had it blocked in inside the shop with parts all over so it couldn’t be towed out. Sometimes you just take your lumps.
I go by there everytime I go to Menards and I’ve been tempted to flatten a few tires but that was years ago now and guess I had forgotten it.
You are paying for one or more lifts, compressed air equipment, fluid exchange equipment, the building, and any other specialized equipment. This equipment has to be maintained. Then there are disposal fees for just about everything, and the staff. I’m not a professional mechanic, and I’m sure I missed some costs. The cost per hours doesn’t seems so bad given what you have to pay for.
@db4690 no doubt the guy doing the work won’t get what anyone pays a shop. No point getting you panties in a wad as that has little to do with this discussion. It was about paying huge amounts for labor because of possibly being charged for too many hours.
Bing, I’ve not only met crooked mechanics (the hard way), but I had a friend who worked at a now-defunct dealersihp that was so crooked he couldn’t stand it. He became so soured on it that he went into another field.
Unfortunately, as the economy sours some shops become crooked. And there develops a “greay area” between honest and crooked, that area of “recommended extra services” that are totally unnecessary goven the age and mileage of the particular car. And than there’s the “grey area” of things like filling the tires with nitrogen…for only a few dollars more.
I have met several business owners who became entrepreneurs with the expectation of earnings above some imagined figure based on estimates that were off the wall. Once committed, these new entrants to the world of business ownership made paying themselves the amount they felt they deserved each month the first priority and then looked around to see what opportunities were available to fill the til. A few minutes glancing through this forum will show how auto service business owners milk customers hoping to cover the life style that they are sure they deserve.
“I have concluded this mechanic is a crook just our to bilk me for more money than this car is worth…”
Then why did you agree to have the work done? You stated he called you and by the wording BEFORE he started the work. So you could have said no, and if you felt at that time he was a crook why leave the truck with him? If it’s really more than the truck is worth $1,800 ($1,000 plus the 700+ for the ball joints) then why have the work done at all?
It looks like the OP will never be back to provide details and this is one of those bash and run complaints.
Many people automaticially assume any amount is a armed robbery because the vast majority of people simply do not like spending money on their vehicle; a tool they use every day.
In this case 700 dollars could be a very fair price for the work; depending upon what was done, the locale, and so on. As to the other amount, I tend to think there is some confusion about what they were told.
Are there crooked mechanics? Yes. I’ve worked with a few and most weren’t around very long.
Are there a larger number of incompetents who should not be servicing cars at all? Yes.
However, many people also associate a mechanic who does not fix a car the first time in and on the cheap as an incompetent and that’s not always the case. With modern era cars many things are not black and white. It’s also common for one neglected little thing to snowball and create a number of problems.
The kind of person with this mindset probably wouldn’t hesitate to pay an accountant $200 an hour to prepare their taxes or an attorney $300 an hour to represent them in a case against someone, perhaps an accused unscrupulous mechanic. They would probably also accuse a building contractor of shoddy workmanship because the roof they installed on their house only lasted 30 years. Mechanics are still at the bottom of the barrel, though, because unlike attorneys and accountants who deserve their $200-300 per hour, mechanics are not trained professionals who have an investment in their profession (never mind certifications or weekly trips to the tool trucks to keep up with the auto repair industry). They are ignorant, uneducated grease monkeys who try to rip off innocent women or mechanically challenged men. Interestingly, the doctors and lawyers were the ones who screamed the loudest about the shop labor rate of $60 per hour when I was doing this for a living.
mark9207, I have to agree with you about some doctors and lawyers being some of the most difficult to work with.
College professors and grad students can also be an equal PITA. I used to work in a large college town and the sheer ignorance of some whose life is academia is amazing and even downright comical at times.
My youngest son runs a financial office at a major university and the biggest pain he has to go through is fighting with professors who demand to be reimbursed for everything under the sun; legal or not.
Recently, one of them jumped all over a new employee of my son and even made a veiled threat about the reimbursement; which he was not legally entitled to. He was trying to bleed the system.
My son told him to take a hike and the professor, screaming and cursing, said he was coming back down with a sleeping bag and would blockade the doors letting no one in or out until he got paid.
“College professors and grad students can also be an equal PITA”. @ok4450–I was a college professor for 44 years until I retired and unfortunately, I have to agree with you. It seemed to me that 80% of the new faculty that came on board in the last 15 years I was on the faculty were obnoxious, self-serving, immature brats. I really liked teaching and working with students, but I got tired of dealing with many of my colleagues. Part of the problem is that the university where I was employed insisted on publications and bringing in grants for being awarded tenure. When I began my career, we were told that our first responsibility was teaching. If we did research and published, that was great, but it had better not detract from our teaching. In the later years, faculty were told to publish and bring in funding and just keep the lid on in the classroom. In my last ten years, new faculty were hired at a lower rank, given lighter teaching loads, and paid a higher salary. When I questioned why the new faculty were rewarded this way, I was told that they were doing research. I then produced my resume which included numerous publications and asked about the publications of the new faculty. I was then told that the new faculty had to be given time to begin their research agendas. When I wrote my letter requesting retirement, I attached reprints of my latest publications, my student evaluations that were very good and my service to the institution. I then put a note at the end to my department chair that said "This represents ‘Geezer Power’. What are your new faculty doing?"
I do most of my automotive business with an independent shop and have done so for about 18 years. My first experience happened after Western Auto had installed a new starter on the car we let my son drive while he was in college. The engine would barely turn over when it was hot. When I went back to Western Auto, the service manager claimed that there was nothing wrong with the starter. In deperation, I went to the independent shop and explained the problem and offered to pay for a diagnosis. I had the car fully warmed up. The manager came out and confirmed that the engine would barely crank. He hooked up an ammeter and measured the current draw which he said was way too high. He then disconnected the ignition and repeated having me attempt to start the engine which had the same result. He wrote the current draw down on a piece of letterhead from his shop and sent me back to Western Auto. There was no charge. When Western Auto saw the results of the test, the starter was replaced immediately. I have been a customer of this shop since that time. I have sent my friends to them. Every so often, they give me a freebe even though I don’t ask for it. I have had a similar experience with an independent tire shop where I buy tires and have alignments done. I find that treating a business with respect pays dividends in good service. I don’t go price shopping. Our vehicles run perfectly which means far more to me than possibly saving a dime to have a cut-rate job done that would give us trouble down the line.
I’ve ran across several dishonest mechanics. I’ve ran across incompetent ones also. The honest ones would always make it right (or at least try to). The other ones would just try to stick it to you.
@triedaq Where I was it was pretty much open season on white male 50 year old plus and also black male 50+. Replaced with idiots by younger female just for the sake of blowing things up. All four of us managers in administration were eliminated in one fels swoop. I felt sorry for some of them whose careers and marriages were ruined, but I blamed it on the current business school crap that was being taught and people fell for. Didn’t really matter what your accomplishments were, if you were over 50 and didn’t like to spend 80% of your time in meetings discussing Jungian theory, you had a target on your back. It’ll take some time for organizations to recover again.
@Bing–There is a medical diagnosis for these young know-it-alls that you and I have encountered. It is a disease that is called "jungle syndrome. The symptom of this disease is that the affected person smells like ape manure and then thinks he/she is Tarzan.
