For all those people arguing about customer supplied parts: from a technician’s point of view…some technicians get paid on “flat rate”, meaning that they have a certain hourly wage and however many labor hours they turn out, whether weekly or biweekly, that is the number of hours they get paid for with said wages. Others, like me, make a percentage of commission off of parts and labor. so if i do a job that pays 2 hours labor and the part is $200, and the customer brings his own part, I am essentially doing to same job for roughly half the price. No way…waste of my time.
And what if I do install customer supplied parts? Let’s say the part is defective or something, and I install it anyway, even if I tell them up front about no warranty. Who would be to blame in this situation, the dumb dumb customer, or the professional who chose to do shoddy work, instead of something that he could stand behind and be proud of? More often than not, the technician gets blamed and the shop ends up eating the cost.
I have heard of court cases where customers sued shops for installing customer parts and the vehicle had problems after the fact, even though there was a disclaimer in writing stating that the shop was not liable, and it was signed by the customer. Guess who had the pay up? The shop, the judges tended to rule that the technician was the professional and should have known better. Not to mention all the hours of work missed by the employees because of having to sit in court for days on end. i could go on for days. the general pubic can be pretty dumb sometimes. you can always go somewhere else.
If all you care about is bargain prices instead of quality work, then you were never my customer in the first place. Let’s not forget that you probably rely on that vehicle on a daily basis to get you to and from work, etc…and you wife probably drives your kids around in it. If you want to slap $10 brake pads on a rotor that has been grinded on for weeks on your family minivan and is probably to the point of being unsafe, I am not your man…"You mean to tell me, sir, that you will not put tires on this vehicle with the cords showing simply because “it is my wife’s car, I don’t drive it.” I thought you guys loved each other? Oh well, that is your choice, i told you about it so if you leave here, blow a tire and flip into a ditch, or worse, your wife does…it is not my fault…ph there is more…