Why would you not assign the menial tasks to an entry level person making 1/2 of what your top flight mechanic makes? It makes no sense to have your most skilled labor doing menial tasks. Other industries learned this decades ago when the shift to lean resources started. I wouldn’t have one of my most valued resources wasting time buying parts for prototypes for example. The skilled labor only does the actual diagnosis- where their skills are required. Having that person locating cars in the lot etc is wasteful and a sure way to send them packing and your business with it…
@TwinTurbo let me be devil’s advocate for a moment, playing the part of a dealership owner or manager. GM corporate has determined that a Check Engine light complaint while still under warranty will pay .3 hours. That means that the customer pays nothing, but GM will reimburse me .3 hours of labor time to diagnose the problem. And since my mechanics are flat rate, I will pay them .3 hours of their wage. Now you’re suggesting that I add more labor force to my payroll–a lot porter, a test driver, etc.–in addition to the diagnostic tech. Why would I do that? I’m getting paid .3 hours for this diagnosis and you want me to increase my costs and cut into my profit. How hard can it be to find a car in the parking lot? You think this is going to drive a guy away? It’s not the guy I need, it’s that little machine in his hand anyway. I can get the lot boy to hook it up and tell me what’s wrong, can’t I?
@insightful, in the case db4690 mentions and assuming a 12 hour warranty job done in 6 hours.
By all rights, if the warranty job pays 12 the mechanic should get 12 because corporate will pay that 12 hours no matter what.
What can, and does, happen is that as db mentions a service manager may use lame excuses as to why the mechanic won’t get 12 and should be happy with 6. Ergo, the mechanic gets 6 along with a foul attitude; the latter which he is rightfully entitled to.
I read an article on warranty repairs some years ago in an auto magazine that was written by some alleged expert.
This expert claimed that “if a warranty job pays 4 hours and the mechanic spends 6 hours on it then they just ask the factory to reimburse an additional 2 hours and they will”. When hxxx freezes over first.
Warranty can also be padded but that present another problem. Car makers watch the amount of warranty claims presented and if things look a little out of the norm the dealer may get audited and possibly end up eating some claims. They don’t just give the dealers a blank check.
I personally resent the large amounts I pay for mechanical work, when the men who do the work get very little of it. As much as I pay, it just irks me that they are being short changed.
And in many, many cases what the mechanic does get usually involves verbal fighting to get.
At one dealer (Subaru) the first thing I would do every Friday night is go over my prior week records on labor times. About 3/4 of the time my paycheck would be short and come Monday I’d have to go and start sniveling about it.
It was always blamed on “an oversight” and I’d always ask why if it’s a random mistake do the odds not ever make it come up long now and then.
In the OP’s case I strongly suspect the mechanic is doing that work behind everyone’s back.
When he was asked if doing this was ok he did not say yes; he just said don’t worry about it.
That’s a politician non-answer.
It could be that dealer is hosing the guy all the time and he’s going to ride that train until he’s made to get off. If he is getting ripped all the time I can understand why he would resort to doing sidejob work on premises. It’s not ethical and I don’t agree with it but it’s understandable.
Oh boy. I have no intention of reading 13 pages of this and have on purpose not kept up after the first couple pages. The sermon Sunday was on the 40 days in the wilderness and temptation and how easy it is but what we lose in the process. The temptation to cheat employees and not pay them fairly. The temptation to cheat our employers (of which I have none). The temptation to cheat those we do business with. But what we lose in self-respect in the process to save a few dollars.
More than once I have complained that someone didn’t charge me enough. I sent more money to a guy who fixed my roof than what he billed me because I thought it was too little. I won’t do business with anyone I consider dishonest or a cheat. I picked up some steel today for a project. The place I get it from is 35 miles away but on every invoice is a Bible verse for the day. And they live by it. Those are the people I’ll go out of my way to do business with.
I made a point of doing the work of three men most of my career. including running from point a to point b , at times, working thru breaks and lunch, and starting work at 5:30 am whenever possible.
results?
slightly higher pay, many enemies at work , a crippled body, and now, mild poverty.
my son is now a workaholic, like his dad was. I hope that my admonitions, and his observance of my physical condition will sink in.
save your body a little at least, you ll want to use it later…
“I personally resent the large amounts I pay for mechanical work, when the men who do the work get very little of it. As much as I pay, it just irks me that they are being short changed.”
@irlandes: Me, too! Especially as all the dealer is, is a middleman of sorts: the customer needs expert service; the mechanic supplies the service–all the dealer does is provide the place of doing the job and advertising, etc. An efficient marketplace tends to root out middlemen!
As for my comment earlier, the one time I shopped for a new car, the books I read (yes, it was a long time ago) said that “you often can get a less-desireable car for little to no profit: the dealer is banking on making his money “upselling” prior to signing…and on back-end service.”
But everyone’s describing a system in which the service department is barely tolerated, vs. a cash cow. Has something changed in the last 20 years, or was the book wrong all along? (Longer warranties? Less periodic service?)
As for morality, I’ve never “moonlighted” on the clock…but what I HAVE done was to take a “McParts” job as a way of augmenting my “shadetree” work: identify folks with broken cars, and (discreetly!) offer my services on my off days to do the job at a discount.
(I hesitate to add that, given the high moral standard set here…but, oh, well!)
Given the usual threads here, I kinda find it refreshing that the OP went to a dealership for service, was satisfied with the work, and happily paid the bill.
My local McParts stores tolerate shade tree mechanics hanging around looking for quick, easy work to make a few bucks. I guess if the young hustlers do acceptable work the store benefits from them hanging around. One McPart’s store manager is an old friend from an old mom and pop parts store years ago. He often calls one of the shade tree hustlers to get minor repairs made after hours for desperate people. I have seen several of the e-mails that his company has gotten from drivers gratefull for the help. But at the corporate level the practice is discouraged I was told.
“More than once I have complained that someone didn’t charge me enough”. @Bing–I agree with you. I find it as hard to be charged too little as charged too much. For years I did a lot of my own work because I didn’t have the money to pay a " real mechanic". After I did have a reasonably good salary, I still did a lot of my own work. I had a colleague named Wes who was in elementary school with me and at the time, lived right around the corner from me. I was putting a water pump on my car and really turning the air blue. Wes came around the corner and said “Why are you doing that? You obviously don’t like doing it. There are many people that like doing that work and need to make a living. Use my rule: ‘If I think a job is going to take more than 15 minutes, I hire someone to do it’”.
I decided that Wes,was right. I have since taken my ramps and creeper to Goodwill. I don’t even do my own oil changes any more.
I have been given enough. There was a great head mechanic and service manager at a. DeSoto/Plymouth dealer and another independent mechanic who had a shop about a half mile from my house for whom I mowed the grass. Both of these men taught me a lot about auto repair. This really saved me when I was in school and didn’t have much money. Now I’ll gladly pay a professional mechanic to do a job much more quickly and better than I can do it.
“More than once I have complained that someone didn’t charge me enough”.
Same here. If it’s with someone who is starting out or who I sense could really use the money, I usually insist on giving them more.
let me be devil’s advocate for a moment, playing the part of a dealership owner or manager. GM corporate has determined that a Check Engine light complaint while still under warranty will pay .3 hours. That means that the customer pays nothing, but GM will reimburse me .3 hours of labor time to diagnose the problem. And since my mechanics are flat rate, I will pay them .3 hours of their wage. Now you’re suggesting that I add more labor force to my payroll–a lot porter, a test driver, etc.–in addition to the diagnostic tech. Why would I do that?
Don’t most dealerships already employ people in those roles? Surely even a smaller shop has a least one junior person on their staff. Even so, let’s say you don’t. Yes, that is exactly what I would suggest you do. Instead of 3 top flight mechanics earning top flight pay to do work including menial tasks, you have two top flight mechanics and one junior mechanic that does this kind of support role as they are learning the ropes. Utilize your highest paid people more efficiently…
I’m getting paid .3 hours for this diagnosis and you want me to increase my costs and cut into my profit.
I’d say you’re actually wasting potential profit already because you’re using your most valued resources on jobs they are overqualified to do. Maybe your profit would go up if you changed the resource pool to more effectively utilize them?
How hard can it be to find a car in the parking lot? You think this is going to drive a guy away?
It’s not hard but you yourself were complaining about losing money because it’s all included in the book time calculation. And yes, if your top flight mechanic feels he is underutilized or not being properly compensated for his work, they will leave.
It’s not the guy I need, it’s that little machine in his hand anyway. I can get the lot boy to hook it up and tell me what’s wrong, can’t I?
Well, if that were true, we shouldn’t be having this discussion. I suspect you’re being facetious. No one would suggest you do not need qualified mechanics to do the actual diagnosis. It’s how you’re using them that is being questioned.
@TwinTurbo Yes, I was being facetious, in fact through the whole post. As a lifelong technician I would never myself subscribe to the ideas I posted, hence the “Devil’s advocate” disclaimer.
But the fact remains (I think, anyway) that many dealership or shop owners actually believe some of the things I said above. “My business is only getting paid .3 hours to diagnose this Check Engine light, and you want me to hire another porter because my prima donna lead tech is too lazy to walk 50 yards out to a car? He’s only getting paid .3 for this too, if he wants to make money he’d better find a way to do it in that timeframe. I have a business to run.”
That top mechanic may not leave so soon if he’s being treated this way. That takes time and effort. I think it’s human nature to find the easiest way to solve your problems. In this case, the answer is just to make more money at the current job. Sure, he’ll only flag .3 on the diag, but by the time he’s done with his management-imposed inspection sheet he’ll have found 5 hours worth of upsells. Do that twice a day, you’ll bill 10.6 hours a day.
On the upsell issue, I saw a Ford dealership shop upsell a new water pump and V-belts on a timing chain job and they billed additional labor to R&R the pump and the belts. I was amazed.
OK, I understand now. It is hard to tell those nuances in postings sometimes.
Well, if I was the tech and I spent the time to do this 3 or four times a day, that could add up. That’s fixed time I cannot leverage against book value. I’m friends with a few professional mechanics and have heard the complaints time and again. These guys know the jobs that yield good book to actual time ratios and can do quite well if they aren’t off doing stupid things like searching the lot, waiting at the parts counter, etc. Everyone could benefit from smarter use of those resources…
Sure, he'll only flag .3 on the diag, but by the time he's done with his management-imposed inspection sheet he'll have found 5 hours worth of upsells. Do that twice a day, you'll bill 10.6 hours a day.
Only if the customer actually buys the upsells, and I think a good portion don’t. Yet he may have still spent well over .5 hrs getting paid for only .3.
Things such as waiting at the parts counter, searching the lot for cars, and the always onerous warranty repairs are things that can’t be avoided.
I can’t even begin to remember how many times I’ve walked around hunting for a car that was not in an assigned area or in some cases; the used car was sold by the dealer or the customer had a change of heart and left. Get handed a Repair Order and then the keys can’t be found; or the car is dead and has to be pushed into the shop with a collaborative effort by the other guys, etc.
At the last dealer where I worked I was warned that the parts department was a sore spot and that turned out to be very true. A simple oil filter and 4 or 5 quarts of oil usually meant a 15-20 minute wait which translated into customers having to wait forever on that .2 oil change and the mechanics getting progressively more POed by the second.
The mechanic has no say-so at all when he’s just spend 4 hours on a job and warranty says 1 hour is all you’re gonna get. Test drives both short and long? Warranty is not going to pay a single minute of it.
PvtPublic is also correct about upsells. Many people offer thanks for alerting them to the problems and then it leads to my spouse will fix them, I can get it done cheaper elsewhere, or I’m not gonna fix any of it, etc.