You don’t get paid to sell a job. That’s part of your budget. Advertisement etc etc that comes out of your pocket.
That’s exactly right. And that’s the point here, isn’t it. If you walk in and say “I need my head gaskets replaced” I will say “That will cost 30 hours of labor at $180/hr and $1400 for parts.” Simple.
But when you come in and say “my engine is leaking” and you have no idea why, where do we go then? How much work am I expected to do to figure it out before I start getting paid?
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That’s where your mechanic “experience” comes into play. Your ability to “estimate” should be heaps and bounds better than a non experienced mechanic.
Again, to be crystal clear, i’m not expecting the mechanic to do anything free. But he should be able to quickly point the customer into the right direction without charging an upfront, all encompassing diagnostic fee, until a real diagnostic is needed. I think that’s absolutely ridiculous and a piss poor business practice.
Who knows though. Again I’m not a mechanic so I’m only judging based off my other job experience and from my own logic. If mechanics feel the need to do what they do in terms of their pricing structure, they probably have their logical reasons.
Diagnostics are performed in order to find the real problem rather than to guess what the problem is based on the client’s description of symptoms. If fix is based on guesses, wrong repair is performed—result, symptoms still present, client posts negative review of facility.
Do doctors prescribe or provide suggestions for free, based on the patient’s description of symptoms—no. They would not only get a bad review, they would get sued, and if wrong enough, loss of license.
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Nothing is being fixed yet here. Its simply a glance over by the mechanic. Its incorrect to say you can’t guess, because “estimation” and guesses when used by an experienced person are educated guesses.
And doctors do guess all the time. Even in the medical world there are different levels of diagnostics and different tooling. A skin doctor can simply look skin mark and make educated guesses as to what it can be based on experience.
But if you’re the patient you’re going to pay for the visit to the office for that diagnosis to be made. Also, you seem to assume that a single symptom has a simple, single cause. With cars, there can be any number of reasons for something that is happening. Doing a proper diagnosis may take time and tests. As someone I worked with once quipped, “everything takes longer than it does.” One should never assume that figuring out why something is wrong is going to be easy or free.
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Wrong,
Right.
Wrong I have skin cancer and my doctor will take a sample and send it to a a lab for testing not guessing.
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The problem with oil leaks is you drive the vehicle and the different wind speeds moving under the hood from the grill, under the vehicle etc etc etc blows air across the engine depending on how everything like splash shields etc are designed, so a slow oil leak(s) that is not dripping can get blown about anywhere on the engine, oil also flows downhill, so you could have a bad valve cover gasket leaking covering the engine, masking the other smaller slower leaks such as a head gasket seeping, timing cover seeping, front main seal etc etc etc…
So if you guess at one thing you could miss multiple other possibility’s…
If you guess and say it needs everything just to cover your butt, and the customer takes it somewhere else for a proper inspection and they say no you only need X and it is 50% cheaper than the guess price, then soon word will get around you are way overpriced and just ripping people off, or you quote one price and once you start the work you add a lot of other items, or you only fix the guess leak and the other leaks now show up and you don’t know how to diagnose a vehicle, then you get a bad rep and go out of business…
Since a simple oil leak can be valve cover, timing cover, front main seal, rear main seal, oil pressure sending unit, oil pan, head gasket, drain plug, oil filter, oil filter adapter, oil cooler, any number of VVT, crank, cam sensors and or solenoids etc etc and that is just a very quick list of items off the top of my head and I KNOW I missed many more things that could be leaking just on an inline 4 cylinder, make it a V engine and now you are doubling up on anything attached to the head, plus now you have the intake end seals as well as other stuff that can all leak…
So in order to see everything, (have you looked under hood of a modern vehicle, heck, sometimes you can’t hardly find the oil filter), you can’t even see the top of the engine, much less much of the rest of the engine… Plus all the splash shields involved, Sometimes you have to remove a wheel in order to remove the side shied to get a good look at the timing cover area… So now if the engine is caked or covered in oil and no obvious drips, then you need to clean the engine and recheck, if you still don’t see anything, then you have to put it all back together so the owner can drive it for a few day, week whatever and then bring it back and start the inspection all over again, including racking and raising the vehicle and removing any shields in the way and sometimes the wheel and side shield, Now since a lot of that crap is installed with plastic clips and pushpins and stuff, they tend to break and or distort and since it was there when you started the customer expects you to put it all back like you found it, so now you have to order the clips and or find the ones you already have in stock that cost you money to buy… Plus you have to look up the parts needed, plus fluids and what shop supplies you may need, plus labor for the repair(s)…
THEN you have to go to the customer that sometime is going to 2nd guess everything you tell them and want you to Guarantee the estimate that you just gave them cause they are on a tight budget and or just a PITA like you that doesn’t have enough life experiences to understand what it takes to run a business and still feed your family…
And trust me, I left out many things both time wise as well as possibilities as to what a simple oil leak “guess” could be…
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My job is to provide clients with thoughtful answers to difficult questions. When someone asks me for a quick ‘off the top of my head’ opinion, I decline. Just like a good shop does when asked for a free quick diagnosis.
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You can’t and don’t always have to do a full on diagnostics for everything. If you’re a Lincoln tech and work exclusively on Lincolns, you’ll be able to make good assestions based on the make and the customers’s complaint. That’s the mark of an “experienced” mechanic I would assume.
No dispute, but I’d call those “educated guesses”; Based on years of training and experience, they’ll presume the problem is the most likely cause of the patient’s symptom, and use that as the basis for the treatment. If that treatment is ineffective, they’ll make another educated guess, the next most likely cause, or may do add’l testing. The physicians business model I look for:
I promise to use my education, experience, and skill to treat you, and I’ll continue to treat you (and bill you) until you are satisfied with the result.
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Agree. 100%.
That right there is the point we keep going in circles about here. Most people don’t want their cars probably or most likely fixed. They want it right the first time. Let’s take a real world example that I witnessed:
Customer says there is an oil leak. Mechanic says “Oh yeah, the Lincoln 2.0 turbo. Last 8 of those I saw I found leaky turbo oil supply lines. We can replace those for $600.” Customer agrees, mechanic does the work, engine leaks oil just like before. Mechanic looks further, finds “Oh the oil cooler is leaking. That’s going to cost $400 for parts and labor.”
So…now the customer has a bill for $600, is asked to spend another $400, and the car is no better than when they started. What do you do next?
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Along the same lines as Asemasters example… when I had my shop, my partner wrote most of the est at 1st, we had just done 3 in a row no cranks on K-cars with the 2.2/2.5L (don’t remember now, to long ago lol) So we had another one towed in and he went out and it sounded the exact same as the other 3 we hade already done that week, replaced a ton of starters on them back in the day… Well the other 3 were carbs w/out air pumps and VERY easy to replace… This one that he priced at the same price was 1 year newer and Injected w/ air pump and a PITA compared to the other 3… Labor was about double to 3 times normal amount and it took that long over one stupid starter bolt… Well I made him do it and we had a little talk about guessing jobs out…
BTW he was a little over twice my age and doubled the experience or more, but I was much better with the books and pricing things out (he had the same idea as you about doing free stuff)… AND I STOPED him from doing free stuff for his friends and regulars, raised the parts mark-up and hourly rates and almost doubled the shops income in a very short period of time … I gave them a discount and would throw little extras in to a point, like free balance if they were spending some money on other things, but damn if I was not going to make a few bucks off them… lol
So like other shop owners on here and shop managers as well as mechanics that get paid by the job (flat rate or %+ hourly/flat rate) have said many times and NOT ONE AGREES with you, once you have been on this side of the fence, cause we have been on both sides, then you can explain your theory’s about how the automotive world should be run and how well or not you are doing with a growth in your company over the long term… 
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Thats the nature of cars. You can never really fix them to “100%” and what can be done or not depends on the customer willing to pay for it but its a discussion between the client and the mechanic.
Well that’s one discussion I will never be having, because I don’t guess on cars. To put it in roofing terms, if you do $600 worth of work on my roof, and it still leaks just the same, I will tell you to take your shingles back because I’m not paying you $600.
Patient says they have a bad cold. Doctor says “We’re seeing a lot of bad colds this month. XYZ med helps, here’s a prescription” . Receptionist " That will be $600. Patient pays. Patient returns the following month “I still have the same cold”. Doctor says “Ok, sometimes the XYZ isn’t effective. Try ABC, here’s a prescription”. Receptionist “That will be $600”.
Is there a fundamental difference between how a mechanic bills a customer, compared to how a doctor bills a patient? .
Mr 305, you’re conflating two different things: the expertise of a given mechanic and how a business is run. A mechanic may be up to snuff on particular makes and models, which is to be expected, but expecting them to give out free advice is unrealistic. A mechanic’s shop has to cover rent, insurance, salaries, equipment costs, etc. etc. For them to charge a modest fee for a diagnosis is perfectly reasonable. Nobody should expect freebies unless it is from their neighbor or relative.
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Yes. Doctors bill you to correct their mistakes and patients gladly pay. Mechanics don’t have that luxury. 
There are different types of mechanics, different types of doctors, different types of customers. Would you hire a roofer or mechanic that would try a list of known repairs instead of just doing the one thing that needs to be done? Granted there are exceptions, but something as simple as fixing a leaky roof shouldn’t take more than one try.
It never ceases to amaze me that a “customer” will balk at paying a diagnostic charge, but gladly forks over money for repair after repair that doesn’t fix the car–let’s try this first, then that, and if it’s still not fixed we’ll do the other thing.
Back when I ran my own place, I had developed a local reputation as the diagnostic expert. One shop that advertised “free diagnostics” would refer people to me when they had exhausted their methods.
One of their customers came to me and said “Bob’s Auto replaced my spark plugs, plug wires, put a new coil on, and replaced the injectors. But it still runs rough.”
I said I would be glad to get to the bottom of it, the charge to find the problem would be $90. Customer said “Wow, you’re expensive.” I looked at her and said “Bob’s Auto spent $700 of your money without fixing anything and I’m the expensive one?”
After that I told Bob’s Auto that they should just sublet the car directly to me. Directing a customer to another shop makes them look bad, and also I didn’t have to deal with their broke-ass customers anymore.
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