While it’s not unusual for sites to set up roadblocks to prevent unsubscribed entry some seem totally oblivious that their efforts have moved into the overkill bracket. After several years enjoying MOD for several vehicles my recent computer crash lost all pass words, user names, cookies, etc and when I received an email from Mitchell informing me that I needed to renew a car I attempted to login in and renew my subscription but got caught in the Twilight Zone chasing my tail and hitting dead end after dead end. Maybe for those who grew up with the www getting behind the broadband curtain would be no big deal and possibly MOD and other such subscription sites find sufficient profits from the under 50 crowd to consider myself and others 60+ as expendable. It seems so.
Funny thing is I have paid subscriptions to various periodicals and news sites that I somewhat painlessly reconnected with while MOD and a political forum were beyond my patience to reconnect with. Has anyone else found themselves banging their heads against the www wall at a paid for subscribed site that kept blowing off efforts to reconnect? And ironically I just went back to a years old subscription to Alldata and quickly subscribed to the current vehicles that I deal with with no problem but I preferred Mitchell’s wiring schematics.
Oh well. The tech savvy world is rushing off to leave me filing points and adjusting carburetors using Chilton and Motors manuals.
I always liked the motors manuals, especially the time guides. I’m a big fan of their website, especially the monthly magazine. Lots of great write-ups. I particularly enjoy reading Karl Seyfert’s and Dan Marinucci’s articles. Mark Warren’s column is also interesting, but it’s really cerebral, and you have to be wide awake to fully comprehend it.
Chilton is hit or miss, as I mentioned a few weeks earlier. Not reliable enough for professional use, in my opinion
As for alldata, we have it at the shop I work in. The information itself seems reliable and correct. But I don’t find it easy to navigate. Much harder than the Toyota, Honda, GM and Ford websites, for example. Again, this is only my opinion, for what it’s worth.
The only experience I have with Mitchell is their study guides.
What “model” of Mitchell are you using? Is it different than what you used when you were still in business? You mention needing to update subscriptions for a particular car. The only system I’m familiar with is one where you pay for a number of licenses and then you have access to all their info, regardless of car.
I wasn’t even aware that there was a DIY version.
More to the point, Mitchell has made a number of changes to their professional systems the last couple of years. When entering a new customer into the system, I just need to look out the window and enter the license plate. Mitchell comes up with the VIN and decodes the year/make/model/submodel/ for me. As soon as I create a new repair order Mitchell looks to see if there are any recalls on your car that have not been done, and I can print them out and direct you to the dealer for service. I know some of their updates have been a little buggy, perhaps you’re caught up in that?
Now you’ve got access to information which applies to that particular vehicle, for an agreed upon time frame
This is straight from the horse’s mouth
MITCHELL 1 DIY PRODUCT PRICING
All pricing is in U.S. dollars for a single-vehicle subscription:
Mitchell 1 DIY comes in convenient and affordable subscription terms of:
1 Month (31 Days) : $ 19.95
1 Year (Best Value!) : $ 29.95
4 Year (Best Value!) : $ 44.95
I subscribed to Alldata when I got no reply from MOD re the dead end their site left me at.
When in the auto repair business I bought into Alldata when it was on discs and ran MSDOS. My first exposure with a PC was due to seeing digital data was far superior to buying more volumes of manuals. For a few years I had both Alldata and Mitchell but I let Alldata drop because it was Mitchell’s superior wiring diagrams and detailed specifications that were the most commonly used data. As digital data grew to require windows and internet connections I found the www world and Cartalk more than 20 years ago. And also I found an email site for professional mechanics called International Automotive Technicians Network that was free for years but was forced to charge a fee as it grew. Do any of you pros get to that forum?
Things have changed a great deal since I first got into earning a living busting my knuckles and if I could have seen what was coming I might have continued driving all those years back. Certainly anyone wanting to get started in the auto repair business these days will find a $teep learning curve with a lot of bumps in the road looking for success. Along with $100,000+ in tools and equipment they’ll need to tie up with one of the auto data sources. I can imagine that overhead in even a small shop would run $1000/day.
The shop where I work now has both Mitchell and Alldata. Mitchell is used more, I think, at least by me, but a couple of other guys like Alldata. One thing is for sure, they both have enough holes and errors that they require the other for complete coverage. We also have Identifix but I’ve never used it and it’s more of a “silver bullet” search engine than an actual info system.
IATN has been around for over 20 years and it has grown tremendously. There is a wealth of information to be found there, it’s a place where serious professional technicians can interact and help each other out and find resources not always available elsewhere. There is a Tech Help section, where one can post a specific case problem and ask for input from others. However, it has devolved over the years to the kind of questions you see here on this forum. “I’ve replaced the coil pack, injector, spark plug, and wire.” What could be wrong?"
That a shame about IATN @asemaster. The site was the most demanding internet site I ever joined and it seems there was a trial period before full acceptance. In the first years a modem dial up to a phone number in the UK was required. And if someone was loading up the board with basic problems members could flag them and make them disappear. A fleet shop in Chicago bailed me out of a problem with Ford F-450 rear axles with a cure that amazed me.
Yes, they have actually done a decent job of keeping it to qualified professionals only and maybe I’m being a bit harsh on what the Tech Help section has turned into. In fact I haven’t visited that part of the site in years, I quit monitoring that aspect of it when questions that could easily have been answered by a TSB search started showing up. And maybe I’m a better mechanic now than I was 20 years ago. There’s still a lifetime of info to be had there in the various forums, not all of it mechanical. I have learned volumes from the management and industry issues forums there.
There are tools you can get (for free) that keeps track of your passwords for every website you want.
My home provider is XFinity. And I get Norton security for free through XFinity. So I use the one from Norton which I use on all my devices (laptop, tablet and IPhone).
My problem was catastrophic @MikeInNH. I messed up and attempted a total reset on a computer that had Windows 10 on top of Windows 7 and totally lost everything. And while I record my login data I do so in pencil on a legal pad and some sites demand a symbol be used and a mixture of caps and lower case, etc. After the 3d mistake on user name and/or password they threw me off into a Catch 22 that I found too annoying to deal with. And since I was successful in getting back to every other website it appears that I’m not totally over the hill. I even got back into the pay the government site.
