Here is the question I have for everyone. My friend refuses to bring his car to a repair shop that is open on the weekends,on the weekends, because he thinks it won’t get done as well as during the week due to Weekend hangovers, tiredness, etc. What do you think?
Oldtimer
Maybe he’s right. Maybe he knows something. Possibly he hangs out with these mechanics at their favorite Friday night watering hole. Whatever the case, just shrug and let him do things his own way. It shouldn’t really matter to you.
Hmmm. First of all a good portion of the population does not stay out late on work nights or drink to excess causing a hangover. So I think this is a non-issue. Second, I don’t know who is open anymore doing weekend work, but if it is a dealer, I think everyone would need to take a weekend rotation not just those with less seniority. As far as Doctors go though, the less experienced ones are on call on the weekend.
Bing
[/quote]As far as Doctors go though, the less experienced ones are on call on the weekend. [quote]
Not really. They rotate too. You get worse care on holidays because there are less doctors working altogether and also the rest of the healthcare workers (nurses particularly) are understaffed.
My local shop has couple of kids do their oil changes on the weekends. They are not better than the regular JL crew, but a head mechanic checks the work before the car leaves. The rest of the work is done by the mechs that are working overtime. I personally prefer to keep an eye on my car at all times anyways. Mistakes DO happen even for the best of us.
My biggest concern would be the “quality” of a shop that needs to be open on weekends. Most of the top shops that I know of tend to keep “bankers hours,” just because they can.
I have gone in on Saturdays before and had to wait an extra hour for the mech. to arrive. He wasn’t in good shape, but he was good enough to align a 1974 f-150. If you have a 74, bring it right in. Soon as I get off the heart monitor, I’ll fix it.
This is what I was thinking, but also the quality of the mechanics that can be made to work on weekends.
A long time ago I worked at a major chain shop where the higher-ups were trying to get us to work on weekends. They had the leverage on the younger guys to make us do it, but the more experienced mechanics would have quit. Mostly we just steered clear of more complicated repairs, but often on slow weekend days we’d sort of fudge our way through something usually out of our range of expertise.
Of course, part of the issue there was that we were so slow on weekends that us hourly people didn’t mind, whereas the experienced techs were flat rate and it killed them to come in on weekends. If there was enough work to do, one of the older guys would sometimes trade a Sunday for a Tuesday so he could go up to the lake when it wasn’t as crowded. If a shop is regularly busy on weekends, it probably doesn’t make a difference.
Also, I’d say a big chain shop or a dealership are the only places I’d really worry about weekend service at and you shouldn’t really be going there anyways! A good independent mechanic may not have regular weekend hours, but can probably fit you in if you have a good reason.
My father-in-law was in the hospital and his car had a check engine light that had come on. He was very worried about my mother-in-law driving the car the 20 miles back home on Saturday evening and then returning on Sunday. I took the car (a Mercury) to the dealer. They called back to the hospital with the cost to make the repair (I don’t remember what it was). At any rate, I told them to go ahead and fix it. They called back in a couple of hours and said that the car was ready. The price was more than $100 less than what I had been quoted on the telephone. When I questioned the service manager to be certain that they hadn’t made a mistake, he said “We’ve just started Saturday hours, so we are giving a discount”. The car was repaired properly. There are some good dealer service departments.