Just the fact of offering a ‘‘money back guarantee’’ creates circumstances of fraud and swindle with a life of its own.
Far too many people will purposely…purposely make every attempt to wring the shop dry by either ruining the item or ignoring maintainence for the sole purpose of getting the shop to pay up.
– the truth is ; if you truly have an issue with a repair…ASK.
Most shops do not send you away with products and services that will put them out of business. Many have posted warranties of a year or more and big ticket items even more ( Ford engines and transmissions ; 3 years unlimited miles ) so if you’d politely inquire you may find a pleasant surprise.
Plus different items should have a different offered warranty.
There’s also the issue of the fine print in the warranty that even the business doesn’t always get right. We get charged back very often for differences of policy between what Ford says and what we allowed on the repair.
My Auto Zone got stung by corperate because the counter help was handing out brake pads right and left. When the customer had bought just one set years back, they’d come in for another set under lifetime warranty. Then they’d come in next year too, and the year after that, and the counter kids would hand out five or six sets of pads because …‘they have lifetime warranty !’’
. So there was this huge meeting with the entire crew to explain lifetime warranty…paying for a set of LTW pads gets the custome another set …ONE other set when and if they wear those out…without regard to mileage or calendar. At the time you hand out the second set …THE WARRANTY TERMS HAVE BEEN SATISFIED AND IS OVER on that set of pads. To get more warranty they’d have to buy the next set of pads which will include its own warranty…
When customers discovered the workers’ lack of knowledge they took them for all they could get till corperate corrected the local office. But it had been going on for years.
I think “free diagnostics” is something shadetrees would exploit mercilessly. Bring the car in, get the diagnosis…then come up with a song and a dance why they aren’t getting the work done. I think “$100…with a $100 off coupon for work done within 5 days” is the best I’d expect.
I guess it depends on what you call diagnostics. Some years ago my son stopped at a popular all night combination gas station, repair shop, and convenience store in Minneapolis. His car wouldn’t start again. Just a click. It was late so they pushed it into a stall. Sunday morning then I drove up and we took a quick look at it and determined it was the starter. We swung by NAPA and picked up a starter and took it to the station to have it installed. The guy wanted $125 to diagnose whether it was the starter or not. I said I already did. He said we can’t guarantee it unless we diagnose it first, etc. etc. I said just put the starter in and I’ll take my chance on it. The kid was really put off by it but finally did it. I don’t remember what the charge was but somewhere around $100 to bolt the new starter in and it worked fine. They clearly were just trying to make an extra $100. Under normal circumstances what does it take to diagnose a starter? The place is known for high prices and high pressure but they did work on Sunday.
I think discussing warranties is getting a little off track from the perspective of most repair jobs. Sure, great, you warrantied that the alternator you put in won’t break for a year. That’s nice, but the car really needed a new coil and there was nothing wrong with the old alternator in the first place. Most shops only warranty the physical work they do rather than the diagnosis that leads them to perform that work, which means now I have to pay for you to install the coil because you screwed up the first time.
The one time my Civic left me stranded, I didn’t think to try push-starting it, and I had it towed to the shop. As the tow truck driver drove it off his flatbed tow truck, he popped the clutch and it started. He handed me the keys and said, “You need a new starter.” However, after my mechanic did some diagnostic work, he found it wasn’t the starter; it was the clutch safety switch.
In that case, if I had gone by the tow truck driver’s diagnosis, I would have paid for a starter I didn’t need and the car still wouldn’t have started. This is a prime example of why I don’t mind letting the shop do its own diagnosis. After all, most of the time, if you pay them to do the repair, they waive the fee for the diagnosis.
I have no problem paying for diagnostics. finding out what is wrong is the hard part sometimes. once I know the problem I can often fix it myself. shops don t seem to like that tho
Some shops don’t like that because they have fallen into the mentality–as many drivers have–that the repair is what’s valuable and that the diagnosis should be free, and as such have a pricing structure that means they make the bulk of their profit on repair and not nearly enough on diag.
This week I had someone call in and ask how much we charge to do a smoke check for emissions system. Turns out she has had a check engine light for over a year, failed an emisisons test, has done the diagnosis several times at AutoZone, and has replaced her gas cap twice. Therefore, there must be a leak in the system. She wanted it found and then she and her boyfriend would repair it themselves.
So for $104 she got an emissions system diagnosis that included a smoke test and found that there were no leaks in the system but that her code P0440 was caused by a faulty purge solenoid. As I was finishing her paperwork she asked me if she could get a free oil change since she’s paying $104 and it took only 20 minutes to find the problem.
Being on the state list of authorized emissions repair facilities brings in a lot of one-time customers. And to be honest I do very little to encourage people like her to come back.
For that kind of service, fixing a problem that others couldn’t should have been worth the $104. I remember those kinds of customers from when I used to work at a parts store in Renton,had lots of people rushing in for a miracle solution to pass the emissions inspection not realizing that even the miracle stuff needs to run through a full tank to even have a prayer. Glad to not have to mess with that down here in Thurston County.