Just wondering what the standard practice is at repair shops when it comes to billing out labor on multiple repair jobs. For example, if I take my car in for a tranny rebuild, I might as well change out the motor and tranny mounts and/or any other items that need replacement, while they are already in there and have removed a lot of parts.
If the tranny rebuild on it’s own requires, say 6 hours of labor to remove/replace (just guessing, not a mechanic-sorry!), and the motor and tranny mounts, if done on their own (not during a tranny rebuild), required another hypothetical 6 hours of labor, what would a good repair shop charge for labor? 6 hours, plus some extra for the actual mount work? Or the full 6 hours plus 6 hours? Or something else?
I truly appreciate the work my mechanic does for me and trust him as the expert. I also don’t want to get taken, either. I like to understand the process and then I’m OK paying for the work, if necessary.
Sure would appreciate any input you experienced guys could offer. Thank you!
Welcome to the SDMB, maxoneout. We put different topics in different forums – a practice that can definitely be a little confusing to start with.
Threads seeking advice go in IMHO, so I’ll move this thither for you. All kinds of opinionated experts will, no doubt, be along soon to respond to your question.
Again, welcome – hope you find other topics of interest while you’re here!
They won’t double bill you for work they’re only doing once. Usually the labor guides are pretty good about breaking down the repair time for repairs that require removing unrelated parts. Or else they can be deduced-- i.e. if changing the transmission mounts books at 6.15 hrs and removing the transmission is 6 hrs, that’s easy enough to figure out.
Of course, not every shop does flat book rate labor and even one that usually does might just charge you actual time if they can’t figure out an appropriate book labor time.
There is no “standard practice.” Different shops make different judgments and have different policies about these issues. Honorable shops try be fair to their customers and to themselves and do their best to account for overlapping labor. I’ve seen some greedy shops that ignore overlapping labor. It’s a lot easier – and quicker – to learn how to find an honorable shop than to learn what the overlapping labor is on a bunch of various repair situations.