This leads to the conundrum of how to quote the fee. Some customers are very uncomfortable if they don’t know a firm price beforehand. However, the idea has merit, and it’s essentially what I do (I quote a range, see below).
This is conflating the diagnosis with the repair, which muddles the issue.
I can’t speak for shops that quote a single flat fee. One would hope they don’t charge for their mistakes, and honorable shops don’t. However, having to take a second or third run at a problem doesn’t necessarily mean the first attempt was a misdiagnosis. There may be more than one fault contributing to the situation. Sometimes there are cases where a fault is found that might or might not be pertinent, but not fixing it first runs the risk of spending a lot of time and money chasing a ghost if it happens to be pertinent. If that fix doesn’t solve the problem, further testing will be needed, but it was still a justifiable repair.
Here’s how I do it: I tell customers that the testing/research/evaluation fee for a driveability problem (engine performance, emission controls, etc.) can range from 50 to 300 or so*, depending on what I have to do to track it down. Most of the time it ends up in the lower half of that range, but I won’t know how far I have to go until I’m done. After I’ve made a determination, I review my steps. If I see that I ran some tests that I should have realized weren’t called for (the old “head was on backwards for a while” method :)), I don’t charge for them.
*There are a few cases, typically a one-of-a-kind wiring problem, where it could even be higher because of the extensive detective work it takes to pinpoint the cause. Fortunately, these are rare.
Some friends of my parents had to call out a plumber for a backed up drain. Plumber comes in says they’re going to use the 20 foot snake, it’s going to cost $50. Homeowner says OK…plumber asks for check on the spot. Homeowner thinks that’s odd but writes them a check. Plumber comes back, says it didn’t work. He needs to use the 200 foot snake, it’s $100, needs a check, and so on and so forth until the clog is cleared.
I found out about this because the friend was saying that this was a horribly unprofessional way to run a business. I agree that it was a bit odd, but at least the plumber never gets calls when he sends out bills from customers saying “Wha…$400, that’s ludicrous, it was just a simple clog, you were only here for 90 minutes.” Also, if the homeowner felt it was getting too expensive he, at any time, knew exactly where the bill stood and could have asked the plumber to leave.
When you bill for (skilled) labor, especially when expensive tools and unseen overhead, are involved you really can’t win. All you can do is price competitively and hope that when they take their business elsewhere next time they understand that everyone charges about the same amount for the same job and that complaining doesn’t really get them anywhere.
Or you could be totally screwed by the [del]stealer[/del] dealer .
Like when they tried to charge my wife to reset a CEL that was set when the transmission missed a shift point. They told her that there was no way a missed shift point would set a code and she HAD to have diagnostics run for $85.
We went to Auto Zone where they read the code, surprise surprise: transmission shift error.
Don’t sweat it jz he is from doper land where every employee at every business knows everything there is to know about every part of the business. None of these employees are ever incorrect.
However you and I live on the planet Earth where that does not always happen.
So he got the code read at Autozone. Big whoop. He still does not know the root cause or if it is serious or not.
If only there was a place he could take the car pay, a reasonable fee, and have a trained individual that could not only read the code but do relevant tests, consult a service manual, read associated service bulletins, and make a, a, geez what would you call such a service? Oh I know, you could refer to it as a diagnosis.
What would be a fair price for such a service? Do you think that $85 might cover it? I do.
Oh and if I had a dollar for every person that came into my shop who KNEW exactly what caused the CEL and was flat wrong I could take one hell of a vacation.
Out of 10 guesses 8 are flat wrong1 is close and one is right. Of the 8 wrong usually 1 or 2 have ideas that violate the physical laws of the universe.
I know there’s a lot of controversy between leasing vs buying but this is one of the reasons I love leasing. I like being able to roll into the garage and say “car’s broke…fix it” and they come back and hour later and say “Bill here, sign it, $0.00”.
For the record, that’s not the reason I lease a car, but never having to pay for a repair is a nice perk.
No, I am sure somewhere there is an honest dealer. I’ll let you know when I find one. Oh wait, that’s right, I’ll never go to one again.
So you think telling my wife there is no way a missed shift point will set a CEL and wanting to charge her $85 for their “service” is ok? Bullshit (Honda dealer)
Now how about the time they told her she needed $500 worth of brake work done because some proportional valve was going out (different place too). Tire and brake shop said no, you need about $100 worth of pads. More bullshit. The 1992 Buick is still running and still has not had the proportional valve replaced.
Jesus Christ, I won’t even mention letting her take my Mustang to a dealer. It’s a wonder she wasn’t sucked dry on that one.
Or is it only ok because she is a woman and doesn’t know better?
But whatever, dealers are “Honest Abe’s” chock full of love and helpful experience.
And I do know the “root cause”. Honda had crappy transmissions in the 1999-2001 Accords. The 2002 Accord just missed the recall but there were “secret warranties” if you bought the car new, it had less than 100,000 miles, and the cars was less than 3 or 4 years old and if you whined enough. Mine missed on all 3. This was verified later at AAMCO and another transmission place.
So I do know what was wrong and why it was wrong, the idiot at the dealer was trying to tell my wife that was not correct. Which is ok except he thought his “expertise” was worth $85.
God, if I had a dime every time a mechanic wanted to rip me off. Or didn’t know what he was talking about.
Back to my Firestone dealer. I find them incredibly convenient, and while not at all dishonest, not forthcoming in ways to save me money. Last year, same car. Very loud exhaust related noise. I am told the pipe leading to the resonator is broken, and that it will cost $850 to repair it because it is all one piece. I say no thank you, later take it to Mieneke where I get it fixed for $160 because they have a welder. Would have been nice if the first place had told me that their price was outrageous because they did not have the correct equipment.
You have posted this one twice, and I have to tell you despite 45 years in the automotive business and being an ASE master automotive technician I have no freakin clue what the hell you are talking about. Care to try again? (Dag Otto, Kaching!)
Ummm, you are aware that the warranty on the car is given by the car maker not the car dealer, right? The dealer is just the poor sucker that gets the shit from the customer when the factory doesn’t stand behind the product.
Oh, and no you don’t know the root cause.
I agree with you on this. I routinely tell my customers that I’d be happy to replace whatever exhaust part(s) they need, but that exhaust specialty shops can usually do pipe and muffler repairs for noticeably less. Surely these Firestone guys know that, and I think it’s asinine of them not to similarly advise their customers.
And some more on relative values of disparate services provided. Total fee for those ignition coils, plus the diagnostic fee, plus and oil change, but with the battery cables, or the throttle body cleaning minus oil change coupon and minus discount for being a hospital employee: $617.
Now I come across this report: In reality, surgeons get paid on average $1,378 for a total hip and $1,430 for a total knee. Thus patients were off by an order of magnitude in their estimates! The disconnect in public knowledge seems extreme.
In short, patients — the most important part of all of health care policy decisions — have absolutely no clue how much doctors get paid. They think we get paid (or, at least, deserve to) about 10 times more than we actually do!
And I would say that what these surgeons are collection is about what the service is worth, but by comparison the car repair much much less (I would say 20 as absolutely tops, in relative value)
Of the hourly rate you pay for a mechanic’s labor, most of it does not end up in the mechanic’s pocket. There are a lot of bills to be paid: property tax or rent on the building, insurance, electricity/heat bills, tool and equipment maintenance/replacement, and so on. You may be paying $100 an hour for the mechanic’s time, but the mechanic will probably only ever see about $17 an hour.
Likewise with the surgeon: he may pocket $1400 for a surgery but the patient pays a lot more so as to cover all the other expenses: nurses, anesthesiologist, heat/lighting, equipment, malpractice insurance, hospital administration, housekeeping…the list goes on and on.
So, somehow, a surgeon’s services are worth whatever outrageous amount they can charge, but an auto mechanic’s aren’t. And you don’t see the disconnect in that at all?
Also, just as most surgeries are charged according to a schedule, the mechanic also has a schedule that tells them how many hours a certain repair should take. And if it takes them less time and (general) you aren’t a raging douchebag toward them, they will usually only charge for the time it actually took rather than the ‘book’ time.
There’s something to that, but as a blanket statement it’s not correct.
Our estimators tell us how much time it TOOK to do a certain repair, not how much time it SHOULD take and certainly not how much time it WILL take. We use that as a guide for pricing, and although the estimator is based on time studies, the repair is NOT charged by time, but by the job. The customer pays for a completed task rather than for the time it takes to complete the task. If the “book time” for a given job is 2.0 and the mechanic completes it in 1½ hours, that generally reflects skill, experience, tools, and efficiency – all of which come at a price to the mechanic and the shop. There’s no reason to give a discount for being highly proficient at doing the work. Conversely, if it takes a mechanic 3 hours to do that same job, due to lack of skill, experience, etc., the customer is not charged extra due to the mechanic/shop being less proficient. (This is a summary of normal and typical repair situations, there are a number of exceptions but this would be “the usual.”) In essence, the customer pays the same price for the same job, time spent is not (usually) a factor, and the shop isn’t going to charge less for being better at what they do.
Now, an honorable repair shop will try to be fair in their dealings. I remember a job where the book time was 4.5, and that was part of my quote. It took a lot less time than that would suggest, and I saw that book time for the same job on other similar vehicles was 1.5. I don’t know why the book had 4.5, but I could tell that it was out of line and 1.5 was appropriate, and that’s what I charged the customer. He was very pleasantly surprised.
No disconnect at all. I have had both knees replaced. $1400 seemed reasonable compensation to me. This is based on nothing other than what I value the service at vs. what else can be purchased for the same amount. And since this fee was generated at the hospital most overhead does not exist. And the total charge for the surgery is well over 50,000 total, I am just talking the surgeons
But the disconnect you seem to be having is that the $85 fee Firestone charges is the overall charge (just like the $50,000 to the hospital) and (as stated above) the mechanic only sees about $20/hour of it (like your surgeon’s $1,400). And I think that is more than reasonable for the mechanic’s skill and knowledge just like you feel the $1,400 is reasonable for the surgeon’s skill and knowledge.
This seems to have come out of nowhere. Relevance?
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. The $600 repair was only worth $20? The mechanic(s) who did that repair should only get $20?
When it no longer costs $25,000 for an emergency room visit of a couple of hours, I’ll be happy to consider whether $100 is too much for diagnosing a check engine light.