Brake service opinions wanted

In My Humble Opinion
21

[QUOTE=Gary T]
I recommend selecting a good shop and letting them provide the entire repair. What’s the point of bringing the parts? The shop can get anything you can get. If you somehow get the wrong stuff, there are delays and hassles. It’s not likely to save you much, if any, money. And you’re in warranty limbo - if something goes wrong, you’re stuck in the middle between a parts supplier who might claim they were installed wrong and a service provider who might claim they were defective. I don’t see anything to be gained by bringing your own parts.
[/QUOTE]

::: Sign is auto repair shop:::
Do you take your own eggs to the restaurant?

22

Yes, sorry I didn’t mean to offend the mechanics here. I understand there’s no reason to buy the parts unless I were doing it myself, and I don’t intend to risk that!!

I am having my friend call the neighborhood garage to see what they would charge for the whole job. Thanks, Gary, for the info about hourly pricing versus pricing by the job. I will do this as soon as possible given what you have said about the % remaining. The dealer said it’s OK to run as long as I don’t hear metal on metal, but I am already nervous about it and just want to get it done!

23

I don’t know anything about brakes, but can I just commend you for spelling it correctly? “Breaks” drives me batty!

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:wink: I found myself being very careful about spelling in these posts!

Update: The neighborhood guys will do it for $300 so I made an appointment to go there. They also get their parts from the dealer so there will be no difference there. They offered to take a look at it first to see what it really needs but I figure I should just get it done.

Now, the neighborhood guys say that the 5% is a guesstimate by the dealer, since to really look at the pads would mean they’ve already done half the job of replacing them. They think that maybe they used my history to guess on the % ?? They said that the brake service is a big profit center for a dealer so they always recommend the service. (I figure it would need to be done at some point so I don’t mind if I do it a little early.) I already replaced the muffler and middle exhaust pipe dealio with the dealer which I understand is also one of the big money drivers.

I’m already skeptical about the dealer because they marked that they tested the pressure on the spare tire. Now, it was buried under my summer tires which didn’t look disturbed at all. I can’t believe they actually looked at the tire, but they marked it as checked. They also marked my A/C as set to 43 degrees and I don’t have A/C.

What should I make of this?

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[QUOTE=gigi]
…I didn’t mean to offend the mechanics here.
[/quote]

No offense taken. It just looked like an opportunity to educate.

That’s being rather anal-retentive. To measure the pad thickness requires removing them, but I (and many of my colleagues) routinely eyeball brake pads as they sit assembled on the car. You can’t tell the difference between, say 95% worn and 92% worn, but you can sure tell the difference between approx. 95% worn and approx. 70% worn.

Well, they may be right. Or they may not. They weren’t there, so they don’t know. It’s easy to jump to conclusions and make claims about someone who’s not present to refute them. It’s a lot tougher to make accurate assertions about something that happened when you weren’t present to observe it.

It certainly sounds like someone checked the form but didn’t check the car. One could conceive of their somehow checking the tire (though it sounds quite unlikely), but there’s no getting around the A/C figure being false. What’s that zooming out the window? Oh, yeah, trust.

I’d be inclined to write a letter to the dealership general manager or service manager. Possibly it would inspire some improvement that would benefit some other customer. Can’t say I’d want to go back there myself, though.

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[QUOTE=Gary T]
That’s being rather anal-retentive. To measure the pad thickness requires removing them, but I (and many of my colleagues) routinely eyeball brake pads as they sit assembled on the car. You can’t tell the difference between, say 95% worn and 92% worn, but you can sure tell the difference between approx. 95% worn and approx. 70% worn.

It certainly sounds like someone checked the form but didn’t check the car. One could conceive of their somehow checking the tire (though it sounds quite unlikely), but there’s no getting around the A/C figure being false. What’s that zooming out the window? Oh, yeah, trust.

I’d be inclined to write a letter to the dealership general manager or service manager. Possibly it would inspire some improvement that would benefit some other customer. Can’t say I’d want to go back there myself, though.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the reassurance. I figure I am close enough to need the replacement that I am not losing that much to get it done now. Especially with the safety ramifications. I am thinking about not going to the dealer anymore, and writing a letter saying why. I know that the neighborhood guys won’t do extremely complex jobs but I’m sure I can find a place that would…it’s a small town and people will be able to tell me what’s what. And they will do most routine work.

The cool part is that my friend who knows them well takes all his cars there and with that connection they should be pretty accountable. Everyone around here has had good experiences with them and the very cool part is when a friend was broke and needed her car they fixed it with the understanding that she would pay when she could.

But for such a simple thing to be fudged by the dealer…worries me.

Thanks again for all your input, folks!

27

A little more on brakes. I’ve been doing my own for a long time, and as Gary T and Rick will affirm, it’s more than just slap in a new set of pads along with a turned or new rotor.

While the rotors are at Carquest being turned, I do the following: the inner and outer wheel bearings get repacked, the sliding surfaces of the caliper and mount are cleaned, and anti rattle clips are checked. Inspect flexible hoses for checking, cracking, or other damage/decay. When the rotors are returned, after the inner bearing is reinstalled, a new inner seal is also seated, then the rotor, outer bearing, washer, castle nut are installed, the assembly torqued, and a new cotter pin fitted. After pads are installed with anti-squeal, the sliding surfaces of the caliper receive a light coating of caliper grease, and the fixing bolt(s) are installed, with a touch of anti-seize on the threads.

No longer a professional mechanic, I still believe that if you can’t do it correctly and thoroughly, don’t start. :wink:

28

Just a note to the curious that this applies to a typical rear-wheel-drive design, and not to a typical front-wheel-drive design (where the wheel bearings are sealed, not serviceable, and not disturbed in a normal brake repair).

29

A somewhat off-topic follow-up question.

Everyone seems to frown on the idea of bringing your own parts to a shop but I don’t know why. In my experience there’s a sizable mark-up on most parts costs (or they just don’t comparison shop online) compared to what I am able to find with a quick google-fu. A standard part like brakes seems ideal for this type of thing. I have a mechanic that will spec out the specific parts for me so that I can order them myself. I can usually save upwards of 40% on parts costs, significant when you’re talking about a labor-minimal job like replacing a pair of O2 sensors, and the only burden is that it’ll take a week to get them delivered versus my mechanics same-day dropoffs/pickups.

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Let’s say I own a shop. I make money two ways, from parts sales and from labor. If I don’t make a markup on the parts, I am losing part of what it takes to keep my doors open. In the past when people wanted to bring their own parts, my labor rate went up for that reason and one other.
Quality of parts can vary widely from vendor to vendor. I have seen brake pads that had rivits so thick the effective linning was about 50% of a factory pad, and what was there, was as soft as pine sawdust. Complete shit. If you bring me a substandard part, what happens when it fails? Assuming I installed it correctly (and I would have) it is not my fault that your cheap assed 3rd world knock off POS part failed. However you are going to be one pissed off customer when I tell you that you will have to pay me again for the labor.
If I supply the parts, I supply the parts warranty. If you supply the parts, you supply the parts warranty.
When the POS parts fails customers really hate to hear that part. Even if we told them that up front, and had them sign a statement to that effect.
the next issue is what happens if I get your car all apart, and find that you brought me the wrong part? Do I get to call you up and yell at you like I do my parts supplier? :smiley:

About 20 years ago there was a case in California. A customer brought their car into the dealer. It needed a new transmission. Customer could not afford what the dealer wanted. They asked if the dealer would install a transmission that the owner got from junkyard. Dealer said yes.
Transmission was bad. Junkyard gave a 2nd transmission. Dealer charged a 2nd fee to remove and replace. Second tranny was bad, here comes a third. Yep you gessed it, it was bad also. The fourth box worked.
The kicker was that after four labor charges, the customer had exceeded the cost of a factory rebuilt with an iron clad guarrentee. Also the customer complained to the newspaper and the dealer got written up for “ripping” off the customer. :rolleyes:

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[QUOTE=Omniscient]
A somewhat off-topic follow-up question.

Everyone seems to frown on the idea of bringing your own parts to a shop but I don’t know why. In my experience there’s a sizable mark-up on most parts costs (or they just don’t comparison shop online) compared to what I am able to find with a quick google-fu. A standard part like brakes seems ideal for this type of thing. I have a mechanic that will spec out the specific parts for me so that I can order them myself. I can usually save upwards of 40% on parts costs, significant when you’re talking about a labor-minimal job like replacing a pair of O2 sensors, and the only burden is that it’ll take a week to get them delivered versus my mechanics same-day dropoffs/pickups.
[/QUOTE]

The pricing of auto repair has a long tradition of including markup on parts as some of the profit. This has kept the labor rates significantly lower than than they should/would be if all the profit had to come from the labor charges.

The pricing also traditionally has two components, labor and parts. This is for bookkeeping purposes - it makes it easy to track productivity and compute non-salary mechanics’ pay, some states have tax on parts and materials but not on labor, etc. But the two components are integral parts of the whole, and are not intended to be sold separately. Savvy shop owners realize this, and are no more inclined to sell only the labor portion of the job at the normal profit-expected-from-parts labor rate than you would be inclined to buy only the parts from them at their normal profit-expected-from-parts parts price.

While the price of auto repair seems high to most laymen, very few in the field are getting rich. Most make a decent living, and some don’t even achieve that. There’s a lot of overhead in auto repair - tools, equipment, information, training, as well as universal business expenses like rent, utilities, insurance, etc. A certain amount of profit is needed for the shop to stay in business. Whatever they don’t get from the traditional parts markup would have to be gotten from higher labor rates, or the shop would cease to exist.

I sell a whole job, parts and labor, and guarantee it. If you want to provide the parts, I’m going to figure a different (higher) labor charge that reflects that. I have no incentive to do work where the profit potential is about half of normal. And I’m not going to guarantee it, because I have no control over nor responsbility for parts I don’t provide.

And that’s if I agree to do it that way at all. Beyond the financial aspect, having a customer provide parts can be frought with problems. If my supplier sends me a wrong part, I can usually get that rectified within minutes or hours. Customer gets wrong parts, and it can take one or more days for him to straighten it out (it may not have happened to you, but it happens, I assure you). Meanwhile the disassembled car is occupying space and possibly preventing my working on something that generates income. I don’t need this kind of hassle.

Then there’s warranty. If the part you provide fails, your supplier will replace it free, but you’re going to pay me a second time to do the work, and you’ve got to do the legwork acquiring the new part and returning the faulty one. And it’s possible to have a situation where the parts supplier claims the part wasn’t defective, but was installed improperly, while the service provider claims it was installed properly but was defective. Then you’re caught in the middle. My customers don’t need this kind of hassle. If I do a complete job and there’s a problem, it doesn’t matter if it’s a parts problem or a labor problem, because it’s all me, and I’m going to rectify it.

So there’s nothing to be gained by me from a customer providing parts, and not much to be gained by the customer (since he’ll pay a "bring-your-own-parts labor rate), while there’s risk of a fair amount to be lost by either or both of us. If you have a mechanic who lets you provide parts yet charges only as much for labor as if he provided them, you’re lucky. And he’s a fool.

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:d
Gmta!

33

I understand all of the rationale, but I see little reason for there to be an additional mark-up on the parts. The profit you require for a given job should come from labor. Sell me the parts at their typical retail price and charge me double on the labor, I’m OK with that, at least you’re being upfront about it. Here in Chicago it’s required of mechanics that they post their labor rate (I think) and because of that you can comparison shop from one mechanic to another without having to pay a fee for diagnosis in order to get a simple estimate. The parts mark-up is a way of passing along hidden costs and most people find that a little shady.

To draw a comparison in a different market. The IT geeks at most computer retailers will sell you a part at their regular retail price and you can choose to have them install it for a hefty fee or you can do it yourself. They are preying on the ignorance of their customers with the rates they charge since no special tools or knowledge is required on 90% of that stuff, but at least they are upfront about it. The home builder and the full-service customer are being charged the same price for the parts anyways.

If you don’t want to do the work, I respect your right to refuse service to anyone. I totally understand why you wouldn’t warranty the work, fair enough. However it seems that you’re courting mistrust everytime you charge me $90 for a rotor that I can buy anywhere else for $45.

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[QUOTE=Omniscient]
I understand all of the rationale, but I see little reason for there to be an additional mark-up on the parts. The profit you require for a given job should come from labor. Sell me the parts at their typical retail price and charge me double on the labor, I’m OK with that, at least you’re being upfront about it. Here in Chicago it’s required of mechanics that they post their labor rate (I think) and because of that you can comparison shop from one mechanic to another without having to pay a fee for diagnosis in order to get a simple estimate. The parts mark-up is a way of passing along hidden costs and most people find that a little shady.

To draw a comparison in a different market. The IT geeks at most computer retailers will sell you a part at their regular retail price and you can choose to have them install it for a hefty fee or you can do it yourself. They are preying on the ignorance of their customers with the rates they charge since no special tools or knowledge is required on 90% of that stuff, but at least they are upfront about it. The home builder and the full-service customer are being charged the same price for the parts anyways.

If you don’t want to do the work, I respect your right to refuse service to anyone. I totally understand why you wouldn’t warranty the work, fair enough. However it seems that you’re courting mistrust everytime you charge me $90 for a rotor that I can buy anywhere else for $45.
[/QUOTE]

You’re missing what Gary T did a nice job of explaining: the rotor you buy isn’t necessarily equal in quality to what he would sell you at a higher price. You’re viewing rotors and other auto parts as simple commodities, without taking into account differences of quality. A shop’s markup on a part is a resonable cost of doing business, separate from labor.

Do you take your own ham, eggs, and bread to the diner and request them to cook your breakfast, only charging for the labor to do so? Of course not, so don’t make the same unreasonable request of an auto mechanic or other trade professional.

35

You do realize that the eggs to a diner analogy is a silly one, a punchline to a bumper sticker if you will, because we don’t pay itemized costs for product and prep in a restaurant. For other reasons too, but that’s enough to make the point.

I know there’s shitty parts and there are good parts, but there’s no reason to expect that when I buy factory parts from a retailer they will be inferior to the exact same part (same SKU) bought from my mechanic. Why should I pay $15 for AC Delco oil filter from the mechanic when the same one costs $7 at Pep Boys? You telling me that the one the mechanic sells me is better?

Look, I get that there’s cost of doing business and that these guys have to make money. I’m even willing to allow that they will charge a reasonable premium and not match the local discount warehouse prices, but double seems unreasonable.

Mechanics might be charging an entirely reasonable rate for their services on the whole but by hiding a portion of their fees in the price for parts (which the average lazy layman won’t comparison shop for) they are making themselves appear to be less than forthright.

Charge a higher posted labor rate. Charge a flat “garage fee” per job to cover your overheard in specialized equipment and space. Charge a storage fee if space is an issue. Charge through the roof, I’m a huge fan of capitalism, but be upfront about it.

36

I tried bringing a hard-to-find set of shocks to Sears, so they could replace those along with a new set of tires, alignment and such. They declined, citing liability concerns.

Rotors don’t need to be turned, or at least very rarely. It’s just another way of making money for the shop. The latest and greatest cars have rotors that are designed to be replaced, a nice end run around the whole issue.

37

Omniscient You are wrong on several levels. Go back and read
both my post and Gary T’s post about pricing. I never said there was a difference in quality between the same SKU from the same vendor, I said from vendor to vendor. Next that still does not eliminate the problem of what if your A/C Delco oil filter that you supplied is bad (yes it happens, I have seen many a bad filter) Do I leave your car sitting on the damn rack while you go get me another one? A shop could lose hundreds of dollars while that car sits there taking up space.
Next is on the prices. If you are only looking at the driveway rate to determine which shop is cheaper, you may not be right very often.
If Gary T charges $50 dollars per hour for labor, and hour and I charge $60 dollars per hour for labor, assuming parts prices are the same, which shop will be less expensive to get your brakes done at?
The answer is, there is not enough information to answer. What at is missing is the number of hours the shop uses to estimate the time reequired to do the job. If Gary T uses an estimating guide that says the work on your car will take 1.5 hours, and my guides says 1.1 hours we are left with
Gary 1.5 X 50 = $75
Rick 1.1 X 60 = $66
The more expensive shop is cheaper.

Your computer store analogy is also a strawman. If I buy a network card from Adequate Purchase, and have the Geek Squad install it, they sure as hell made a profit on the sale of the card. Just like the auto shop does.
I am sure that Gary T would be happy to sell you an oil filter to take with you for he same price he sells it on a job he does in his shop. That is not what we are discussing here.
A fair comparsion is you went to Circuit City and bought the card on sale and have brought it to Adequate Purchase and you want them to install the card that you bought elsewhere. Good luck, let me know how that goes.

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GeekSquad will install whatever you bring them. They overcharge for it, true, but they’ll do the work.

And I’ve not said that you can’t profit on the sale of parts. I’m just saying that your profit shouldn’t be a 125%. It should be in-line with the kinds of margins that autoparts stores operate on. Best Buy’s margins on most computer hardware is pretty close to what you get on NewEgg or Buy.com. In many cases there’s a bit of a premium because they are a brick-and-mortar, but it’s within the realm of reason.

You guys went a long way towards explaining why you don’t want to use outside parts. All fine reasons which I completely understand. You’d completely remove the incentive for a customer to want to bring in outside parts if you didn’t charge an insanely high price for them.

I totally understand, caveat emptor and all, but you’re overlooking the crux of my point. Gary’s Garage and Rick’s Auto aren’t even bothering to tell me what their price is for those pads and rotors. They have different labor rates and different labor estimates, all that is above board, but using your example I have no idea what the cheaper shop is still because of the mysterious parts markup.

I’ve still yet to hear a compelling argument for why a portion of the labor and operating costs should be hidden in the billed price of parts. You can understand why a layman might feel a little shafted when he gets his service bill and later sees the same part on sale for less than half the cost in the weekly circular. I don’t think the average person expects to pay rock bottom prices in that situation, but I can’t help but thing the industry is doing itself a disservice by setting up it’s billing structure this way.

Simple question. What is the upside from a mechanics perspective to having part of their labor and equipment costs wrapped into parts markup versus simply charging adequate labor rates?

39

Well here in California if all the shop sold was labor, or had an imbalance of labor, they might get the people at the Franchise Tax Board climbing through their books. Due to prop 13 out property taxes are insanely low. That means the state looks for every nickel everywhere it can. Forget what you have heard about the IRS being assholes, they are pussycats compared to the state and uncollected sales tax. :eek:
One other problem is it would add a couple of more steps to writing an estimate, and introduce one (or more) chances for an error. Due to the law in California you have to give an estimate that you must stick to. If you fuck up, you (the shop) loses. Again marking up the parts to retail is a way for the shop to keep it simple.

Also your idea of parts mark ups is, shall we say, a bit out of line. Most dealerships give their wholesale accounts 15% off retail. An independant parts house gives between 20-35% most of the time, and to a really good customer up to about 40%. The customer walking in off the street will buy dealer parts at list, and parts house parts a list or maybe a 10% preferred customer discount.
Gary T runs a shop and probably can give a more accurate description of what current the current discount structure is like, my information is about 20 years old, when I was buying and selling parts.

40

Mind you I’m not trying to be overly contrary here, but I have a couple issues there.

  1. Your first point is that the state’s lackeys would be sniffing around your shop if you charged a higher labor rate to offset the profits on parts. Probably true, but this seems to simply be because you’d be doing business differently from the status quo. It does nothing to justify why that is the norm, unless I’m missing your point.

  2. It’s not clear to me how my supposition would add a level of complexity to the estimate process. As a matter of fact, it seems to be precisely the same amount of complexity. There’ll still be a parts cost, a labor rate and a hours estimate. Perhaps an addition of a flat diagnostics fee and/or storage fee, both of which are common, if not standard. The proportions would be different, but I’m not seeing how it’s more complex or how it presents a greater opportunity for error.

  3. I think you’re misunderstanding my point about mark-up. I realize the consumer will pay a higher rate than you will due to economies of scale, and you’ll pay a higher rate than large chains for the same reason. Let me use the following example:

My widget is broken and I’m looking to get it replaced. The manufacturer sells widgets at a list price of $100. I can walk into a dealer and buy it for that price. A big-box chain probably gets them for $60 a piece and sells them to me for about $80. A auto-mechanic shop can probably get that part for $80-85 from the dealer or wholesaler.

Now I can get this part myself for $100, give or take, and you can get it for $80. You could sell it to me for $100 and take your modest profit which is in line with what any other source would make off that product. Everything would be kosher and you’d never have a single customer who wanted to supply his own parts.

Instead most mechanics will sell me that part for $180.

There’s a couple reasons why this is an issue. First, as I’ve tried to explain above, this is a hidden charge to most customers. They don’t know that you’re taking a sizable profit on that part. The second issue is that it’s a somewhat inequitable distribution of fees. For example, you’ll charge your $75/hour rate to a customer who needs a stubborn loose vacuum hose reattached for say and hour of work. There’s zero parts costs. Another customer will come in and need brakes replaced and you’ll charge him an hours worth of labor to replace them at $75 as well. Two customers, same labor, same price. However suppose the wholesale cost of those rotors and pads is $250 and you’re charging him $400. You’re taking 3 times the revenue from a customer who cost you the exact same amount of labor and overhead cost.

In the above example the mechanic is either taking a loss on a repair in which there’s no need for parts replacement or he’s overcharging a customer who needs parts.

In my scenario where the shop charges the customer no more than list for the parts the revenue for the two jobs would be almost equal (we’ll still assume a modest profit off the parts sale in the mark-up from wholesale to list) as I think it should be.