Did I not specifically say “if you aren’t up for the challenge of a particular job, then of course you should decline it”?
I’m not sure how to point you to a business of this nature, as they are not multi-location chains like Home Depot or Walmart. I’m not in a business that involves clients or customers at the moment myself.
Do you think the top heart surgeon declines to perform a risky surgery out of concern that people will bitch if it is unsuccessful? They wouldn’t be the top heart surgeon if that were the case, would they?
I am utterly shocked to learn this.
I was able to retire a few years back, has it changed?
Because I don’t really see how it could.
(bolding mine)
It is? :dubious:
It might be ‘well-known’ among experienced mechanics, but I seriously doubt that the average Ford owner is aware of it. How about providing a cite that it’s a ‘well-known’ issue of owners of Ford automobiles.
Car guys, here’s an analogy:
Customer: Hi, I have a problem with my driver’s side window, it doesn’t go up and down anymore.
Shop guy: we’ve checked the fuse, which is fine, so it is most likely a problem with the switch or the motor itself. I’ll take apart the door and fix it for you… Here’s your repaired car, thank you for your business, and prompt payment.
Customer: Thanks a bunch. Heyyyy… the door lock doesn’t work anymore!
Shop guy: I’m guessing that the linkage between the lock and the mechanism got dislodged while we repaired your window.
Customer: Can you fix it?
Shop guy: Sure, as long as you’re going to pay me more money to figure out what got messed up while I was in there fixing the other thing.
Do you consider this an example of acceptable customer service?
This watch guy screwed up. He changed the battery and did not check the operation of the watch before returning it to the customer. If you take something apart for a customer, you have to check that everything works after putting it back together again.
And if it turns out that the reason for the lock not working is:
(Pick one)
The lock motor is bad
The wires inside the harness between the door and a pillar have broken due to excessive flexing
A wire has backed out of a connector under the dash
None of these have a single thing to do with the window repair. Should he still fix it for free?
Remember we only have the customer’ word that the lock work when received. Our hypothetical auto mechanic does not know for a fact that he broke it.
There is a class-action lawsuit, and lawyers are generally good at informing people about such things. I’m not saying that the issue is so well known that every affected owner will ALREADY know about it, but that when the customer is informed that there is a higher-than-normal risk that there will be extra charges, they will easily be able to confirm that this is true. When they go to another mechanic, they will be told the same thing, and when they call the car dealer, they will be told the same thing. If the mechanic makes the issue clear and recommends a course of action, uses the correct tool and best known procedures, and has gotten signed acknowledgment of the worst-case scenario pricewise, the customer may not be happy with the result every time, but there is no need to turn down the job.
Perhaps there exists an extended warranty that would cover this. If so, the mechanic could suggest purchasing that in advance of attempting the work.
Imagine that you take your vehicle to a full-service mechanic and ask to have this work done and the shop says “nah, we don’t do that, too risky,” and thinks that’s sufficient. If there is a specialty shop in town with a mechanic that is better at it, or it’s one of those things best done at the dealer, one should at least recommend this course of action. I’m not saying just dive into the job if you have little hope of success, but “hey, your car has this issue, so you’re fucked, good luck getting someone to help you and I don’t care about that stack of cash you are willing to pay, find someone else to give it to,” is a business strategy that could succeed I guess, but I’d want no part of it.
“Bad”? They don’t just spoil like milk. You were working on the electrical system, so perhaps that had something to do with it.
The wires were probably flexed last by you, while working on the electrical system.
If a wire has backed out of a connector, it was probably by you, when you were moving wires around. Regardless, do you really need to be paid for the 4 seconds it takes to fix that?
And maybe you should have confirmed that the lock worked BEFORE opening the door. If you only have the customer’s word, then that’s your fault, and assuming that the customer is a liar in the absence of any evidence beyond the fact that what they are saying will cost you extra time is pretty messed up.
If you are a smart mechanic and had your own door open to fix a problem, wouldn’t you go over everything inside before you closed it back up? Opening the door is a hassle and I’d want to do it as little as possible. Why not do the same for your customer?
No.
If it turns out the reason for the lock not working is a mistake by the mechanic, should the customer have to pay for it to be fixed?
If we assume for the moment that your answer is “no”, we are at an impasse. I don’t want to pay for a repair that is your fault, you don’t want to perform a free fix on a pre-existing problem. How would YOU propose the transaction continue?
As far as I can see, the mechanic is going to have to open up the door to find out what is wrong (at least to the point of determining it isn’t a repair error) without demanding payment. The jeweler did not offer any such option.
There are a number of scenarios with tightly packed components in inaccessible spaces where simply fixing one problem has a far greater than zero probability of causing another problem just from having to move wires and components out of the way to get to the problem area. Anyone who has ever fixed a notebook PC or dealt with intricate car or electronic repairs knows this. Fixing a car is probably the worst of these scenarios since there is so much that can go wrong. It’s easy for laymen to wave their arms and say “Well you’re the expert. You touched it now you own it!” but from the repair person’s POV it’s a substantial occupational risk.
So check before you start, to see if everything works, and after you think you’re done, to confirm that it still does.
Well, I wound up caving on this one. I went back to the shop yesterday and talked to the woman at the counter. She was asking me questions like how long I’ve had it and what I thought it was worth (to be honest, I have no idea - I bought it 30 years ago!), and then she asked “When was the last time you had it cleaned?” And I said, “Uh, probably never…”
To borrow the car repair analogy, it would be like not doing any routine maintenance for ten years and then expecting the mechanic to fix my car for free because it started making a funny noise after I took it in for an oil change. I felt like I should at least take some responsibility for the condition of the watch.
The worst part is that she said it was going to take a week to 10 days. Jeez, I figured they’d have it maybe a day or two.
I have never heard of an inexpensive quartz movement in a sealed watch needing to be “cleaned”. It’s a quartz driven oscillator and an electric motor in a plastic frame and a few very basic nylon and metal gears. It does not (normally) use lubrication. Other than blowing dust out I’m not sure what they have in mind. Re-setting the frame should fix your pusher issue. Having said this to be frank your Lorus is way, way past its expected lifetime. It’s on borrowed time. Putting more service work into it is not likely to result in decades more service.
I could see sweat/moisture dragging a lot of random gunk into the buttons though.
Bad that is a technical term used to denote an open circuit, a shorted motor, a broken plastic gear, a binding gear train, in short a whole laundry list of shit that go wrong with a door lock motor.
Wait, let me get this straight, you have opened that door 10,000 times, I opened it once and the wires that weakened by the 10,000 times you opened it finally broke, and it is my fault? Bite me.
Do me a favor, don’t ever bring your car to my dealership.
OK, here is where you really show your ass. You will note I said under the dash. The window repair was in the door a couple of feet away, yet you insist on making a defect in a part of the car I never touched my fault. What next, are you going to blame me for the burnt out brake light bulb when I did a repair to the driver’s door?
Also you are showing just how fucking stupid someone that has no clue can be. Yes it might take 4 seconds to push the connector back into the connector, but accessing the connector, and finding the problem might take hours.
To use the punch line from the old joke:
5 swings with the sledgehammer @ $20 a swing $100.
Knowing where to swing the hammer $5,000
first off we can’t as a practical matter do a complete function check of every system on the car before working on it. No time.
A better analogy to the OP would be a car gets towed in with a totally dead battery. Customer approves a new battery. It is installed and when started the car has a dead miss on one cylinder.
Is it fair for the shop to ask for diagnostic time to run down this problem?
Before you answer, remember the shop has never seen this car run, it was towed in.
Go back and read posts 15, 17, 19, and particularly post 26.
If it is the shop’s fault they should fix it. The items I listed above are items that are obviously (at least any sane person) not the technician’s fault. In that case who pays for the time to fix the problem?
This discussion is starting to remind me of a couple of customer interactions I had at Volvo
Case #1 Customer comes in and asks us to put air in her tires. We drive the car to the shop, air up the tires (all were evenly low) and give car back to her. Two days later she has a catastrophic blow out on the freeway. She came back and claimed that we did not know how to put air into her tires. She refused to believe that she might have picked up a nail or hit something, it was for sure our fault. :rolleyes:
Case #2 we do an oil change on a customer’s car. about 3 days later, the rod that opens the driver’s door fell off the inner door handle (happens sometimes) She drives in and proceeds to rip me an asshole for about 15 minutes because we did this on purpose. I take the car back into the shop, have the panel pulled and the lock rod reinstalled.
I go to give her the car back and she won’t shut up about how we did this on purpose. After about 15 minutes I have had enough and I lose it with her. I ask her for what purpose we would do such a thing?
She says so we could charge her more $
I ask her how much I charged her to fix the door.
Nothing was the answer.
So let me get this straight, we somehow rigged your door to break a couple of days after we did an oil change, just so you could come back here, yell at me for 30 minutes and I would fix your door for free just to get you out of my life. is this what you think we did? And you think I did this for profit? Where is the profit?
Her answer? Priceless: “Yes you did this on purpose” :smack:
Any electrical problem with the motor could be caused by the work done on the electrical system. That’s not far-fetched.
I opened the door 10,000 times without incident. You can’t even open it once without breaking it and it’s MY fault?
The wire runs from under the dash to inside the door. I wonder what you think would happen if you pulled that wire when the door was opened up.
Perhaps the sledgehammer is not the precision tool you believe it to be, and could be responsible for the various problems cars have when they leave your shop.
You don’t need to check every function on the car. In the aforementioned situation, you are opening up the door, so you should check every system that one would open the door to repair. If you discover that the lock doesn’t work, you even get to ask the customer if they want to pay you to repair it, so further easy profit potential. Once inside the door, inspect for parts it would be wise to replace, which you also offer to do for more money, but less than they’d pay if you did not already have the door open.
Clean and lubricate where applicable. After closing up the door, confirm that anything you could mess up while poking around in the door still works.
The customer likes the sound of these procedures, so let them know what you did. This will do wonders for the relationship and next thing you know they will be docilely opening their wallets and obediently paying for your professional sledgehammer watch cleanings and synthetic blinker fluid flushes.
It sounds like a lot of your customers leave your shop angry with broken cars, so you’ve decided all are crazy idiots. Your business depends on these folks, so if you are correct, you’re in a bad spot indeed.
You know, they usually charge for inspecting systems and cleaning and lubricating everything. Should they just add that to the cost of repairing what the person brought it in for or just eat the labour cost?
This is where watches and cars diverge. It’s easy to see how a battery change will not affect your brake pads, and a customer suggesting that it did is delusional. A watch, OTOH, is such a small delicate item, I hardly think it’s delusional to believe that a mistake made during a battery change could affect the operation of the Date button.
That’s why I’m trying to limit my analogy to car repairs that could realistically be the fault of the technician, and shouldn’t the shop at least agree to confirm that it was not the technician’s fault before charging the customer for subsequent repairs?