I don't get it....
 

with these Porsche stealerships. Our local P dealership it seems that they hardly sell any cars, the cars are way overpriced(incl. used) and servicing runs about $150/hr. I went to buy a serpentine belt for my Boxster and just for curiosity I asked how much to install the belt. They quoted an hour and a half of labor. So that is close to $250 with tax. Wayne's 101 Projects for your Boxster book states one hour. Edmonton has a population of about 1 million. If they did not make a profit, then they would not be in business. But they are but I don't understand the economics of it. Could somebody in the business enlighten me? The indy shop is virtually the same. I am sure it would pay for me to have major work done down say in California in the middle of winter and stay at a Best Western for a few days holiday while the work is done. At least your prices are more reasonable. Probably have to pay duty on the way back for the work done. Do you think P dealerships make a ton of $$$$?Please enlighten me!

Dealerships/repair shops in general are there for the people that don't have the ability or want to work on their own cars.

I hear stories from people all of the time about how much this or that repair cost them recently.

Our vehicles are maintained by me except for tire mounting/balancing and alignments.

It's a service and some people are willing to pay for it no matter the price.

Mine has a plaque that says "million dollar sales level" and it shows them getting that award most of the last ten years. I don't really think about the charges very often, they are convenient and do an excellent job.

Sorry but whatever he says will not override what services like Alldata say certain time per repair take.. that is book... and you get charged that

If they beat the book hours... they make money.... if there are problems or the tech doesn't have chops they lose money..

This next sentence is hard to construct...the owner of the site we all post on and exchange information on is not (does not), Influence the data shop owners use to bill time for repairs....

I.E. Alldata does not tell shop owners how many hour to charge based on the owner of this websites claims..

so everyone in the industry uses this....they all report data and this company compiles it. what incentive do they have to ever try to best the estimate? It's in their best interest to jack up the time required to do jobs. That way, the expected amount of time to do jobs always increases.

I don't necessarily dislike unions, but this smells like that same kinda bulls*t

What union? Thats a friggin leap....Many independent shops use service like this...The dealers have there own factory hours/repair manuals...

Duh...

Industry book says you can charge 2 hour/ job... do the job in one hour you make money.... do the job in four hours...

its not that hard

Yeah, so why should anyone trust this book then? Everyone should just assume that the reported amount of time in the book is pure crap.

Everyone should just slow down how fast they are able to do **** so they can get away with doing less ****.

This is not very ethical. Imagine if doctors did this. Why do some people feel like they can get away with not performing at their best?

Speaking from experience, more often than not the book wins. For instance getting paid 4/10's of an hour to track down and repair an electrical issue. Or your changing a water pump and one of the bolts snaps off. It's probably more normal to work 12 hours to get an eight hour book. Unless of course you give the dispatcher and service writers a bottle of VO at the end of the week.

If a mechanic finishes a "2hr" job in 1 1/2 hours or 3 hours, he still gets paid for 2 hours. If it takes him less time, he makes more money because he can start the next one early. So the incentive is not to meet book time but to beat it. After experience, and as new tools and techniques are invented, the estimated time is lowered (or raised if the job sucks more). The time the book says is from your car pulling in to out and all tools/equipment is cleaned and stored, not the time it takes to change the part.

It's not a perfect system by any means, but it's the one most use. If you don't like/trust that system, work on your own car.

I always thought I got charged whatever time the mech actually worked.

Just saying this system lends itself to abuse/padding.

Nothing against mechs, all professions tend to do this whenever they can get away with it. Human nature I guess. I strive to overcome this everyday.

And this is why I attempt to work on my own car, with the help of those on this board.

Rec. 60- as long as Guenter is there along with Randy Mayagashima, there will be little change.

This is oil-country -don't you know!

Everyone- COULD be the CLAMPETS!

And everything here it reflects upon it. It's like the Gold Rush.
Real Estate is + 300% in the last 15 years.
This is EDMONTON ( what a dumb name). I can't stand this boring town. So cheezeball in the -City Of Champions - B.S.-and you pay more to live here than Palm Springs.
That was over 2 decades ago! They can't let it go and it's embarrassing.

How come Mike you still live here? You vote with your feet! 50 golf courses + Rockies 4 hours west+
relatively low taxes etc etc. With all the $$$ you save you can have holidays wherever. Winters really suck but then u become a snowbird when u r older. Oh back on track here, cheaper auto service in the US.

Most people expect to spend serious coin on either a car under warranty or some bigger repairs over the years. Most people know literally nothing about cars. They could not explain to you how a combustion engine works or point to any major components. These people are okay paying for the service. And a little I am sure the Pcar ownership plays into it as well. Most people that are tight don't drive a Pcar or at least not from the dealer.

Not sure if the travel south would pay for you - the hourly rate her isn't cheap either. An independent shop in LA has a ton of overhead and they have to pay their mechanic decent too if that guy wants to live in the area.

G

My Kids are here.

Doctors do this. Exactly this. They bill based on the procedure, not their time. Unless there are complications that take them longer. Then they bill for that too.

Same with contractors, plumbers, IT guys......just about every profession I can think of. Even prostitutes.

Why even have an hourly rate, if everything is treated as a fixed bid agreement? I would expect to be billed based on actual hours worked. If they expect to go over the original estimate/quote, I expect a phone call.

I just had to replace the valve cover gasket on my wife's Kia Sedona. I was quoted around 7 hours of labor plus parts from 2 different dealerships. I spent the $35 in parts and spent 3.5 hours doing the job myself. No shop, no fancy tools and no manual. If it takes a trained tech nearly 4 hours more to do the same job, I have limited faith in our trade schools.

If a prostitute snaps a bolt off, you're going to have a bad time...

Okay, I feel that a little life lesson is in order here...

If a mechanic could charge you however much time it took him to do something, there would be precious little incentive for him to get it done expeditiously. The longer he took, the more he'd make on the job. Want that scenario instead? Think you'd come out ahead in the long run? End of lesson.

Flat rate times aren't generated by a poll from a bunch of lazy mechanics sitting around and guessing what they think they can get past the customers. They start with the manufacturers, who have their own flat rate times for warranty work. They are not very generous. I've run shops where a VERY competent lead technician might have to do a particular job a half dozen times before he could do it in the time they allowed. And that doesn't take into account the time they waste pulling cars in and out of the shop, waiting for parts at the parts counter, filling out the peperwork, etc. That part's something they don't get paid for.

Other flat rate systems like those quoted above are a little more generous than those of the manufacturers but nobody's getting rich in that business. There's a lot of unpaid time diagnosing a problem, or dealing with unexpected occurences that have nothing to do with the repair at hand. Cars aren't so easy to repair once they have some time and miles on them. They are usually pretty filthy, things break when you remove them, etc. The guy working in a shop doesn't always have a couple days to soak something in rust penetrant, while the customer waits in the waiting room. It's not like working on a car in your garage.

And, who knows if the dealership was even using a flate rate system. Maybe they adjust the times, like some of them adjust the retail prices on parts? It's a business, not a goverment service. If they can't make a profit, they won't continue to exist. If they don't exist, that's not a good thing for Porsche ownership in your area.

Lastly, you may be able to do a simple repair pretty quickly, maybe even almost as quickly as a mechanic. When it comes to the really hard jobs, they'll knock something out in a day that might take you a week in your garage, if you could complete it at all. And, they get up the next day and do it again. Some of the stuff they do isn't for the casual tinkerer. I wouldn't change places with them for all the money in China.

Have fun,
JR

Well said JR

What about when they charge a flat rate to fix X and they deviate from the procedure and fix it? Like the dealer charges a book 2.5 hours to fix something and 1/2 hour later you get a call your car is ready? "Oh we don't do it that way anymore".

I can't think of a single thing that could be done properly in 20% of the flat rate time, so maybe you could give us a concrete example. Otherwise I'd have to think your statement was just inflammatory BS, no offense intended.

In general, I don't take my car any place where corners might be cut. I find the best guy out there and give him all my business. When I ran a shop, all of the work was checked; every single car was driven before the job with the customer, to demonstrate the problem at hand, and after the repair was completed, to make sure the complaints were addressed. We didn't do anything half assed and I don't recall we ever did anything that took substantially less than the book time.

JR

This, I would love to have some of you weekend warriors who say you beat book time by 2x, to come to my shop, and do 10 average repair jobs that come through the door, and see how many times you really can beat the book. The best of the best in this biz do not always beat the book, and regularly get their asses handed to them. I just worked 5 and a half hours diagnosing a real pain in the arse problem, and you know what? The customer is gonna complain when I bill them for 2. Gotta love this biz.

I took the POS Chevy Colorado in thinking the misfire was due to the extended warranty valve seat wear issue. Turns out it was a wire fatigued in the back of a connector that there was a TSB (and book time) for. When I questioned the labor charge they did waive the diagnostic fee.

I don't have any specifics on your particular repair, so I can't discuss it intelligently, but this brings up another point, using wiring as an example. The flat rate books don't include every conceivable repair or service operation you can do to a car. Often, the service writer must use a little common sense and pick the closest thing he can find, and modify it accordingly. I doubt there is a flat rate time for diagnosing and repairing the damage to that wire, in that connector, on that car. More likely, there is a time listed for a generic "wiring repair", without any reference to what that might entail. Might be enough time, might not be, depending upon the job in question. And generally, diagnosis and repair are two different things. Flat rate books often don't include diagnosis time, as that's rather hard to estimate for some things in a book.

When I was in the business, we explained to each customer what we thought would be involved to diagnose a particular problem and got their permission to expend that much time and money when they dropped off the car. Once the diagnosis was made, they got a total repair cost quoted to them, along with an explanation of the work involved and they got to approve that before the repair work was started. When they picked up the car, they already knew the total cost and had approved it. No surprises made for a better experience for all.

JR

Had the cashier waited 3 hours to call me to tell me the car was ready after I ok'ed the repair with the service adviser I would have been none the wiser.

What repair did you authorize?

JR

The service adviser told me of the TSB and quoted labor and parts (I assume from the TSB) to which I said go ahead and fix it.

No offense to you mechanics out there, this commercial always cracked me up.


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Okay, so how many hours did he quote you and how long did the repair take? I have never seen a TSB that was so generous with the time allowed that a mechanic could beat it by much. After all, they are the ones using the warranty flat rate times, which are way low on a good day. Any chance they already had started the repair before they called you? I've seen that happen, too. Mechanic A assumes the repair will be authorized and gets started on it. Serice advisor B calls the customer and hopes to get the approval, after the work is completed, or mostly done....

JR

The companies that write the 'books' typically conduct independent time studies. They don't just write down whatever the shops and techs tell them.

Checks and balances.

Insurance companies and manufacturers (warranty) pay based on these 'book' times, more or less. Get too far out of line and you don't sell many copies of your book. A multi-year contract with a single large insurance carrier could be in excess of $50 million. That carries a little weight.

There is more than one company setting and publishing 'book' times. Again, get too far out of line and you don't sell as many copies of your book.

Bodyshops by and large bill the same was as mechanical shops. A good tech at a busy bodyshop can work 60 hours and flag(bill) more than a 100. A lazy tech not so much.

Shops and techs (loosely) split the money from the time you are charged. A slow or lazy tech doesn't make the shop as much profit as an efficient, hardworking tech. The slow, lazy techs get weeded out pretty quickly.

I'm painting with a pretty broad brush but maybe you can see where it's not really a system set up to screw the customer and a shop or company can't just set rates at whatever they want.

J

Complications can be a lot of things but getting paid to fix problems created as a result of a procedure has and will continue to be going away. "Pay for performance" is near...not that reputation doesn't take care of a lot of this already...pay for reputation (patient satisfaction) will be part of it too. John didn't get his oxycontin script as he had asked-->he's not satisfied and indicates the same on some phone survey-->guess who gets dinged for not giving John the satisfaction to which he's entitled?

Dealerships are more expensive but the mechanics are REQUIRED to do certain procedures on a job that an Indy shop might not. I have a few friends that are Porsche dealer mechanics, when you ask for new brake pads installed, they also check seals, lube guides,etc etc that take more time.

Dealerships are there to sell new cars, and to provide warranty repairs and service to customers. They may provide service for out of warranty vehicles, but this doesn't mean that they won't charge for it.

Their business is to sell new cars. An independent shop is generally in business to fix cars. It is their primary job. I would expect them to be more competitive in pricing as they want your repeat business.