Incompetant Mechanics

[Hitman]

I was once a Toyota Tech myself. I now have my own Automotive repair business. Most service depts work like this.

Lead Tech, Team Leader:

Usually has the most experience.
Hands out work to the other techs on his "team"
Works on the most high technical stuff, likes to do gravy work.
Helps the other techs on his "team" with problems when they arise.
They usually get paid a little money for what the other techs on thier team turn.

Thier are usually 3 or 4 teams at each dealership.

BTW gravy work means jobs that are very easy and pay well. Such as a 60k service, brake jobs, etc. Not anything that takes diagnosing.

If I have to take my car in for warranty work, I always ask for a team leader to work on my car.

I've never heard of that.... around here, the techs work independently of each other (of course they will give each other a hand when needed though) and get their jobs from the service writer.

The gravy work usually goes to the top techs (with the highest seniority) and the newer guys get stuck with all the jobs that don't pay....

 

[toyo]

Interesting.... About 90% of all dealerships around here function that way. Where are you?

 

[EDGE]

I've never heard of that.... around here, the techs work independently of each other (of course they will give each other a hand when needed though) and get their jobs from the service writer.

The gravy work usually goes to the top techs (with the highest seniority) and the newer guys get stuck with all the jobs that don't pay....

I just wanted to reply to you about the crash damage, as much as dealerships get bad reputations, they do excellent work, but what I meant about the damage was as a consumer when I buy a car, anyone who buys a car and it's new they don't want to have any hidden previous damage, I've seen customers who did not care they touched it up and I've seen customers loose it cause their was different shades on the bumper, most of the cars are undamaged and if the dealer usually informs the customer, some do some don't.

The best bet for the consumer is to be informed about their car and the work about to be performed, as to Pitbull and everyone else on this board, most techs are smart guys, some are pretty stupid but you put a wrench in their hand and their a god, just think of the kids who hated school and alsmost failed making more money then straight A students who kissed ass, their is a learning curve for everything, I once was learning how to change oil only to be pulling trans/engines 6 months later, of course under the supervision of the head tech but I'd rather some young kid mess my car up and the dealer fix it then have a botched surgury, can you say learning hospital:

Also take into consideration that dealerships go through a tons of help, just the few places I worked at the turn around rate of guys coming and going is just like car salesman, it's a hard career and it fast paced, when I went to Land Rover to meet a friend for lunch their was a tech who did a head job in 45 minutes and it was a 4 hour job, dude had speed and talent.

Hitman once again, the teams is something new, you got out and they started up several years later, my friends that use to work at MB got into them, in short it's nothing different then what you did but now you got several techs that all watch and monitor each others work to different degrees, also helps with diagnosing problems, the teams look invisible to the outsiders probably why you did not notice but it's similiar to what you did.

With the teams I really don't know how they work but at the Benz dealer they share the laptop, diagnostic tools, sometimes you need other guys to help with certain things but I do know at the Benz dealer, a team or 4 was clocking in way over 300 hours a week, the dealer also gave the top team, incentives, prizes and stuff, it was also a way to improve quality of work and such:

Also makes for a better work enviroment cause some places techs are fighting for work so they wanted to eliminate that

 

[Cliff s]

Having owned several auto service businesses over the years I can say from experience
of dealing with customers that the flat rate beaters that have botched the jobs.

The flat rate book is quite accurate in the time that it takes to do the entire job RIGHT.
The only way you can beat flat rate is to cheat and not do the whole job.
Air tools are the biggest offenders. Running down bolts and screws, cross threading them
or breaking them is common.

Sloppy work makes unhappy customers along with come backs from job not done right.
I fired many a so called mechanic for doing sloppy work to beat flat rate, because the
come back came out of my pocket. These guys sometimes broke more parts than they fixed.

It was really difficult to drive through the hard heads that quality of the job comes first not beating flat rate.

Cliff s

 

[MicaBlue03]

How to find a trusted mechanic and stick with them?

Am I misunderstanding things or is it getting tougher for independent shops to compete with the dealers? It seems (just from looking at the repair manuals) that every individual vehicle brand, and even individual models in some cases, needs it's own unique set of "special service tools." For an independent shop to work on several different brands it might be prohibitively expensive to buy all the special tools they need. And this is in addition to the increasing cost of the repair manuals.

I bring this up because some dealers have good shops while some others don't. One way of keeping them on their toes is competition from good independent shops, but I'm concerned that all these special tools and manuals may dramatically reduce the number of independent shops available to do the complex jobs (I do the simple stuff myself).

I've got a great independent body shop that I trust and recommend, but I can't say the same for a general mechanic. Anybody care to enlighten me on this?

 

[EDGE]

Many of the larger private shops in and around my area have closed down, guess you can't compete with dealerships that have 40-60 bays, the technology does make it hard especially when each brand does things different, just the price of equipment, the tire shop I go to the guys alignment rack/machine is 100k:awais:

I don't know about cheating but I've seen impressive shortcuts

 

[Hitman]

Having owned several auto service businesses over the years I can say from experience
of dealing with customers that the flat rate beaters that have botched the jobs.

The flat rate book is quite accurate in the time that it takes to do the entire job RIGHT.
The only way you can beat flat rate is to cheat and not do the whole job.
Air tools are the biggest offenders. Running down bolts and screws, cross threading them
or breaking them is common.

Sloppy work makes unhappy customers along with come backs from job not done right.
I fired many a so called mechanic for doing sloppy work to beat flat rate, because the
come back came out of my pocket. These guys sometimes broke more parts than they fixed.

It was really difficult to drive through the hard heads that quality of the job comes first not beating flat rate.

Cliff s

I used to easily beat the book time on most of my jobs, and I have VERY few comebacks (I didn't like working for free!) when I was working as a tech.

It doesn't pay for a tech to do sloppy work because dealing with comebacks quickly erases any extra time that he has made. That's the system of checks and balances at a dealership.

Like I said before, the top techs in my dealership were making six figures, which would not be possible without flat rate pay.