TomH

Yep, I'm getting ready to make a raise myself. When I took over for my grandpa it was $55 and that was in 2009. You can only imagine the type of customers that brought, I'm up to $70, about to go to $75 soon. Thats getting upper end for our area.

I don't think you are high enough for your area. I have been over $90 for at least 6 years now in Dayton, Ohio. It is not what you charge, it is the value of the service received for the price.

It looks great. The only suggestion I would have is to put pictures of the shop and the employees on the site to give it a personal feel.

I used to have longer hours and also was open on Saturday. Life is too short to work it all away. I got 4 loaner cars and am now only open Mon. - Fri from 7:30 am until 5:30 pm. If the customer can't get there car there during those hours, I arrange a free loaner car. I have 2 teenage boys and they come first. I wasn't making much with extended hours when you factor in paying overtime. Read this and it might change your mind from working yourself to death. Marbles

What did it cost you? I would like to know because I checked into this a few years ago and the cost wasn't justified by the volume of business I thought it would create for us. I was wondering if their cost structure has changed. I called them a few months ago and told them I was interested in finding out more but they never got back to me.

It costs me 3.5% plus .25 cents per transaction. I had to buy compatible equipment which costs me $427.00. We are also able to use this machine for all our other credit card processing. ( the other cards are at a much lower rate). I hope this helps.

Has anyone ever thought about or checked into accepting the Wright Express credit card?

I recently just got signed up with them because I had a company come in that was using them and they wanted to do business with us. It was a pain to get the credit card machine set up but now all is good, We'll see how it goes.

TomH I noticed that you are an AAA approved shop. What do you think of AAA buying shops in Ohio and potentially being competitors?

I'm in Dayton, Ohio, the shops that they bought are in Cincinnati, only about 40 miles away. I can't say on this list what I really think. (we have to keep it clean!) Let's just say I gave them an earful. They say it would never happen in Dayton, buy why not? When one of my customer's call them for a tow to my shop, they already try to get it going or sell them a battery before towing it to me. I won't continue to be a AAA Approved Shop if they are going to be my competition.

AAA Buys garages

Agreed!

 

Agreed!

 

AGREED also. Joe, you have a perfect vehicle for this with this site and your website.

I bought that tool for about $300.00 a couple years ago to repair a car that I had in the shop. I then posted on a Cadillac Forum that I would rent the tool out. It's paid for itself 4 times over with no problems. I'm think of adding more specialized tool to the list. I also rent it to local garages for a discount. I think this idea of a few shops each buying a specialized tool and then sharing them should grow since the tools are expensive for as little as you would use it yourself.

Bumping this topic..anymore sites? Topic Pinned.

Here's our site: AutoTech Unlimited

I am looking very strongly at this program.

 

http://www.autoenginuity.com/

I just got the AutoEnginuity last week. So far I am VERY impressed. I bought the complete domestic and Asian. It shows so much more information then our Snap On Solus and our Master Tech. Plus it just has a crazy amount of graphing features, It was a total investment of about $2000 including a new high end laptop.

Thanks for the information. I didn't realize that there was another thread on this forum discussing Identifix.

We use it and love it.