tyrguy

You do know that the MC MC440S are imports as well don't you? Mexico. However the reason I'd go with them over the Westlakes, Ironman, or whatever is that the MCs are backed by Cooper. We sell the Fuzion line which is back by Bridgestone and are at about the same price as the MCs.

You have nothing to worry about except losing the customer which in this case might be a plus. Your warranty was explicit in that they had to return to you for warranty work. It only makes common sense that they would be required to do that unless they were out of town and couldn't get to your shop. Your $40 goodwill offer was a correct response.

We never give alignments away for free. With the purchase of 2 or more tires we do give away a free alignment check. My records show that 70-75% of the vehicles will need the alignment touched up. Very few people opt to not have it adjusted after putting new tires on. The Hunter printout helps with the closing of the sale.

We used to be open a full day on Sat with a full crew. 2 service advisers, 2 out of 3 techs and our tire changers. 1 tech was always off on Sat [i left it up to them to choose who was off]. Eventually cut back to closing at 2, then noon. About 20+ years ago we I decided to give the service advisers and techs the weekends off but in return, we went to staying open till 9 on Wed with all 3 techs on board. So for the last 20+ years Sat has been myself and 1 or 2 tire changers [depending on the season] from 8 till noon. We do a lot of free tire changes and rotations, and probably average 8 tires sold retail except like now in season when that will jump to 16 to 20 or more. There have been Sat where we do less than than $100 retail. However, we also deliver tires to our local car dealers, make service appointments for the following week, and have customers pick up vehicles that have been finished during the week so there are intangibles that don't show up in $$s. It's probably a break even proposition but I just haven't pulled the trigger on closing on Sat yet. Except when I was a tire salesman for the Mohawk Rubber Co on the road during the late 70s, I've never had Sat off so I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't working. Final note: About 3 months ago I asked my techs how things were going and they replied okay except that staying till nine on Wed night was getting old. In response to that we decided to stay till 6:30 on Tue and Wed instead. We get the same tech hours but but it eliminates me buying them dinner and we all get home at 7 instead of 9:30 which is a big difference. I like it more myself.

LMCCA'S comments don't bother me. It's all good. I just like having this forum as a place to go and vent a little to guys that know what I'm going thru every day. Yes, I go home and tell the little lady, or talk to my brother the school teacher. But NO ONE understands what we go thru better than our compadres on a forum such as this. Whether it's seeking advice, or just venting, I feel like I'm in an auditorium with all of you where I can stand up take the floor and speak my mind. And because of who you all are and what you do, I respect your opinion more than anybody else.

Absolutely my fault, and I readily accept that fact. And I didn't mind making it right by giving the service away at no charge. And if the customer had said it's an old car, or I can't afford it I wouldn't have thought anything of it. It was just the fact that he admitted he would have had given the authorization that got under my skin.

Sorry, too old school for the acronyms. OP? LMCCA?

Richard, of course that makes sense and I try to do that when I remember to. In this case it was dropped off with no appointment for a tire repair that led to a tire sale. When I sold the tires over the phone I said we would do a free alignment check if we could fit it in. Just one of those busy times when you don't think about it and figure you'll call the guy if it's out. Most times that I think to get a pre-authorization the customer either says to go ahead or to check it and call them if it's out. In the rare instance a customer would decline the alignment before it's even checked, the question would be to the customer why do you want to check it if you're not going to fix it? After this situation I indeed had a talk with my guys about pre-authorizing to keep this from happening again. I can tell you though, I've had similar situations in the past where we didn't go ahead with the repair and the customer was not happy because it wasn't done. The only reason I started this thread was it was frustrating and who better to unload on than your peers who understand.

Learning experience? Bad choice? I don't feel we made a bad call at all. If it happened again next week, I'd do the same thing. Because the fact is, most reasonable people would say i'm sorry you couldn't get a hold of me and thank you for proceeding with the alignment. My tech gets paid .5 hours to do a free alignment check so all it cost me was an extra .3 hours to have him make the adjustments. I wasn't looking for sympathy, I was just venting about having to deal with characters like this guy that we all encounter way too much. If the question bothered the guy it's because he knows he was wrong. Fact is I don't think the question bothered him at all and that's the problem. He's oblivious to how he came across.

You missed my point entirely. We took a chance that he would be okay with it. However, I told my service manager if he balked when paying his bill, we'd just take it off. I don't have a problem with him doing that at all. What does bother me is him saying he would have given the okay if we had been able to contact him. I would rather he have lied and said "no, it's an old car and I wouldn't have had it done".By saying he would have given an okay he's basically saying I can take advantage of you and the situation and I will.

At 63 and in business for 37 years this month I wonder more and more how long I want keep having mornings like this morning. Guy comes in yesterday and drops his car off for a tire repair. It need tires so I call him and tell him that. He says why don't we put a set on. I explain that I'll be glad to do that but he really only needs 2. He's grateful for the advice and decides on one of the 3 options I quote him. He asks when it will be done and I explain in an hour but if he wants to take advantage of the free alignment check he'll have to leave it for the day. He agrees so later in the day we proceed to check the alignment which is out badly. We try to contact the guy 3 times for an okay to proceed but he doesn't respond to our messages. Finally my service manager and I agree to go ahead and align the vehicle but we made sure to print before and after copies of the settings. When the guy comes in today he balks at paying for the alignment. I immediately tell him I'll deduct it from his bill. But then I explained that although our policy is not to go ahead without an authorization, we couldn't get a hold of him and took a chance that he would want it done. I then showed him the before and after readings. He didn't budge so I took it off his bill. But when running his credit card, I asked him if we had gotten a hold of him if he would have given an authorization and he said yes. So he was basically saying I would have paid for the alignment but since I have you in a bind, I'm going to take advantage of you. I so wanted to really give this guy a lecture but I bit my tongue and kept silent. I'm getting soft in my old age.

Some points. We went thru an audit 5 years ago and managed to keep our service advisers as clerical. I reviewed my notes and here are the reasons I think it went our way. Different uniforms. Our service advisers wear totally different uniforms than out techs. Don't discount this. You are trying to differentiate your advisers from your techs. Separate work areas. It says right in Ohio's clerical description there must be separate and distinct work areas. That means a wall between where they work and the bays. We don't have a adviser work station in the bays. Additionally, behind the counter we have an office where both advisers have a dedicated desk. All selling is done by the advisers. They specifically asked whether the techs sold any of the service. The answer was no, which is true. All the selling is done by the advisers. Lastly they asked about wholesaling tires. We do a bit with other shops and car dealers. They asked whether the advisers did that selling which the do. I think it re-enforced their status as salespeople. Again, these were from my notes. I don't know for sure why they ruled our way but these are my best guesses.

I just read an an advertisement in one of the trade journals that might be the ticket for many of us when the need for flashing increases. A company called Drew Technologies has a system they refer to as RAP [remote assisted programming. I believe they lease you the box that you plug in the car and it connects with their company and they remotely re-flash the car. Have no idea about pricing etc. It would eliminate the need for any OEM subscriptions. Check it out at http://www.drewtech.com/.

A set would be 4 units. A pair would be 2 units. I'm assuming what you are referring to as a set is only 2? Also I don't understand your last sentence.

I remember a tool for shocks many years ago. Late 70s or early 80s. It was a gauge that attached to the fender by a magnet. You jounced the vehicle and it would measure the oscillations up and down and pass/fail the unit. Problem is it wouldn't work for struts because of the way strut/spring assembly is engineered. The only "test" I know of is how the unit reacts on a test drive. Obviously it's easy to recommend a leaking, bent, or obviously weak unit for replacement. But don't discount a "soft" recommendation based on mileage. We start to recommend replacement at 80mo/80k miles. Studies have shown that ride, braking, and tire wear can all be improved by replacing oem units above a certain mileage.

Okay guys, I'm pretty computer illiterate so if I'm providing info you already know, excuse me. I did a dumb thing yesterday. Got an email that gave me a confirmation for an order of some sort. Please, no lectures, I know better, but I opened it. It was ransomware. Infected my computer and encrypted my Quickbooks and POS software. That's the bad news. The good news is, the local company we use to fix computer issues was able to correct the situation quickly, and that's the advice I want to pass along. The reason they fixed the issue so quickly is because there is an option in the Windows operating system that makes something called shadow copies. So each of our computers is always backing itself up. The issue was only on my computer and the tech was able to restore my data back to only 7 hours. He said that a lot of people don't have this option clicked on because it takes up a small amount of disc space. The reason we had it clicked on was because when they were here last year for a different issue, they clicked it on. We also talked about initiating some constant cloud type backup which I am looking into. Sorry if this info isn't more detailed but again, I'm pretty stupid when it comes to this stuff.

Okay, I misunderstood what you said. i thought you were saying that they didn't expect you to be responsible in any way. I'm assuming you meant that they don't expect you personally to go down to Florida and fix it, but they do expect you to get it handled thru these programs. So in essence, they do expect you to be responsible.

I disagree. If we put a water pump on a car and they travel to Florida a short time later and it starts leaking, I would fully expect to be held responsible whether it was my fault or not.

The break even point depends on how many hours they work.

Another thing that will really hit Tire Rack is if and when congress gets around to passing the fair marketplace act which will force Tire Rack to charge sales tax. Right now that is our biggest disadvantage when competing with them on price. The fact that one of the biggest web based retailer [Amazon] has started to charge sales tax on all sales most likely will hasten the implementation of this legislation.

I buy exclusively from ATD. Now, you can say putting all your eggs in 1 basket can be a bad thing. However, there is an upside as well. If you spread your purchases out between several suppliers, you aren't as important a customer to any of them. But if you concentrate your purchases with 1 supplier, you are as important a customer to them as a customer many times your size that buys from multiple suppliers. Additionally, most good suppliers will reward that kind of loyalty.

Hoses are the most neglected and un- recommended/ un-sold service out there. We adhere to Gates' recommendation of inspect at 60k, replace at 90k. However, most of time we tell customers that at 90+k they should replace them they almost always initially say go ahead. That is until you tell them it's going to be $400-$500. Most back off at that point.

For the few times a year that we need to re-flash something we use a Mobile re-programming service. Same day service and reasonable [$115.00]. We have been very satisfied doing it this way so far.

We were very similar for that period. Our sales were down about 30k for a month as well, but for us it was April. If April had just been equal to 2015, we would have been up as well. Currently, Our sales are down about 10% for the year. But considering one of my techs retired in April and I've elected to try and make it work with only the 2 service techs remaining and 2 tire techs I don't feel too bad.

I pay my techs $34/hr for every flat rate billed. If it's a slow time I pay them a minimum of 60% of that rate or $20.40 /hr worked. They work 44 hours a week so 40 hrs x $20.40 + 4 hrs x $30.60 = $938.40. They get whichever is higher. The hours at which it flips from hourly to flat rate is 27.6 hours. With three techs over the last few years, I was paying a lot of minimum weeks but now with only 2 techs, they rarely get paid hourly.