mmotley

*double post

1 hour ago, xrac said:

Paul is a good guy but he is hard to get off the phone with. 

😂 He will keep you on the phone longer than you really want to. But such a nice guy! You can tell he really cares about his clients and getting them the best deal. Night and day difference between him and some of the scum I've dealt with in the past.

6 hours ago, alfredauto said:

Remember some companies break up the charges to deceive customers. I studied a colleagues account because I wanted 1% processing. Turns out he got a monthly statement that was fixed at 1.2% on all transactions; swiped, typed, cvc not present you name it. Looked good until we checked his bank statement. They deducted the interchange rate before depositing funds. All part of the contract. I had a similar  system when I first started, trust me I paid for that free equipment.  I didn't do a complete analysis but it ended up around 4% total. 

We pay about 2.7% average because we accept Amex, discover, over the phone. Pin entry with chip inserted is the best and cheapest way to get paid. 

What burns me is I'm paying 2.7% to collect sales tax for the state. Do the math. It costs us money to collect sales tax. The credit caps out fast if we do even moderate volume. 

Some months it's below 2% but being in a college town keyed entries are common, as are multiple cards for a relatively low purchase. It all adds up. 

Wow! That's slick, taking the charges before depositing the money. Surely he should have caught that as he was reconciling the bank statement though! I use Paul, as recommended by xrac. Great guy. He'll tell you more than you care to know. I'm consistently around 2% total, out the door, everything. The only thing I don't like is being under a contract, but given the fact that there are so many shady credit reps that will lie to get you to come on board with them, I can understand it. I'd highly recommend Paul.

10 hours ago, xrac said:

Be wary about what you are promised and what they tell you.  Ask for the name of 2-3 businesses that have been using them for more than 1 year.  Talk them and see what they say and what their actual costs are.  I have had great rates like that promised, signed up and then got baited and switched. They were outright crooks.  Currently I am paying about 1.7% total costs no contract and no equipment costs. 

This is why I say to make sure you're not signing a contract. Tell them if they keep their rates fair, you'll stay. 

Did YOU personally call and verify you are not under contract? I had a rep come in and say he would call and make sure I wasn't under contract. He came back 2 days later and said 'I called your processor and they said you weren't under contract'. That's why I stress that YOU call and verify. Some reps are ruthless and will lie or say anything to get you to sign their contract. 

Agreed, that does sound too good to be true. I would make sure there is no contract. You'll literally have to read through the entire 10+ page agreement, but it's worth it. I'd be VERY suspicious. 

I would advise that YOU personally call your current processor and make sure that you are not under contract. Sure, you can haggle with them on rates, but if your under contract, you better find out what it takes to get out. 

Also, do not fall for a new processor who claims no contract, or that they can make a special deal and negate the contract agreement. Most contracts state "no strike throughs" so your rep writing "no contract" on your contract is total b.s. 

Looks like you're paying about 2.3%, which is a little high, but not terrible. Find out when your contract is up first, then start shopping around. 

For some reason I can't edit my last post, but anyway, I should have mentioned that you will meet some great people through BNI. We have an AMAZING CPA in our group. A great financial guy that is gonna set us up with something similar to a 401k (pretty much IRA accounts or something like that), a lawyer, etc, etc. 

Truett, how's the new pay plan working out for you so far? You should have about 3 weeks worth of data. Any improvement? I've been working on my pay plan for techs and I'm implementing it slowly over time. We started out with an hourly pay, plus a bonus for each billed hour over 20, plus a team bonus for every hour over 45. 2 weeks ago I scrapped the team bonus and just divided it up among the two techs. Probably starting in December, I'm going to change to an either/or pay scale. Something as follows: They'll get there hourly guarantee, unless they flag more than 20 hours. 20-23 billed hours, they'll be making $24 an hour, 24-27 they'll be making $25 an hour, 28-31 they'll be making $26/hour, and so on. Numbers are strictly just for illustration purposes, but you get the idea. Again, it will be an either/or, so they either get their guarantee, or they'll essentially be flag rate once they break 20 hours. Again, all numbers are for illustration purposes, as I have not done the math yet to make sure I'm getting my necessary GP, but you get the point.

I know simply changing their payscale, like others have said, likely won't be enough to get things where I want them, so I'll have 90 day reviews going forward to help move techs along. I'll show them where there at, decide where we want to get them, show them how it will increase their paychecks, and set a goal we can both agree on for the next 90 days. Rinse and repeat. Keeping my fingers crossed, as I feel I'm in the same boat as you. Two techs averaging 25-27 hours/week. 

Jeez, I can't wait to get out of my contract based on what I'm seeing others pay on here. I paid 2.3% last month

So it only happens about 3 or so times a year, but every once in a while we get a bad check. Out of the 3 or 4 bad checks, 1 or 2 are an honest mistake and gets corrected immediately with cash or CC. How many shops out there are operating as a cash or CC only business? I've thought about it many of times, but it's hard to make that change when we have a lot of customers come in and write $1,000+ good checks. 

Something that would be interesting is to have all this information correlated with shop revenue. IE, are there shops out there doing $1 million+/year that are doing their online marketing on their own?

BNI was cheap compared to everything else and has been great. I can pull up my revenue numbers from it, but I know without a doubt it has paid for itself. Downside is you have to attend weekly meetings for about 1.5 hours. So unless you can step away from your shop for that long, don't waste your money.

We use kukui for our webpage and listing. Not cheap, but they do a great job. As far as adwords, we spend about $400/month

Have you shopped around? From what I can tell, most companies start out paying you, then say they can't pay anymore but will pick it up for free, then slowly start charging. At least from my experience.

I wonder if something similar can be done for Facebook reviews...

Saw this posted on bolt-ons facebook page today... I've got have a mind to get a professional plague made up or at least have it framed for our lobby 😂

3 hours ago, mspecperformance said:

I am still in dispute with them over 8 months they charged me for QB integrator for $39 per month. These A-holes even say, "OH... I see that you did cancel but I don't know why you are continuing to be charged..." I am making it my life's mission to convert any shop friends from them. Protractor has been awesome so far at one of our other stores. I can't wait to convert my original store over. I'm going to give these idiots an earful at the RW Conference thats for sure. 

Adam, have you tried calling Back Office about this? That's probably who you should talk to I think

7 minutes ago, mspecperformance said:

I'll be using Protractor for the new shops and will convert the original store after I have a good familiarity with the program. Its awesome. 

I would love to hear your feedback on protractor once you get it up and running. I've heard good things about it

I hear a lot of complaints and I agree that Mitchell has room to improve, but is there any alternative software that anyone recommends?

So, I feel like most shops on this forum are performing some sort of multi-point inspection on just about every car that comes in. I know we do. I'm curious though what everyone's inspection consists of. Are you having techs pull every cabin filter and air filter? Test drive every vehicle? Are you pulling wheels to check and measure brakes? 

Also, are you paying your techs for these inspections on top of other services? If so, how much?

Here is a copy of one of our digital inspections if anyone is curious.  http://2un.me/yssm 

Personally, I've struggled with checking cabin and air filters for 2 reasons. 1.) It is a bummer to pull out those filters, take pictures, make the recommendation, and the customer decline, just to turn around and put them back in. 2.) Some filters a real pain in the ass to check. I really struggle justifying pulling out a glove box assembly to find a clean cabin filter, or to find a dirty filter and the customer decline replacing it.

I've also struggled with with the following situation: We find a radiator leaking, build a quote, present to the customer, and they decline. I've toyed around with the idea of scrapping all component specific inspection points and simply informing the customer that we found a coolant leak on their vehicle and using that information to sell a '$49 cooling system inspection'... I haven't pulled the trigger on that yet.

It would be cool to see what kind of inspections you guys are doing on every vehicle and how you are handling different aspects of it. 

May was rough for me. June seems to be picking up though

0.6 includes a digital MPI

One thing I haven't seen anyone mention about loaner vehicles is that, as a shop owner, you should be taking full advantage of having a loan car fleet personally. My company has three loaner cars, but I don't own a car. I also don't pay car insurance, but the company does. I also don't have car repair bills, maintenance, or fuel expenses, but my company does. Just thought I'd throw that out there

*wrong topic