lmcca

sounds like your techs may be managing you?

this is a hard issue in some cases and we had our share to. We had one guy that complained like no other that if he was going to look at something he should get diag time. Then i guess one day he wrote up something and the service writer sold it and now he is my best guy at looking for maintenance etc. He saw the hours it was producing him and he does good with it now.

My advice would be to write down what you would like to see.

Put it to paper in an easily understandable way.

Have weekly meetings explaining the importance of this to them, the customer and the shop. Notice i put "them" first?

Keep harping on it, dont be overbearing but be consistent.

If that fails to work then you will need to be more firm. It can even lead to replacing someone, as harsh as that may seem it sounds like the shop could be running down a road to a problem and you cant let your techs dictate how to steer it back. They can help but its you that is in charge.

The simply are NOT doing what you ask of them, you may have to make them.

Having freon levels drop over several years is normal and doesnt mean there is anything wrong, it will permeate thru the seals and is nothing to worry about. Add dye, top it off and, come back if it gets warm again, that way, you will know its something more.

We do

We use ccc as well, its only for collision as im sure your aware and it works great with quickbooks as well. Mitchell ultramate is not a management program, we have it to process Progressive insurance and it works pretty good.

The shop owners, managers, dealerships and repair chains are all getting rich off the hard work and tools of the low level to high level mechanics and technicians.

bringing up the dead eh? this post was made in 2013.....

i liked your post

Mitchell will not stand by its mistakes. We had them for about 12 years and decided to get the quickbooks integration. We have a collision and mech shop that have two p&l's into one bank account. They assurd us that it would work. It didnt work. They kept trying and trying and made quickbooks an utter mess. It create duplicate entries of every customer, every vendor in our qb database. Then they said they couldnt fix it. This was about 2 months into it. Then we realized they never refunded us at least for the integration. At that point they would not give it back and said, "your under contract sir" and refused to refund us our money even though they had their own techs notes indicating it was not working.

We will never use them again. We can understand mistakes or limitations but to not refund us? They took a customer of 12 years and threw us to the side and didnt even care.

whats a "phone book"?

some people you just cant please, you know this.

if you want to keep him then you have to explain things. People try that with us too on old cars, its old so it cost less. I explain, its old, less helpful (computer systems), rusty and easy to break stuff, so, it will cost you more to fix it. If you dont want to keep him, explain that your prices are your prices, those people on the internet are not coming down here to fix your car. Auto repair prices are different here in tx as they are in california the same as cost of living and home prices.

it really isnt any different than any other customer, some you have to spend extra time on and others you dont.

I disagree as well, me as a customer, you wont tell me how much a wheel alignment is? What are you hiding or what is the trick your trying to pull on me. Prices have been posted for services in the industry since day one probably, and for good reason.

why on earth would you use oreilley. they are the worst parts dist we have ever used. Autozone pays us warranty claims, they deduct it from our bill immediately. Autozone used to be shit too but more and more these days they are getting better manufacturers, thus better parts.

so by not charging 95 an hour you are limiting yourself to the same old thing day in and day out. I mean, you cant buy newer tools, updates, specialty tools, ac for the shop, (here in Texas that would be awesome but dont know if its needed there). It sounds like you dont need the money, but you are very good at what you do so you should go into this to make things easier on you, your not getting any younger?

anyway, thats my short opinion. no need to cheat yourself and its not wrong to charge that.

now that is funny, wonder what he did then?

$400k gross in a 8 bay shop is terrible. Something is wrong. Look back 10 years if you can, maybe he slowed down. 8 lifts can accommodate at least 5-6 techs and should be grossing well over 1m. There might be a problem with 1. Equipment isn't usable, 2. Good help isn't available? 3. Customer base too small , 4. Customer base too poor. 5. Some other reason. The utilities remain constant, so the reason the current owner is under-utilizing the space should concern you .

i agree, that was so far off that it screams the reason he is selling.

i agree your limiting your customers. For example, i have 2 cars, a chevrolet pickup and a toyota camry. So, i can go to shop A with just my camry, and have to go to shop B for the chevrolet. But Shop B says that they can service the camry too, so, now i dont really care to go to Shop A as it only services one of my cars. Now at B i can have all my service records in one place, i can build a relationship with them easier and so on......

thats my 2 cents and how it would play out for me.

hope this helps

We had challenger for 12 years and they were good. Then a year ago we got a rotary and we really like that one so much better. Rotary is a very nice lift.

it should be promoted that way then. People would follow what you submit more so than the person that owns the site because you are a shop owner on a site with other shop owners and managers. If you know the guy im sure your friends and you should state that instead of coming in with a "hey i found this site, and i am using it" as it misleads people that read it, almost like you didnt want them to know that you knew the owner of the site.

cheers.

kms, werent you promoting that website in another post and the moderators told you to stop. Do you have a vested interest in that website? If memory serves me right, your shop is located in the same town, a few streets away, from the websites owner, coincidence?

they stopped paying us too, with oil prices way down it greatly affects the oil people. When oil goes back up, they will start paying again.

yep, couple things, keep the messages short and to the point, graphics are the best cause they are flashy. keep in mind they are driving past around 40?? Once its up, drive past it yourself and see how you can read and comprehend the message(s).

good luck!

Umm sorry to be the voice of decent, but 30-40k? Are you nuts? And you got a whooping 4 LOF and a set of tires. Please, don't take offense. I truly think that's a horrible investment. Tires run at what 20-30% gp if your lucky? LOFs are usually a loss leader ( from what I've read on here, I make money on mine).

 

To spend $30k means you have to bring in 70k. Wouldn't that be better spent towards improving efficiency and productivity? Put it towards a computerized inspection process, get the techs tablets, and increase your average RO. Then put 10 k into yelp/Adwords/ your website. Then with the left over purchase factory scan tools and now your even more productive.

 

Like I said, I'm not trying to be rude, I just think $40k on a message board is crazy. Especially with the test results you've gotten back.

be careful taking advice from someone that has not used one. The boards are well worth the investment. The idea is to get people to notice and read it. When you drive down the road, you yourself read these boards, your almost mesmerized by them and this is the point. Advertising is about getting people to look at what your advertising, their brain will take care of the rest, mission accomplished.

We have one and have had it for 5 years, it helps with bringing in sales, new customers, retaining current customers, hiring people and is awesome.

I cannot imagine NOT having one.

They are out there BECAUSE they work.

good luck.

Has anyone tried it? I signed up and the first "class" was a sales pitch. When i questioned the sales pitch and how to take other courses they ignored my question about the sales pitch.

wow, and your first post ever was to inform us of this, man, thank you sooooo much!

wow, thats pretty bad, i havent had one that bad. geez, what a tool.

never used dayco, always gates, have not had any issues with gates so no need to switch