lmcca

well, said and very true

We almost exclusively use after market brake pads and our comebacks for brake work are less than 5%. I agree with others that you have to find a good brand and also make sure technicians are doing proper brake repairs.

us too, we never use OE and have great success.

no offense but i would find another shop to do my repairs if i was billed for you not finding me good parts, you said it yourself, you use ceramic unless its a cost factor....

What brand? And you find 98% of the brake rotors are below spec or will be after resurfacing? Thats ALLOT.

What brand of brake pads do you use?

We use Centric and almost never have them come back on us. In Houston, we have high humidity that will literally rust the rotors overnight which will cause squeaking once or twice when first start driving. Its no cause for replacement. Other than that i cant remember the last brake job that came back. I would suspect your brake lathe being an issue but it doesnt sound like it gets much use, lol.

I am grateful for the responses. I decided to call 3 of the no shows to possibly get some answers. One didn't answer. The other two said they found it cheaper or a friend did the work. I am also amazed at the number of people that do ask to bring their own parts in. I knew before moving to this neighborhood it was going to be an adventure but I never expected so many people to give their word on something and then break it. It just aggravates me the lack of integrity in such a great majority of people. Maybe that is why the median income in this area is around $30,000 a year. Maybe I can take beer as payment and start a new business reselling beer and cigarettes.

jesus, really man? You have to find a REASONABLE way to entice them to your shop. Maybe check your pricing, maybe you really are too high, if so, look at ways to cut overhead and compare pricing for your level of service etc. Your not going to change people in the way you want them to. Agitated because they didnt keep their appointment, its about them, they are the customer and if they chose to not show then so be it, move on. In a perfect world they would keep their appointments but we dont live there.

You should look for ways that make them WANT to keep their appointments and start programs like mikerisich said, that does seem to work pretty good but there wont be one thing that makes them come in, except you and how you handle it.

Good luck!

demand force is now month to month as of an email in the past few weeks. Ive had good luck with it and havent had any problems with tech support yet.

i would rather them concentrate on the service ro's rather than answer general business phone calls. Those ro's are your bread and butter and you dont want to skew those numbers. my 2cents.

we tried motologic in hopes of switching, they have a long way to go. They are missing a ton of information. We found things like, looking for a knock sensor on a 4 cylinder car and it gave it for a 6 clyinder and where can you input the engine size? Dodge truck info missing and many others, i stopped writing them down. Motologics response was, we have that missing info but you have to call us to get it?? Said it was something due to licensing.

We run 350 to 400 cars a month and if we have to stop and call to get information its not worth it to us, wasted time waiting for information that should already be there. Mitchell had all of the missing information that motologic was lacking. We are staying with Mitchell.

What I've been doing is giving "free" diagnostics when you buy the repairs, but charging a little extra on every item so the diagnostic cost is recovered. The customer think they got something for free and I didn't lose any money.

wow, you should stop this immediately. Deception is not the way to go, take the time to explain it to them.

I'm pretty sure Napa tracs is Mitchell manager. I use Mitchell, its an easy system for anyone to learn. Its not the best at everything but it makes invoices like a champ,

Napa tracs is its own thing in no way tied to mitchell. We had mitchell for years and tried Napa tracs and dumped it during the training. Napa tracs is very detailed and not easy to move around quickly. Also, most importantly Napa tracks does NOT care nor allow any other parts ordering in their program other than their own. So, you use Advance, you cannot have it in tracs, like Carquest, cant use it in tracs.

hope this helps.

The average consumer is a victim of what they don't know. They really don't know all the associated costs behind diagnostic testing: The scanner, the training, the information systems, the software updates, the complexity of the testing procedures, the tools needed, and you need a highly-trained tech - All of which costs money.

 

Perhaps the consumer sees no difference between a check engine light and a brake noise?

this!

I tell our people not to take offense to the customer not wanting to pay for the diag charge. I tell them to inform the customer and they will understand it, if they don't understand it we liken vehicle diagnostics to medical diagnostics, it is NO different in the meaning. We use, books, diagnostic equipment, self knowledge, learned knowledge etc in order to form a "diagnosis" and the same in the medical field, ALL of that costs money to make available to find out what is wrong with the car.

Knowledge is power, use it to your advantage and you will gain a customer rather than insulting one, take the time to educate them, it will pay off for you.

We have also had customer turn and walk out, but those are the customers that didnt have the money to repair the car anyway, that is a fact in 95% that walk out. The other 5% was we didnt explain it enough or well enough for them to understand or be reeducated.

and you have nothing to do with this company other than your a customer, the only customer, in the same small area of Ohio?

another weird thing is the owner of that site is right around the corner from you, yall are neighbors, how cool.

is your name Peter by chance??

sorry, just trying to help others. SEO is not an overnight thing. you CANNOT buy your way to seo rankings, you have to do many things to get top spot and it takes months. You can get at the top but its not seo ranking or generic rankings doing it, its people buying ad spots and pay for click spots that are there on those spots in a short amount of time.

Google and other search engines have worked long and hard to keep you from paying to be on page one, slot one. They want your content, your website traffic, meta data, key words among other things to rank at the top.

Did you check that the review was really your customer cause, the way its written is not how customers write reviews, its too technical and fishy looking. Yes its only 20 dollars but is it just smoke and mirrors?

oh, and you are his only shop in the United States. i clicked on everyone of the states and the only shop to come up was yours in Ohio. No other shop in the nation is doing this. I think he needs the advertising more than us

• "$19.95 / month, for up to two Makes of vehicles, Repair Shops Only."

so what 2 makes did you buy for 20 whole dollars.

i have a brother team going here, one is my service manager and the other is a tech. Dont really have too many problems but the tech gets ballsy sometimes. I even wrote him up recently for some things, but, the SM has been here 13 years and the tech 8 years, so i guess this scenario is working.

Basically it depends on the two you consider, if they have a good marriage then they probably will work out great. If you have other techs it maybe awkward when it comes to dispatching, the whole favoritism thing will be brought up. So you will have to do a little extra work in figuring out that side of it if she will be dispatching work or even if she is in charge when others are out for personal stuff.

wow, nice post, very informative - thanks!

Cool, got my Zebra printer set up. Designed my own label using their label design software on my Snap On Verus scan tool which I also use for my SMS, Alldata, etc. I can open the template, hit print, asks me for mileage and date, then it spits out a label. I can change the layout daily if I wanted to. Logo is on it with all of my information as well. Freaking love it!

 

If you're using a desktop computer daily for everything else and you have a spare USB port, you might as well save yourself $300 and just buy the printer itself. You can always custom order a roll of static cling labels with a color logo on it if you'd like. Just my 2 cents!

 

AJ

i did the same thing, saved half the cost of buying one from a company.

i wouldnt do anything about a customer simply sitting in the waiting room waiting to pay you money. what harm are they causing? the smell? big deal. make your money and they will go on.

also ask them when they make the deposits to your bank account. some will hold onto your money for 2 days.

but what did he say when you asked him that?

and, theres no law ive ever heard of about that either