John Pearson

We need an Ikea

My thoughts are people need to be better prepared, we will dump 16in of snow and then be -40 two days later and haven't missed a day of school or work. Alaskans are a tough crowd

CUST. I need my snow tires changed

I have an appointment in an hour does that work

Cust. NO

Are you available tomorrow I can squeeze you in at any time but do need an appointment.

Cust. NO

Okay when are you available?

Cust. Im going to have to call you back im just to busy.

Your not the only one dave.

Ever have an "ASE Master Tech" brake a BMW windshield while changing wiper blades? It happened to me.

I did this on a service drive showing a customer how to do it because they asked me to when I was working at a Volvo dealer. OOPS, I paid for that one and I was a tech at the time.

I can't see it, Im not allowed.

I had a 2000 chevy blazer come in and the guy thought it was a water pump but it was really a bad rod knock. Thankfully we had it inside called him told him the engine was bad and the car was not worth putting money into and THEN we pulled it out. I say thankfully we did in that order because that stupid little crammed in there 4.3L took a shit on my floor as we were pulling it out. All of it Rods, oil pan, oil KABOOM.

The customer understood and wasnt that upset and we had his vehicle taken away to a salvage yard.

You dont even want to know about the mustang with the fiberglass hood that opened on a test drive what a nightmare.

yeah just google exotic car rental most of the time it has to be in a big city.

We dont go on vacation much or leave the state much at all, so while we are in phoenix in December we have a C7 corvette and a lambo gallarado lined up as rentals, I can only imagine what those cars go though. it wasnt to bad the vett was 1500 for a week and the Gallarado was 995 for a day.

I am 160k in debit with my shop. I needed a small loan when it came time to buy new equipment when we added 4 more bays. the other 120k is a piece of land that we plan to build our own building on in 5 years.

Thats another shity situation though, I bought it for 150k and then 6 months later the state comes in saying they need it for a road improvement and will only pay 40k for what they need and are taking 3/4 of it and not leaving me enough space to build anything. we are still fighting that.

we have used it a few times, but the interest rates are extremely high. Normally we use it to urge a customer to find another funding source, being close to a military base there are a lot of options out there.

I have them for my techs, the front is my logo and the back says "Your vehicle was serviced with pride by Technician" one goes in the cup holder of every car.

My service advisor has a company card.

Pearson Auto

phone number

website

logo

and on the back what we do and address

Also all repair orders go into a white envelope with logo on the front and a verse on the back.

"provide things honest in sight of all men" romans 12:17

losing another one.....

A customer drops off his vehicle for a shifting problem. Its an 88 Mustang 5spd. So with any ado I hop in and go for a spin around the block to feel what he is talking about, once I hit 50MPH the hood opens and smacks the windshield.

Its a aftermarket fiberglass hood and was just put on and painted at the body shop 100 miles ago. We told the guy its not our fault on this one, if we had open and closed the hood id eat it but we didn't even have it in the shop yet. so the body shop that did it came by and looked at it and said it wasn't his fault but he is a good customer of his and offered a 3 way split to make the customer happy.

So in the end I talked to the customer we told him not our fault we didn't do it but its 1500 bucks to have it fixed and we are willing to split it 3 ways and so is the body shop. He just said I guess we will see what small claims court has to say and walked off. This is a guy that works for himself as a handyman I was expecting more reason out of him and thought he would value his time more than trying to sue me.

I am right there with you bro, I can talk to my customers all day about what needs to be done to their vehicle, what to do while your in alaska, and everything else under the sun. But as soon as its time to take someones money, or tell them how much their repairs are going to be I hate it.

Back to 24.95

Don't feel to bad, I personally just FUBARED timing belt. I didnt bend the valves I broke them and ran them in to pistons to look like mushrooms. best part is the customer was supposed to drive to the lower 48 with a military transfer. I gave him two options.

 

1 I can give you fair market value for your car, and you can go buy a new one.

 

2 I can fix your car, you can change your travel with the military and fly out ( it would not cost him anything) and I will ship your vehicle to you ( military pays for it I just need a power of a attorney).

 

That sucked, thankfully it was a older Hyundai and old 6k he sold me the car and is off to buy another.

Insurance just called they are buying the car from me for what I paid. thats a little bit of a relief.

I dont mind the radio on, and they can listen to what every they want as long as they would play it on public radio, If I can hear F*** yo Hoe A** N***** word to your drug dealer I F****** your mom, from the office or standing out side with the door open then something is wrong and that is not cool at all.

So your trying to get your guys to flag 200% of book time is what it sounds like. Is there always a car on every lift? Maybe you need 3 techs to 5 bays to hit 100% on every lift. Your guys are getting it done maybe you just need more.

It is going to effect pay and the value of the dollar across the board. If minimum wage goes up 7 dollars and pretty much doubles cost of goods is going to go up. At that point your guys that were working for 25 an hours are going to need to be making 32 an hour to keep the same life style.

7 dollars an hour more on their paycheck is going to equate to a 10-13 dollar an hour actual cost increase, I know if it happens in my state we will have to raise our labor rate but 12-15 dollars an hour. Or to many more states out there.

Scrap metal and parts go to the shop fun account, when there is enough fun money we will do BBQ's, 4 wheeling trips, or gift cards to the crew.

Let the tech keep it, I ask mine to refuse it once but most people that want to tip enjoy doing it.

 

Why is it hard on the pocketbook? Do you discount tire installs for customer supplied tire?

 

Because it can tie up one bay for a day and if I have 1 guy that does tires all day 10 tire changes a day that's 750 bucks total sales for the day. Or I can have a guy do some service work, or repairs and do 4 times that in sales throughout the day. Plus its heavy dirty work most of the time around here.

Hey....us Northerners are fighting it year round, lol. I stock 300' of NC 3/16" brake line....although I haven't looked at it in awhile, there's been months where we've installed nearly 500' of the stuff. You just GOTTA love rust, no?

dislike

Do you all do any type of winterizations or block heaters? I wouldnt say we are cloudy that long but 7 months of not driving the toy cars sucks.

And it looks better now with its wheels and tires on it.

We install a LOT of Customer supplied tires twice a year, and it royally sucks. But with our heavy winters and beautiful summers most people have a winter set of tires and a summer set. When it first snowflakes fall we will miss 5 phone calls for every one that we answer.

To battle this problem because doing 10 sets of tires a day is hard on the help and hard on my pocket book we reserve our tire services for previous customers. Any other day Ill be happy to install your tires and try to up sell brakes, axles and ball joints, maybe even toss in an alignment or two.

I've noticed that people seem more willing to spend money on atv repairs than car repairs. Have a 98 polaris that I just did an estimate for thinking no way he'd have me do all the work. Estimate was over $1,500 and he gave the go ahead and said if we find anything else, fix it.

 

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Stranded out on the road is okay we have road side assistance, stranded out in the Alaska bush is not an option. Fix that damn thing.