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I am owner financing the sell of my business and the new owner has 3 other shops that are smaller than mine. I have my insurance with Nationwide and they will only insure him if they get all 4 locations. Their concern is that he might shift employees around from location to location. I want him to have BOP insurance (Business Owners Policy) which covers the building and Liability. They are also going to consider this as non-owner occupied and don't like the fact that he sell used tires. The price they are giving us is almost 3 times what I was paying. My insurance agent says he can't find anyone else that will write the policy. Does anyone that sells some used tires have BOP insurance with someone other than Nationwide?

I used it for 7 years. It is very easy to use. They will let you try it at no cost. There customer service was always good and the labor was correct 95% of the time. I also had AllData to compare it with but did not use the database function on all data. Again Automotive Expert was easier and less expensive. I would not recommend it for a large shop because being easy means there are limitations to it.

I think as shop owners we get hung up on reviews too much. We should think as consumers in this case. The type of people that check reviews before going to a business will expect to see some negative ones, if there are enough posted. What they are looking for is consistency. If all the negative are about the same thing then there is a problem. If you get a negative just bury it in positive ones. When a customer is really happy ask them to post a review.

I am concerned that I may have an employee using drugs. We have found two plastic needle covers for a syringe. I have not noticed any unusual behavior or anything missing. Has anyone dealt with this before. Any advice? Is it possible to have a drug user that is maintaining like House on TV?

Marksas, that is an excellent idea. I am in the process of doing something like this on a different business. I am going to fund it and let them do all the work and build the business for me. They will get paid and receive 6% equity each year if the hit their targets up to 24% each.

I will throw out another thought. Buy the land and rent it to someone else. I have done that several times because I didn't want to deal with running another shop. If you do this you will hold all the cards so you can do what ever you want down the road.

Just had a guy stop by to get a tire. He said his wife ran over something. We found this .22 inside the tire with a live round in it. When you think you have seen it all....

I think I have the answer for anyone that may see this post later on. Changing my business model is not the answer. It is true that it would run most of these customers off but this is a very profitable business. I base that statement on the fact that I have been to several of the ATI seminars and my numbers are usually one of the best in the room. I am talking about percentages not dollars. There is money to be made in this market. I see post all the time about how we need to get rid of "those" customers but they have to go some where. I spoke with another shop owner near me and then my attorney. In my state I have the legal right to use reasonable force to remove a customer from my property. That is what I was really after, if it gets to the point that I need to do this until the police show up I can.

All good information and I would hope those of us that have been in business for many years are following the above advice. I deal with low income customers driving older cars and many are clearly on durgs. I would guess we have to call the police once every 3 months. What I am asking is after we have done all the above and the customer is out of control.

Need some advice on dealing with angry customers. I try to call the police as soon as things get out of control but it usually takes half an hour before they show up. It is really bad when another customer has to see this so I want to limit that. This is obviously for situations where we are in the right. (Stuff like we replaced a tire and now the car overheats)​

We got it shut and she claims she is returning to get some work. I think this will all work out well.

I was in court once for something like this and the Judge told my customer that if she had the car towed to my shop it was obvious that there was an expectation for me to fix it and for her to pay for my services. If they have found another shop that will do this work for less I think you need to take the savings out of the equation. When they find out how much It will cost for you to undo what you have already done they may tell you to keep going.

This issue depends on your customer base. I deal with low income customers and I could not get away with that. The same thing would go with a battery. They know they could go to AutoZone and buy it with free install so all I can do is sell it at AutoZone walk in price and pocket the difference of my discount. For the air filter, at my shop I wouldn't go much more than $10.00 mark up with no labor. I have some friends with nice big shops on the high income side of town and it is a different story for them.

I deal with the entitlement section of our society and have been to small claims court many times. I have never lost. If I am in the wrong I settle out of court. I pay a monthly fee to Legal Shield and get free consulting with an attorney. If you are in the right don't be afraid to use the system.

I don't live in fear over google reviews but I do keep them in mind and I don't like getting bad ones. I also agree that this shouldn't be on me but if I were her I can see why she would think we are responsible. I just told my mechanic to man up and fix it. He is understandably upset having to fix someone else's problem.

A customer came in with a 2002 Mercedes C230 and my "C" mechanic took it for a test drive. For some reason (he says accidentally) he hit the sun roof and the interior part opened and will not close. The customer tells us that it was broken when she bought the car and she took it some where to have them put it back and she has not messed with it since them. I feel that we should fix it but my head mechanic says he will not mess with it because he has no experience with it. I can tell him to do it anyway but don't want to end up in a bigger mess than I am in right now. I would like to hear how you guys have dealt with situations like that.

What happened to Ingersoll Rand? I had a Curtis that lasted for over 30 years. When it went out I replaced it with a cheap 5 HP unit from Lowes and was told by a competitor that it would not last long. It broke while still under warranty. I then got what my competitor recommended which was a 7.5 HP Ingersoll Rand that cost $1800. His motor went out in 4 years and mine just hit 4 years and I just replaced the motor at $1200! I called another shop for a different reason and they mentioned that their IR compressor was down and were told it would be a week before they would get the part they needed. I talked to one of the service guys and was told that the motors don't like constant on and off so I have just linked my 80 gallon tank to another 80 gallon tank to double my storage. Perhaps this will help me get some more time out of this motor. I also went with a different brand motor. It would have been more than a week for the IR motor. We do around 5,000 tires a year so I do put a heavy load on the compressor but I think 4 years is unacceptable for a $1,800 compressor. Am I out of line on this?

One thing that has not been discussed is what part of town your shop is in an who your customers are. I am in a low income area and all my competition will use customer parts. There are 3 salvage yards very close to me so this is the situation that I have to deal with. If they use their parts they do not get my discounted labor rate (I learned that here), I will not mix my parts with their parts. If I put their pads on I will not turn the rotors. Guess who's fault it will be if the I did and the brakes squeak? Sometimes you have to play the hand you are dealt but you do the best you can.

I use an Excel spreadsheet. If you have some basic skills in Excel you can set it up where you key in the size, quantity, and your cost to get the customer price. This gives me control to add more to low profile sizes due to the additional time required or big mud tires due to the extra cost in weights required. You could use a dollar mark up or a percentage mark up or a combination or as your cost goes up have the markup increase.

SMMototors, I know this all sounds horrible and I would not go to my shop after hearing all of this. Your points are well made and I will have to figure out how to avoid this in the future. Please keep in mind that you are only hearing one side of the story but it is still bad. I am currently dealing with all the finger pointing from the shop that put the engine in and the specialist and my mechanic. I certainly don't want to be in this situation again. The cats were cut off and it only cost me 150 including the tow fee. The mechanic that said he had checked the plugs was not my mechanic. He was at the shop that I paid to put the engine in. I will not do that again. The customer is actually happy with me because I have not dumped him like the other shops did and he is still bringing me other vehicles to work on. The specialist has not charged me anything other than his first fee and has stuck with me on this. I know many of you think I should dump him but I have used him for many years on problems that my mechanic didn't feel qualified to deal with and this is the first problem I have had. He has a good attitude and is honest which goes a long way with me. However, I am considering just sending all these issues to a shop better able to deal with them.

It's back! I called the customer 2 days after he picked it up to check on everything and he said it was running smooth and everything was great. The day after that he called me and told me the check engine light came on and it felt a little low on power. I told him to bring it back in. The next call I got was that it would have to be towed it had no power and the engine was making a loud noise. I sent someone out there and found out one of the cats had come apart and was blocking the exhaust. That was the noise he was hearing. I had it towed to an exhaust shop and fixed that at my expense. Then it had a random miss fire so I had to have it towed to my shop. The injectors have gunk in them so I am going to replace them and drop the tank to clean it along with the filter. If this fixes everything he will have to pay for the injectors.

The van is fixed! The mechanic that put the engine in swore that he had put new plugs in it, which he did, and that he had swapped out the #4 plug with no change. I question the truth in this. The specialist (Darrell) and myself both questioned him on that and the timing marks. We didn't want to keep going over each others work. Darrell put in around 20 hours on this and finally decided to start checking what others had assured him was good. The plug was pulled and moved to # 6 and the problem followed. After close inspection the insulator is lose on the plug. I don't know if I told you guys but I had paid another shop to put the engine in for me. I split the profit on the ticket and the customer agreed to pay an extra $200 if we could get it done in 1 week. I actually had an ownership in this shop so we help each other out when we can. They don't know that it is fixed and I have been considering how to deal with this. There might be a lot of finger pointing. I know this is not the best way to do things but this is the first time I have had a problem. I want to thank everyone for their help and comments are still welcome.

Update, the PCM did not fix the problem. The specialist has committed to getting the scope and but that will not happen right now. Says he is getting a Pico and can't get that off the truck- will have to pay cash for it. Anyone know if that is correct? The newest info is the Harmonic balancer. I don't know if it was Identifix or a contact at the dealer ship but it looks like some of the rubber is bulging out so I am going to replace that.

I have it marked on my calendar to check them every month. Our alignment lift gets heavy use and a cable last about 2 or 3 years. Our service company was charging us $500 for the cable and they had to order them. I have found a company local that will make them for us for $150. What held them up was the ends had to be ordered, so I bought some extra ends to keep on hand. They can get a cable made in one day now and we put it on our self. That lead to us doing most of the lift service in house.

NCAutoshop, Just asked him and he says his scope will not do 2 channels at once. He has high expectations that replacing the PCM will fix it. There may be something else that everyone is missing but it sure runs better with the new engine than it did before. (According to the mechanics) ALTauto thank you for your info. I may be able to use identifix now that I know about them but I don't have what I need at my shop to do this kind of electrical work. That's why I called a specialist. I think the specialist is coming by tomorrow for another car that just came in and then has some out of town jobs to get to. I should have the PCM in a few days.