pam

When we had our body shop along with the repair shop, we staggered vacations. It was hell for me and my husband because we ended up covering for everybody. July is historically a slower month for us so we shut down for 2 weeks.  This year it was 7/23-8/3. We scheduled state inspections and repairs that could wait for the week we got back. All in all it worked out great we plan to keep doing it that way.

@ScottSpecScott, you did not sound rude at all, Aloha did. We have cases of sentimentality with cars too and it's sad but we still present the facts. Honestly, of all the customers I've had apply for financing, only 1 has qualified so far. It was an elderly lady (good customer) who just needed a few months to spread out the payments.  It wasn't even a large repair. There have been times that we did flat out refuse because we were afraid of the liability issues.

@AlohaAutoLasVegas Aloha, You've got a bit of an accusing tone there. We are probably one of the few shops in our area who will let our customers know if we don't feel the car is worth putting money into. If it needs a lot and the car isn't worth it, we tell them to take the money they would have put into the repairs and use it towards a newer vehicle. Our customers who use the financing option are just in a temporary tight spot. They need their vehicle for work or whatever so the repair has to be done. If 6 months at no interest helps them through, then what's wrong with that?

We refuse to work with any of these "companies". Yes, in quotes because I think they're just thieves preying on the hard work of others. I'm not lowering my profit margin for a price shopping customer who will just move on to the next cheapest shop for future repairs.

Yes. When I see something I like, I'll save it to share to the page. Or I'll surf for specific subjects like for the holidays or weekends. I'll share from other pages I follow too. I figure it gives that business more exposure also.

I try to post something every few days. I mix it up with funny meme's, community events, shop updates because we are remodeling and car tips/appointment requests. I use it as a way to show people who we are, our personality. Here's a link if you'd like to check us out. https://www.facebook.com/AAutomotivePittsburgh/

Thanks for telling us about this group. It's great!

I claimed our Google business page and manage it myself. I also claimed our pages on Yahoo, Bing, Foursquare and Yelp. The smaller search engines take their information from these ones so it took a lot of time and determination but it was better than the hundreds of dollars we were paying someone else for nothing in return. I keep our information current and change the pictures once in awhile. We also got a new responsive website. We come up on the top of Google searches now and have been getting a lot of new customers.

We are just outside of Pittsburgh, PA and recently raised our rate to $100. But we tend to adjust it down if the bill seems too high. Probably not a good practice on our part but we aren't in an affluent area so we try to take care of people if we can. The average rates in our area are $80-$110.

We want to start offering finance options to our customers. Can anyone recommend some companies that you use? I've heard good things about One Road Lending. GE Capital is now Synchrony and they have horrible reviews. Appreciate your help! Thanks, Pam