CARMandP

I use BG transmission fluid for almost all of my transmission services except the CVT transmissions. We have been using it for over a year and have been very happy with it. Price is very competitive and I have a very good transmission fluid.

Not hard if that is what you are looking for. I would personally visit some of your local fleet businesses and make sure they know you are out there. Personal contact for those type of customers is very important in my opinion.

Welcome to the "wonderful" world of shop ownership You will gain a lot of insight from the "older" shop owners on this site. Have you checked to make sure your online presence is good? Google places, Bing, Yahoo, and such. All of this is free and since more and more people are searching for shops online this is a must. We are one of the only ones in our small town that have this setup and I get a lot of people from it. Also if you have never seen it Google has added a panoramic view that you can add to your google places page. This is a really cool feature that will allow people to see your waiting room area or how your place looks from other than the street. Costs a little money to have someone take the pictures but this is something that we will be doing soon.

I charge 8.01% on every ticket up to $39.97 total. I have been doing this for almost 4 yrs and haven't had anyone question this charge at all. I have plainly posted on the wall what this charge is for and it is included in the cost of the estimate so it doesn't show as an extra charge when they check out. Its worth a lot of money a year to cover all the "stuff" we can't charge out on every ticket.

I discovered that TN has a free service that will come out to your shop and inspect your shop and make sure you are complient. Its not an OSHA inspection but an inspection to give you guidelines. Planning to do this in our shop very soon so I don't have the hassle of OSHA.

Great idea. Planning to implement something like this in our shop as well.

I personally chalk them up as part of doing the job. No matter how many check list you use, there will be tools left behind. Sadly I even do it myself Not sure if there is much you can do to enforce "lost" tools since there is no way of knowing who is loosing them.

I'm sure you saw the other one they did. Ship My Pants. LOL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I03UmJbK0lA

Guess that means we need to change the password a little more often Like the annoying bank passwords that need to be changed every couple of weeks.

Welcome to the site. Good to have you here.

Will there be other times that this is offered this year? My main service writer is getting married around that time and 3 days away won't work for him

Welcome to the site. You will learn a lot of information from the seasoned shop owners on this site.

Well, the story actually is this car was an automatic. The trans went bad and its almost impossible to find the auto transmission for a VW Jetta so he did the swap to a manual transmission. The customer knew about the remote start and so did I. I just forgot to pull the parking brake. Just so glad no one got hurt and no damage.

I had a driverless car last week. LOL Remote start on a 5 speed car that I accidently activated with the keys in my pocket. Car drove between my sign and a tree, across the busy road and got stuck in the ditch about 100 yards down the road across from the shop and did NO damage. Couldn't believe that happened, of course this happened 2 hrs before I was leaving to go out of town on vacation. The customer is a good friend and laughed right along with us.

I am wondering if it will work with Quickbooks online. I don't have a standalone version because I have found that its much easier to be able to use the online version. Updates done constantly and I can access from anywhere. My CPA has the login as well and helps me with the check book reconciling every month.

Yes. You will miss something if you rush the job.

I guess I came in after you guys because even with 18 yrs experience doing alignments I still need to really think about how to change the angles, especially when you have to move front control arms to get bother camber/caster correct. LOL

I charge a 1/2 hr for my diagnostics 95% of the time. Need to be able to pay my techs somehow if the customer declines the repairs and this is how I address this charge with the customer.

I already thought it was illegal to install used converters but now they have to be CARB certified. Just another reason I am glad I left NY 18 yrs ago.

Glad to have you here. Welcome to the site. Please don't be a stranger.

hmm. Thinking about doing something like this right now. Will check out this site with interest. New doesn't scare me or the shop anyway.

Someone beat me to the punch Joe. Great webinar. Enjoyed it tremendously. Thanks for the info on the packages. We are beginning to do something like this for our shop and your insight is greatly appreciated.

Our local Valvoline is normally slow. I find it interesting that I see the guys out front swinging the no wait signs pretty often. Our local quick lube was owned my a local business man for a long time and the service he offered was amazing. Since "corporate" Valvoline bought the location and had started running it, I have gained a lot of oil change customers that do not like the change at all. They say the prices are higher and the service not up to what they are expecting. Good for us

We only have a emissions test and it only applies to a few counties here in TN and I am pretty sure the emissions test is strictly for the money and nothing else.

Our little town holds a Best of White House competition where people vote for a list of businesses that they consider best in our town. Would you guys please take a few seconds and vote for us This free publicity is awesome as we were the Best of White House 2012 and are very proud of that fact. Here is the link to vote. Voting ends tomorrow April 19th so don't delay http://browserconnection.com/?page_id=1331 Our business name is CAR Maintenance and Performance Thank you guys for your help.