OTPAuto

Does anybody notice that as soona s you buy something from Worldpac, the price on that items seems to go up a bit? I'm starting to notice the trend, and it's annoying. Had this happen on a particular coolant I use often in particular. It was typically $14-$16/gallon, then jumped to $20. Called my rep, he 'let' me buy 3 cases @ $16/gallon, and said the price was going up. Next time I looked in SpeedDial, the price was back down to around $16 again. What gives? How can I combat this?

I ended up hiring somebody on a personal recommendation from my CPA. $75/hr, thus far she went and cleaned up my first year and a half for just under $1k. Planning to start looking at stuff quarterly, should only take her a couple hours.

As a fairly new shop (almost 2 years open) that isn't trying to be a bottom feeder, we charge a flat $100 diag fee (assuming it's not something thats going to take half a day or more, like ripping the interior out of a car to find a short or a water leak etc - then the customer gets a phone call explaining that we need more diag time, or we put the car back together and they pick it up.), with the caveat that if we do the repairs, then we waive the diag fee. The entire purpose, in my mind, is to avoid diagnosing cars for people that have no intentions in having us repair the vehicle. I don't want to diag cars for other people to fix, even if we get paid the diag time only. I want to fix cars. And being a small 2-bay shop, people wasting our time is infinitely more valuable than a bit of diag.

Yelp! will also start relentlessly calling and badgering you to pay advertise with them as well. And eventually if you don't, there has been a LOT of rumor that they will negatively review your business for you.

Ya, I got told the other day that Identifix was going to be $179 after the 'trial period' (just signed up). I'm in the Atlanta area if that makes any difference.

I think the biggest problem with shopping for shop management software, for us at least, has been cost. More specifically, it's as if the cost is a big secret, I can't find ANY of this info via Google. Perhaps the forum can post a sticky with the average price for the main SMS programs? It would help newcomers like me, I think, be able to sort out what we can and cannot afford very quickly, and then pick the best within our price range.

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