Jay Huh

Yup, best way to go broke is to put the (former tech) owner at front counter. I don't write service for exactly that reason.

Good to know I'm not the only one!!

O yea my business name is Carmedix in Durham, NC

Location for second shop http://raleigh.craigslist.org/off/5962879072.html

Possibly consider this a sattelite location?

Hey guys, my shop is becoming pretty successful and it runs pretty well without me being there (most of the time), should run flawlessly if I hire another advisor for when I'm not there.

Owner of a building of a 5 bay garage 1995 sq/ft contacted me to see if I want to rent it out for $2400/mo. Currently leasing a 3000 sq/ft 6 bay garage about 20 miles away for $4100/mo. I have a reliable employee that recently quit bc of the distance he was driving and the new location is only 15min away so I have people to work lined up and this one is 10min from my house oppesed to 45 min for my current shop. My current shop has a 5 yr lease so not planning on giving anything up.

I have a good brand image and a strong reputation. Google alone 82 reviews 4.9 rating.

Profitability wise I just got to the point of being able to pay myself salary. Is it too risky? Headache worth it? Thoughts?

In about 2002 I was in a pretty tough spot. I was losing money hand over fist. We had taken over a larger space on Sept 1, 2001 and ten days later the world fell apart. Then to boost new car sales, the dealers were doing no down payment, 0% financing, if you could fog a mirror you qualify. People were literally trading in their car if I told them it needed a set of tires. It was unbelievable.

 

I finally took a few minutes and calculated my break even point. I made a nice little graph with my fixed and variable expenses. The long and the short of it was that I needed a substantial labor rate increase to be able to survive. Not to make a profit, just to stop losing money.

 

I raised my labor rate $15.25 in one day. I only had one complaint, from my service advisor. Not one customer said a single word. Not a new customer, and not a long time customer. From that day on, I have never feared increasing my labor rate, and I certainly never felt guilty about it.

 

A couple years after that big jump, and another rate increase or two in the mean time, I had a lady just beat me up until I would give her my labor rate (we try not to talk about labor rate, only the bottom line job cost). She was mortified to find that my labor rate was higher than the Chrysler dealer a mile away from me. Two weeks later that Chrysler dealer went out of business. I wonder what her warranty was worth on the work they did for her? BTW, the service manager from that Chrysler dealer has been writing service for me since a couple months after they closed.

Thanks for your post. My mistake is posting and letting people know my labor rate (doesn't t hurt bc in lowest in the shopping center) but since I now have a good following, I like the idea of not revealing what the rate is and just letting them know how much the job would be. Still have to work on not feeling bad about the cost. I end up making the decisions for the customers sometimes when price hits a certain amount... good thing I have a service advisor on hourly/commission that doesn't feel bad like I do

It'll be fun to be on a tv show and awesome if they come and fix my broken ac unit lol. Too bad no casting in NC

If you ever come to Boone let me know!

 

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Yea for sure. I've been to Boone many times. I'll come check out your shop one day

Yea very true. Selling cars would come with its own set of headaches. I was thinking about just selling 1 or 2 cars a month just to subsidize income for when it's slow, not having any sort of lot or anything.

But yea we are in Raleigh, technically Durham but just on the Raleigh Durham border. Must be nice to be in the mountains. I love snowboarding, been forever since I've been

I spend roughly $500/mo with adwords... it's ok... I probably need to up my budget but $300 doesn't get you much at all. I spend $425 with Yelp, I think that's a waste of money.

Really, what helps the most is to be the top 3 organically on google places. I made my own website and I dabble here and there in SEO. When I first started, my business didn't even show up. After a few months, it was on page 5. Now it's on the first page but fluctuates from page 1 and 2.

Top three are always the same and they're always businesses that's been around for a while (like 20yrs...)

Make sure you ask every customer for a google review, that seems to help. If you're top 3 on google places for your zip code, then you've got it made. My friend owns a shop and he comes up number 1 for his zip code and he is the busiest shop by far.

Never heard of AS BUT I do appreciate their response and what he said makes sense. Not the defensive answer I would expect from most companies

I've been lucky so far but I couldn't escape the "slow" season forever. I'm in NC and we got 2 inches of snow and the whole city/county shut down for days.....

We got snow Saturday, had pretty much no customers Friday, Sat (closed) Monday and today and tomorrow doesn't look good either (no appointments).

Techs are getting frustrated with no work (they are flat rate and usually stay busy) and obviously not good for me or the business. Do you guys go to auction and buy cars to sell? I usually have 1 car that I work on at all times for myself to sell but I haven't bought a car off of a customer in a while.

It's a bit of a pain to get a dealer license here so wondering if you guys do it

I have one phone line and was thinking about upgrading to 2. Instead, I got a business cell phone through Boost Mobile ($28/mo) and forward all busy calls to the cell. My service advisor keeps the cell and the techs and myself answer the shop phone. Worked out pretty well and we don't miss a lot of calls. If we do, the cell phone makes it really easy to check vmail and call back right away.

I guess if I was interested in a third line, I can always forward busy calls from the shop cell to my own cell.....

Thank you guys so much for all your thoughtful responses. It's nice to know that I'm not alone in something like this.

I do have an update. Like everyone has said, there's no way of knowing what really happened. We made sure nothing was leaking and test drove after (not 10 miles though).

I found out that they bought the car for $1000 a week before we started working on it. The oil leak was so bad that they thought it was the rear main seal when they brought it in. I honestly cant think of anything we could've done to have caused the fire. Oil leak couldn't have been worse than what it was, even if the part we put on failed (oil cooler from the dealer BTW).

Anyway... the customer never pointed the finger at us and she just texted me with pics just for FYI. These customers couldn't be nicer and I took initiative in starting the claim... they never demanded anything.

I am pretty certain our insurance won't do anything but came up with a solution. I had a 07 Dodge Caliber I bought from a customer for $400 a while back and just sitting on my lot. (Misfire cyl #4, she bought a new car and didn't want to mess with it, replaced crankshaft position sensor to fix)

I sold her the caliber for $500 today (what I had in it.). KBB value for very good was well over $2000 and much much more reliable than the Kia.

It had that notorious throttle body issue but I reprogrammed the throttle body yesterday. I told her about it and if it happened again, I offered to replace it for her if she provided parts.

All in all as long as the Caliber holds up, it worked out well for the customer. She ended up spending overall what the Caliber was worth so technically wasn't a loss for either one of us. Also offered to buy back the Caliber anytime for $500 if she decided she didn't want it anymore. Hopefully this post doesn't jinx it but they took the caliber and haven't gotten a call or text from them..... so Caliber must be holding up. It wasn't registered and no tags so I couldn't test drive it, just drove it around the parking lot a bunch and made sure no codes came up. It's been sitting for months

I think there's two questions - are you at fault, who knows and you may never know. It very well could've been a workmanship issue considering the job was frustrating (we tend to make more mistakes in these situations) and the oil light came on directly before the issue. But who knows maybe it was the wiring harness insulation melting resulting in circuit issues causing the the light.

Question 2: Are you liable? In my opinion, absolutely. As a shop owner you should be calling the insurance company and doing whatever it takes to take care of these people. I've in the past had situations where I didn't address an issue as I should have. I regret things like that so, in situations like this we work extremely hard to make it right. Replacement car, full of gas and detailed maybe a gift card and hand written apology.

Your business reputation depends on it.

I've only had one similar situation but it turned out ok and minimal damage was sustained. We handled it in house as the repairs were less than the deductible.

 

 

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Thanks, yea I just got off the phone with my insurance and started a claim. An adjuster will be calling me within 1 business day and I texted the customer and let them know. Man, it's times like these where I want to close up shop and work at Carmax again

I get a text from one of my customers. It's a 1997 Kia Sportage with 160k miles on it. We fixed a severe oil leak exactly 6 days ago (they've been driving it for 6 days).

We replaced the oil cooler that attaches to the oil filter adaptor and hoses that run from the cooler to the head. We had to remove the intake manifold to do it. We didn't undo any fuel lines. There were no leaks from what we could see after we finished other than a severe exhaust leak.

She texted me that the oil light came on and the car shut off and that when they tried to crank it, fire started from underneath the vehicle. Fire was really bad and burned up pretty much everything in the engine compartment. Fire man said fire was too intense to know where it originated.

They are really nice people and feel really bad for them. They were texting me just to let me know what happened.

I am a really fair person and if this was our doing, then I would definitely take care of the situation in whatever way I can. Is this something my insurance should handle? Do you guys think it could have come from the repair we just did? We spent 2 weeks on this car because parts were special order for everything and it was a pain to work on as well. This job was already a loss to our shop but something like this just makes it worse. Also we are having one of the slowest weeks. Tough time financially, tough time for the customer, just overall a really bad situation.

Be careful with the Maxisys J2534 programmer. They don't list what pins has certain manufacturer protocols. You have a higher risk of messing up a module with it. Also, if a module gets damaged, you won't receive support through the auto manufacturer (GM, Ford, etc), as the MaxiFlash isn't a recommended/approved device.

Thanks, I appreciate the heads up

Sorry to hear about 2016. Hope 2017 is better for all of us

Ok so here we go on Thursday.....

First, had to go get a battery maintainer ($595.00 from MAC) Yea I know but need in a hurry.

Second, Went to GM and bought a two day subscription ($55.00)

Third, Ran on one of my Windows 10 Lap tops.

Fourth, Tried to hook the Mac Mentor J2534 to the laptop and program.

Ok so this did not work. I got to the point in the software that connects to the interface and it could not find it. Called GM, wait, hold, transfer you know the routine. Finally go a good tech that said I needed to find a driver for the interface. So called Mac, said to call Bosch. Called Bosch, wait, hold, transfer again. Finally was told " no Windows 10 drivers". Another call to GM and have a MDI2 coming ($750.00 plus shipping).

Now Monday, MDI 2 arrives. Hook up to laptop, install drivers, can not see....

Another call to GM. Laptop must be Windows 10 Pro and an Intel I-3, I-5 or I-7 chip.

Run to local store, buy cheapest Dell with Windows 10 Home and I-3. ($300.00)

Get back to shop, Run laptop setup and get to main screen (20 min of removing crap)

Purchase Windows 10 Pro from Microsoft on line and install ($109.00)

Have 30 min left in day. Oh well lets try this.

Go to GM and use Promo code they gave me to get to software(Great company by the way as when I told them what happened they gave me code so as not to have to buy another subscription for two days at $55)

Hook MDI 2 to computer and it sees it. Yea. Follow prompts on screen and software in the new MDI 2 I just go was out of date. Started download and as it was going to take 20 min, I closed up the shop and went to the bank. Came back and software update done. Ran SPS, Found BCM, Programed (took 5 mins)

When I clicked on the "complete" everything just came on. Man was that slick.

So after a week and $1800.00 I programed my new BCM.

Just can't wait for the next one...Yea Really

Richard

That is awesome that you stuck with it. Had a chevy van that we did a bunch of work on and it then needed a new ECM and needed to get programmed. Sucked that I had to get that thing towed to the dealer. I just ordered the Maxisys Elite, comes with the interface and looking to start reflashing as well

I am in Raleigh/Durham NC and we have been pretty busy Holiday season but typically it's pretty slow this time of year

My oil changes are $30 and $50 for full synthetic. We don't lose money on them but I think of it more of a service for my customers. I share the same wall with big franchises that advertise $19.99 oil changes. They still stick with me

Throughly inspect, detail the estimates, honestly present the need, and leave it the customer to decide. Do not decide what the customer can or cannot afford. The results will surprise you.

Very true and this is something I forget too often

I've been at my current location for 8 months and we have a couple cars that's been abandoned. One is a car with a blown head gasket, customer won't return call for anything. She only owes $30 for the diag.... another is a van that doesn't start, needs ecu and he owes $500.... and we have a 07 335i that needs a transmission that has been sitting on our lot. The 335i customer just wants to get rid of the car and offered to give it away for $200 plus what is owed on the bill. Problem is, car is still owned by the bank and he still owes on it. Can I get the title or does the bank have the right to repo it? Never done a mechanic lien or title before but I feel like this is going to be an ongoing issue

This is a great subject, I just open a 2 Bay Shop and I'm bearly making, great potential due to location I even open a hand car washow in the lot and hire a guy to it , but coming from a Factory own dealership (BMW) to work in general mechanic is a whole diffeent world, I notice I need to hire a mechanic with experience and probably pay him 40% of all labor. That will allow me to run the front. Can't afford base salary yet.

You should flip. you work on cars and hire a counter guy. Counter guys are dime a dozen and you can find one for a lot cheaper than a good tech. If you are used to working on BMW's, you can work on other cars. Hondas, Toyotas, chrysler, GM's etc are all easier than BMW's.

We stock wipers, batteries, oil filters, oil, coolant, brake fluid and trans fluid. Napa is 2 doors down from me (10 sec walk) so we don't need to stock anything but we stock more to help sell and display.

I'm in a shopping center and Napa is 2 doors down from me.... Advance Auto Parts is 5min away, Autozone is across the street, Oreilly's is also right across the street. I'm used to getting all my parts within 15min or less. But yes, parts on Amazon are so much cheaper. I've ordered parts on Amazon for bigger jobs where the car has to stay at the shop for a week. It's a pain though when the parts are wrong or parts are defective.

I've thought about pre-ordering parts for future appointments but the thought of a no-show keeps me from doing so

I got lucky with my first employee. I wasn't even looking to hire anyone as I was doing everything fine. It was a kid and he had experience working for his grandpas shop and wanted a chance to work in the real world. He was willing to do anything for minimum wage! Well.. a year later, he is now one of my 4 employees and one of my best techs! He did 2 back to back head gaskets last week (both Jeeps, surprise surprise). Having another guy pushed my business to the next level. I can never go back to working alone.

If it's going to be your first employee and if you guys are working side by side, I would hire someone a little bit inexperienced so that you can teach him how you want things done and don't question your methods. Also they will be really loyal to you and you can start their pay low and raise their pay as their skills grow

Saturdays are our busiest day! I buy lunch for all my employees because we are so busy, even in the winter when the weekdays are slow. It'd be nice to close on Sat but afraid of the work we'll miss, we need the Saturdays to stay profitable