DUFRESNES

I just copied and sent to my e-mail friends. This is great.

With our management program, it shows all the prices of the different suppliers as long as you have it programmed to show them.

I hope everybody remembers this when it is time to vote. Have you heard that after the election there will be a 1% on all bank transactions, deposits, checks written and or transfers. They don't want to put this in until after the election. Also there is a 3% tax if you sell your house. This is attached to the health bill, so haven't heard if this one is definite. On a $400K sale, it will be $12,000. Make sure your vote counts this time around.

Ok guys. First of all I love this forum. You have to ask yourself why are Saturdays not working. Is it the Service Advisor? The Owner? Attitude is everything. If you believe it will work, it does. If you don't believe it will work, it will fail. 1st of all everything begins with an oil change. We do a 70 point inspection on all cars. Then we prioritize it for the customer with safety always 1st, then maintenance. Our customers like us to be proactive instead of them breaking down somewhere. Yes, there are customers that won't do anything until it is broke, but this is not the normal. We take appointments only, unless we aren't busy and someone walks in. We have an online appointment scheduling, which works great. If we are too busy, we can close it. On the subject of adding other profit ceners to auto repair. I am all for it. We have a drive through Espresso. We have propane for barbecues. These are add ons, don't make a lot of profit but round out the picture. We have a gal that mans the Espresso, but she also is a CSR person and has many hats.

We also had 2005 GMC Yukon. When it came in it was making a horrible noise, scanned computer and retrieved PO300 random multiple misfires. Live data showed intermittent misfires on 4 & 5 &6 pulled plugs, wires corrosion on the wires, rec: plugs and wires, vehicle was very salt corroded. Engine oil full and proper, oil pressure was good. Engine noise was consistant with RPM and gear change. Best guess was flexplate is cracked. We would have to disassemble to be sure. After repairs it was nice and quite with 2 mounting ears on the bell housing cracked and broken due to rust and may have previous work, no codes and none pending. He stopped by about a month later. It was making some noises. We suggested he take it to our Trasmission shop, we use. He did and the owner called us and said the the flex plate was broken again. He did the repair and we paid him. When I went and picked up the flex plate to turn into for a defective part, it was a disaster cracked all over and broken. No one here had ever seen anything like it except for racing or reving up and dropping it into gear. The transmission shop said they could not find anything we had done improperly. He said there had been an updated one from the dealer. I feel it is going to happen again, don't know.

Our European Technician came and said he was taking the summer off to work on his house and go Opal mining. Go figure. I put an ad in Craigs List and in our State Employment office. We pay more than anyone in our area and better benefits. I had 3 people call, the first one sounded great, made an appointment, called and cancelled, made another appointment, cancelled and made another and never called or showed up. The 2nd one called, he lived over 30 miles one way from us and wasn't really qualified. The 3rd one called and said he had been out of the field for 7 years, would I send him to school to catch up. We have had several dealerships close in the area, where are those techs? Unemployment is still way up, one of the highest states. We are having a record month, but losing a tech the 15th and our shop foreman is going on vacation. We have tried some of the automotive agencies in the past, but after paying their fee, haven't had any better luck. Any more suggestions?

When I was studying all the management products. I concluded with the help of others that if you had one shop RO Writer was the best overall for everything, but if you had multiple shops, Vast was the best. Not sure this answers the question. If anybody has questions about RO Writer, they can call me 503-646-2940.

After 42 years, I can tell you stories also not enough time today. We don't have accounts receivable. They have to pay for their car before they can drive it away. It used to be a real problem because we couldn't leave them outside at night. In a 5 bay shop will little parking, we need them picked up as soon as possible. We used to put one in the air and another under, if we had to keep them over night. Finally, somebody said why don't you build a fence? DUH?? Why didn't I thing of that now we can park about 8+ cars in parking spots and then vertically to them. No one could get them out. At least then we can work around it.

Thanks again

Thanks, After reading his email, there is a charge of $7500.00 and 195.00 monthly. I cancelled the upcoming interview. I put it also on another forum and got an answer that your local, state or city would be much better than the federal.

I just received a call from a Federal GSA Schedule Representative asking us if we would be interested. Anybody know anything about this? I do know you have to sign a 5 year contract.

Need some good info on which scanner is best for scanning and testing for Volvos. We have an auto enginenuity, Gennesis 2 different one, Interro, Vag and a Bosch for different modules. Having problems especially with Volvos. Please share and thank you.

Before we went with RO Writer, did a study. This is what I found out for my circumstances. Pace is the best if you have multiple shops and ROW if you have only 1 shop. Both of these are expensive. After 2 years, with ROW have most of it down. They have training sessions all the time on the internet. If you are interested in talking about the schedule give me a call at 503-646-2940. When you make the estimate, if you have the tech on it and the work it will put it on the schedule with a color for that tech and the amount of time needed. Not sure what al you need on it. It seems to flow good if people do their job and post it correctly.

I don't know if it is right or not. Our Techs have their radios going all the time. They don't talk to customers, usually. If we have to take a customer back to see something on their car, the techs are really good about turning down or off their radios. If it makes them happy and work better, I don't care. The cell phones, texting, craigs list, facebook etc do drive me crazy. We try to control it, but I don't see how you can control it 100%.

I think you have done a great job with the auto shop forum. It iis the best one I have seen or been a part of. Most forums have very little knowledge or participation. Great Job Guys!!!

We had been open for years on Saturday. Then someone said we should close and you will make as much money as if you were open. Wrong. Twice we have tried being closed on Saturday. 1st the customers complained bitterly. Then we opened again. Then we weren't doing much, so we closed again. I kept saying Saturdays used to be profitable. So back to the drawing board. I think we have the solution now. We had 4 tech 1 Service writer, 1 marketer, i girl friday (we also have a drive thru espresso) and my self. This is how we are doing it now and it has become very profitable and also jobs sold on Saturday can be finished on Monday. One of our techs wanted to be a Service writer and tech. So he is a helper, tech and SW on Saturdays only. Then we hired a part time master tech to work Sat and Monday. He fills in for vacations etc. I didn't think we would get any applicants for part time, but you would be surprised. We had several really good applicants. FYI we pay 1/2 hour for an oil change with a 70 point inspection, wash window and vac. We don't have the complaints from the techs now on doing oil changes. If they pull the work from the inspection, they get the job when sold. IT has taken a lot of on and off to get it to work smoothly. As a owner, I don't work Saturdays. You need to be with your family especially if you have small kids. Mine are all grown, now I want this time for me. Hire great people, pay good and it will work.

We also use ROW with Smartecap and smartejob. We had it configured with our suppliers. We order and export it right to the work order. It works really well. It also keeps tracks invoices. When it is time to pay your invoices and you are missing some, you can go to the supplier, print the invoice and check it for the purchase order. It saves a lot of time. Instead of calling the supplier and asking for the missing invoice, to pay your bills etc. I think it is how well it is set up for your individual needs. For us it saves a ton to time compared to our old program.

We don't sell a lot of tires. We sold $24,000 plus last year. Just wondering how everybody else is handling wheel weights and the tape ones. We charge a mount and balance additional.

Thanks Joe, I agree. Car count was up, very few slower days. We were up 12%. I thought we were up more, until I did the figures. Balancing the car count just right is a real art. If someone ever figures it out, we will all be rich. LOL.

I agree 110%. We send a nice letter with 2 movie tickets to them for referring other customers to us. As a new customer, they already trust you because of their friend who told them about us. This seems to work really well. Our average work order is over $1000 per referral. We also send rebate checks to our best clients. We divide it into 3 groups, so it lasts for several months.

I talked to several people in our office, maybe different in Oregon; but they all agreed so far. They wouldn't be happy. As long as you ask them 1st, it would be ok. People take their cars very serious.