jeffa1958

Since the dawn of time there have been people that are NOT my customers. There will continue to always be people that are not my customers. Concentrate on the ones that are. Not all of them are stupid with no basis for reality.

ESTIMATES ARE FREE. DIAGNOSIS COSTS MONEY.

I have found it isn’t the amount of the discount that matters to hagglers as long as it’s something. Taking $20 off a $500 dollar bill is enough to make them smile in most cases.

I have found 14 days are required to really feel like I have left. I never call in or check cameras when I’m gone. If your people can’t take care of things for 14 days you are employing the wrong people. I have taken three one month long vacations, those were wonderful. You come back and everything looks and sounds different. After your back for a half day it feels like I never left, but my attitude is better for doing it. I get really bitchy if I don’t leave. February I spent 16 days in Palm Springs, CA. What a wonderful place.

I will second checking your laws. If it is mandatory to attend I MUST pay them. I pay for classes. They know I want them to attend but it is not mandatory. I know if they don’t attend they are not serious about there career and act appropriately

My shop just received a five star review. The person that wrote it states she came there after reading a horrible review about us. The review was placed on a private network for the University Hospitals and clinics. I could not respond to it there. They filed a complaint with BBB and I responded to the complaint there. A customer of mine was nice enough to put a link directing people to my response. Good customers are not stupid. Not sure I can say that about the bad ones. You don’t want to work for everyone.

Time clock. Would never be without. Another of our antiquated systems that would be replaced with something more high tech if I wasn’t selling soon. Trust in 2018 is synonymous with screw me.

I agree with junior. Principles are too expensive to fight for. You will not erase what has gone before. You just want to move on.

As soon as someone mentions the words court or sue I tell them, "From this point on the only interaction we will be having is written." I will not accept your calls and there will be no verbal discourse. In court the only things that speak are paper, photographs and an ASE certification of the tech working on the car and or you the presenter of your side. When I invoke my written only policy you would be surprised how many people want to suck the words back into their mouths. In forty years I have been sued once. I was much younger then. The customer wanted me to not only refund his money for what he spent at my shop but also the repair he had to do. I refunded him what he paid us. Hes sued me and I wanted to see what a judge would say the correct answer was. The judge said that he had to made whole. He had paid 22$ more to have the car repaired in Chicago, so I lost and had to pay 22$ plus 85$ court costs. A side note to anybody, I would recommend avoiding court at all costs. What your think is black and white becomes gray in those rooms. Never walk in the door thinking its an easy win.

Interstate has removed their batteries and delivered a final screwing. We are being charged for 11 batteries when our sales in that period were 5. According to them this is possible because some of them had not been restocked. I have no way to prove it. My fault. Watch your counts.

In case anyone doesn’t know this. The Better Business Bureau is NOT A GOVERNMENT AGENCY. THEY HAVE NO POWER TO DO ANYTHING. They are a for profit non profit just like your non friends at AAA. Another fine institution out to fill their pockets.

I tried repair pal for over a year. Brought in people we didn’t want as customers. Dropped them. No change in business except more money in checkbook. My old policy for over the phone estimates was to take down their information on a piece of paper and do nothing. If they called back and bitched they had not gotten their estimate I would apologize and make out the estimate and call them back. Now we do give the estimate but it is when we have the time. People go down the line in the “phone book” they have no idea the cost of estimates.

My policy is: I will repair at no charge anything that myself or my employees break. I know that people make mistakes. I WILL NOT pay for damage not caused by myself or my employees. If the customer does not believe me when I tell them it is not our responsibility, my response is to go get it repaired elsewhere. Bring me a receipt from a repair shop (not your boyfriend or some guy in his garage) stating that we caused the damage and I will write you a check. I will and have bent over backwards to make people happy. If I reach a point where I realize I cannot make this person happy I stop. I have never gotten above a 3.8 star rating and don’t really care if I ever do. I always ask how a person found us. They will say, I read your reviews and they were good. I always respond, did you read the bad ones? Nine out of ten respond, yes if you didn’t have any bad ones I wouldn’t believe the rest. EVERYONE knows you can’t make EVERYONE happy. Many years ago a shop in town was busted for not re[lacing parts they were paid to replace. I thought, wow goodbye to them. Ten years later they are still there. Just as busy. I learned THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BAD PRESS. It is time to get nasty with these people. Your good customers know your good, the rest all think we are thieves anyway. It’s our job to prove we are not.

I have switched from interstate to Napa batteries upon reading the topic of this post. No corporation has devalued automotive technicians more than Advance. Now that the true Christians that run Interstate battery have made a deal with auto repairs Satan, they can rot in hell.

This person cannot grasp the concept of allowing wheels to eject on your customers cars without any prior notification is wrong. That is quite basic. Good bye. Please find a profession where you won’t kill anyone.

I think it would be better to maximize the five days your open now. Are you getting everything you can out of five days? (You would be an unusual individual if you are.) With labor shortage growing daily, the quality people don’t need to work Saturdays. I forgot to mention my last couple of years of Saturdays were usually not profitable.

Employees make or break your business. I am the king of the mis-hire. I have babysat through temper tantrums. NEVER AGAIN. I moved from hell to heaven by finally not being desperate and waiting for the special one instead of a warm body. My father owned a repair shop and the employees always complained about my father. My father would complain about the employees. The animosity between employers and employees seems to be common. I vowed I would not have that in my business. I found that if signing their check makes me sick it’s time for them to go and they usually know it but need a push. Otherwise they will hurt your business. If I do not take a regular break from the business I become ornery. I was lucky enough to be told by a good customer of mine that I had a bad attitude. Trade seminars recharge and invigorate me. I try to attend as many as possible. My attitude is the attitude of the business. I set the tone. You can’t take criticism personally. “Don’t worry be happy”

When I entered this industry I began working at my fathers shop seven days a week. I was young (18) really loved the work. At 25 my father decided to close Sundays. I worked Saturdays until I became 56 years old. I am amazed at all of the fun things there are to do on Saturdays. Two consecutive days off are wonderful. The workers today do not want to work Saturdays. I really can’t blame them. There are so many reasons I hated Saturdays I can’t get into them now. I have three master techs that are compensated better than they could get anywhere else and I know they would walk if I wanted them to work Saturdays. As it is they do 1.25 million in sales without my involvement. They can have Saturday off. And four day weekends whenever possible.

A $4000 ticket can be ruined by forgetting an oil change sticker. “What else did they forget”

In conversation I will ask people to take the time to post a review for us. Verbiage on the invoice " The sincerest compliment we can receive is a referral of a friend"

When a new customer is checked in, we ask if they were reffered to us. We send a a custom thank you card that is addressed and personalized by hand to the person that reffered them. It includes two ten dollar off coupons for the wings place next door. I pay 8$ per coupon and only pay for the ones that are redeemed. A thank you card with some candy explaining our free top off policy is included with oil changes.

The name of your shop sticks out to me. Does anyone know what a carburator is? In the cars for oil changes we put a thank you card with a little bag of runts on it. Our oil change service includes free tire pressure check and fluid top off for as long as the sticker is valid. We have an ultra clean and plush waiting area. We have a full candy dish with the best assortment. Less than one percent don't touch it. Popcorn, coffee, water, soda, hot chocolate, etc.The outside of the building is ultra clean. We sweep the gutter and the sidewalks. We plant $1000.00 of flowers in spring. I have plywood hearts for valentines day, jack o lanterns, pumpkins, corn stalks, etc. I have people stop and thank me for the appearance and the decoration. I have had many new customers that only tried us because of sweeping the gutter and the appearance of the shop.Our customers are referrerd to as guests.No one wants to come to our shop. Make the visit as pleasant as possible. Everything we do is to engage the people in conversation. People don't buy things, they buy relationships. Look at other businesses and take there ideas.