PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - View Single Post

stevebfl · #12 01-10-2004, 10:36 AM

Geoff,

Once you have been in this business (or any business)as long as I have, one can quite quickly determine whether a propective customer is a prospective customer. I deal with a lot of DIYers locally and how much I help them depends mostly on respect; more than money.

To give you only the barest of insight I'll give an example. Yesterday I got one of those phone calls while I was doing the third of five alignments I knew I was sceduled for. In a wandering preamble including the statement that since he was in Texas he obviuosly couldn't bring me the car, he got around to the question about his late model MB that pulled down the road and had just been to the dealer for the x number of times.

Part way through I asked him to speed it up as I was busy. He paused, obviously offended (he may have had a speach impediment as he spoke very slowly). He then went on to repeat much of what he said. As I started to mention aspects of his problem he acted as if I might not actually know about his type of car and he left me in a position of having to explain or prove myself (he had called because he read my "Import Car" article on MB alignments from a google search). I spent way too much time with him and gave him a direction of diagnosis that may or may not help.

The point here is that there was no business there for me in this example. A DIYer fresh from setting his SRS light while playing with his car, likely is no business for me also. If he comes at me with demands he is history. Our basic shop charges (to address the original question) go like this: One half hour labor ($34) to read and reset the codes, up to one hour ($68) to evaluate the codes and run any other scanner based testing. Two hours and up for on the car circuit and component testing.

It was pointed out that it's a free country and each has the right to pass on a businesses service and go else where. At some point in one's business life one realizes there is no point in buying poor business. My final paragraph points out that our business passed that point some time ago. We have paid our dues to thousands of current customers who continually send us new customers. A DIYer, price shopping, or interested in a dissertation to prove our capability may find us not to their liking and go elsewhere. I answer the phone a lot in the early morning and always spend to much time (I like talking cars). The easiest way to get a short conversation is to talk about price.

This reply realy only applies to diagnostics in general. There is a very good chance we would not be in the market to assist a DIYer working on an SRS system, just too much liability.