Very interesting thread. I believe business schools may somewhat be to blame here. They emphasize creating good processes to leverage the cheapest resources possible. The theory is if you are a smart manager you should be able to create a process to deliver quality service/goods with the cheapest talent/supplies. It's all about price pressures and margins.

The good side is that people like us (discriminating eye for quality) learn to do things ourselves. The bad side is that if you do not manage your vendor you will get the lowest pass-able quality. If you don't want to do-it-yourself you need to know how to manage your vendor.

I'm looking for a good indy in the Bay Area. I want to have all the fluid flushed and I don't have a lift or the facilities to deal with brake fluid, tranny fluid, and hypoid oil. I've had sloppy experiences with most of the shops around town. Mechanics have replaced perfectly good O2 sensors when supposedly only diagnosing, put out-of-round tires on and blamed the alignment. The only guy I know that is decent is very expensive. So I can either pay top-dollar for a shop that uses quality talent ($105/hr) or figure out how to manage a shop that is using commodity labor ($65/hr). Sure, I can draw up the acceptance criteria and make the shop sign their side of the deal but is that what it's coming to? Do I really need to draw 2cc's of brake fluid and test that it is DOT 4 with zero contaminants? Do I need to draw off and test some tranny fluid from the transmission to ensure they actually flushed the system and drained the torque converter?

-Robert

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