I am definitely willing to pay top dollar to get quality work from a skilled mechanic. I think it is critically important to make it clear that we value good work. That goes for all trades, where skilled technicians are essential for a high-quality finished job. When I find a good carpenter, plumber, electrician, or auto mechanic, I make it a point to thank them and gratefully pay them for their professional work. Once you find good skilled labor, I think you have to reward them by acknowledging their skill and paying them appropriately.

That said, it can be frustrating when you can't find a proud skilled professional to complete the work that you need. I definitely don't take my car to just any shop. I only go to my local dealer, who really does seem to do a good job, and to one local independent shop with two owners that are both capable and honest. My independent mechanics do seem to be busy with more dilapidated older cars, whose owners are just trying to save a dollar or two, but they really are skilled mechanics.

I know I am not adding much to what has already been said, but I feel passionately about this subject. I truly appreciate the highly skilled people that help me with my home and with my car. I am very particular about things, so I can tell when things are done well. I happily spend the money I make doing my job to secure the skills of an expert. I figure I get paid to do what I do best and then I can pay others to do what they do best. Doing what I do isn't better than doing what they do, so I don't think I should be rich and they should be poor. They should make a good living, if they are good at their job.

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I just couldn't give up on my 1995 E320.

I think it might be like always going back to that same bad relationship with an ex girlfriend.
You feel you love them too much, or you are just too stupid to know any better.



Flickr slideshow of my 1995 E320
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24145497@N06/sets/72157616572140057/

I read the first few posts of this thread a few days ago. It took a boring Sunday morning to read the rest.

I doubt I can do much to add to Peter's reply, as it contains as much truth as any of the posts.

Many have touched on the reasons for the situation as it exists and many have stated that it isn''t exactly as it appears. I believe the problem is basic economics. The most basic problem is the way technitians are paid. The first problim is that there is great disparity in the qualifications necessary at different levels of repair. The guy doing water pumps just doesn't need the brains, training or tooling that a drivability diagnostician needs. The mechanism for pay in most shops leaves the water pump tech being paid more than the genious. Most shops pay by piece work "flatrate" (or flatrape as it is refered to in the industry). A tech doing a 3 hour waterpump in a hour and a half gets duble pay while the diagnostician on a hard case may spend half a day for an hour or less. Good shops realize that they need the genious so they keep them making atleast as much as the laborer. They do that a couple ways. One of them is to keep a ceratin portion of their work the easy well paid stuff. This reduces the shop's overall capability to do the tuff stuff and places a certain amount of it in the hands of the laborer.

If the industry paid the diagnostician a relative pay versus the laboroer, cars would cease to be professioanlly repaired. You think costs are high now. Would you wish diagnostics to do be done like medicine. Personally I'll wager the good techs already do a better job than medicine in instances atleast as taxing. Would you wish all the CYA that is passed to insurance companies to be included in car repair.

Would you pay for no results? I've got a Volvo at the shop sent to me by another shop. It has an intermittant problem. The other shop has tickets for over 1200 dollars of parts changing and I have over 6 hours of designing tests, installing equipment, and driving the car waiting for the event. I must just be stupid at this point as it isn't solved yet. Is anything I've done worth paying for? Do I keep trying? Who is going to pay me? If I never find anything and the problem still exists do I work for free..... ever see a doctor do that? Our prices are set by expectation! Do I set up a research team and fix the car, maybe a 5-10,000 dollar exercise if it were a government project (actually maybe I should say 50-100,000).

BTW, I threw in a few mis spelled words and grammatical errors for those of you who do your best work shuffling paper. They also camouflage the real errors, after all those of us who do honestly get things done have better things to do than spell check.

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Steve Brotherton
Continental Imports
Gainesville FL
Bosch Master, ASE Master, L1
33 years MB technician

Ksing44,

I couldn't have said it better. You expressed my thoughts pretty well and particularly the part where you get paid well so why shoudn't others. I'm semi retired now and only have a few clients who have been with me for twenty or twenty five years. I can remember in years past when some people asked me if I could do the work for less like on medical doctor comes to mind. He asked if I could give him a break. He was tight on money, because he had heavy bills to pay. He then told me money was tight, because he had one son in law school and one on medical school. To my way of thinking, I just wanted what was coming to me so I could buy shoes so my kids could go to school. Then there are people who act like you just drove a stake through their heart when you tell them it is going to cost several hundred dollars to do needed repairs to the ride they have been flashing around. When you look in their trunk, you see shopping bags from the most expensive department stores in the Bay Area.I really love the people driving around with stop leak in the coolant, half the power windows not working, and A/C not functioning, but the've got $2000 worth of wheels and tires and an incredible sound system. I learned early on as to whom to work for and whom not.

On the other side of the coin, I can fully appreciate car owners frustation in trying to find an honest competent service facility. I don't believe that there are that many shops that are dishonest. I think the biggest problem lies in the fact that too many mechanics have little or no training and fail to read to keep up on technology. Since there are no licensing requirements in the industry, anyone can get a box of cheap tools together and start fixin on cars. As a result too many parts are changed to get to the problem when a proper diagnostic normally uncovers the one defective part. Car owners feel ripped off, because they think all those parts were changed to make a profit when in fact severl parts were changed until the mechanic stumbled onto the right one. I think the real artist in this scenario is the guy who explains the need for all the parts to the car owner. As I stated in an earlier post, a good deal of the blame lies with high school counselers. Any student taking algebra and chemistry is encouranged to go to college just to go to college. All the stanine level 2 and 3 students are encouraged to go to auto shop. I have a friend who has been teaching auto shop at a Bay Area high school for years. He says it is a zoo wher they keep the animals. It is sad to note that there are thousands of high school auto shops around this country where bright young students could have a career field which would allow them to buy their own home and enjoy a better life. Good mechanics never live under the cloud of corporate down sizing. I have a young friend that I mentor. He is a 30 year old mechanic and has just sold his small 2 bedroom home for $340,000 and buying a larger new home for $430,000. To me that is an awsome burden to take on if your job could be lost or moved. I hope my ramblings spark some interest in seeing the need to bring intelligent new blood to the industry.

Peter

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Auto Zentral Ltd.

One of the first things my old Toyota mechanic told me when I started using him was... "Things break, this car is ten years old and some or these bolts haven’t been turned since they were installed at the factory, I will be careful, but I'm not promising anything." He was a good guy. Honest and fair but he made mistakes.
We all make mistakes at our jobs no matter what we do. Sometimes our customers know about our mistakes and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they are reimbursed for our mistakes and sometimes they aren’t. There is a big difference between a crankcase filled with ATF and "they still can't figure out what’s wrong with my car".
A lot of people think they are paying to fix a stall in there car but that’s not what gets fixed. The "something" that needs fixed is the cause of the stall and unless that "something" is crystal clear (on fire...) the request is actually "please investigate, in the order you as a professional know to be the best, the possible causes of my symptom". A lot of service people know this and know that their clients do not the good ones take a minute to convey the nature of the service they are offering to the client in advance so there is no misunderstanding about the possible outcomes and costs. Lots of them don’t have direct access to the client or are too busy to take the time to communicate this clearly. In a way it is contrary to the making of the money. The best way to make a sale is not to say up front that this might cost $1,000.00+ and not fix anything. But it is essential to good customer service.
Ask me how I know. I have learned the hard way the past 15 years running a courier service in Pittsburgh. When I started out in this business I thought I knew my job better than my former bosses. I know now that I have more to learn than I ever thought possible back in those days, and I know a lot more now than I did then. Customers want to believe that you can do a job for a lower price and faster then their expectations. But if that’s not going to happen, or even if there is a possibility that’s not going to happen, they want to know it in advance of booking the job what the worst case scenario might be. Its not always easy to come right out and say just how badly something I do for a living might come out in the end. But it’s 10 times better than the alternative... Honesty and truth buy a thousand pardons in failure.
P.S If my car was butchered by the stereo guys like that I'd be pissed off to.

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-Marty

1986 300E 220,000 miles+ transmission impossible
(Now waiting under a bridge in order to become one)

Reading your M103 duty cycle:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/showpost.php?p=831799&postcount=13
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/showpost.php?p=831807&postcount=14

Certainly there are lots of mis-spelled words and grammatical errors posted, probably some of them mine!

My point was, here comes this guy who's calling people who complain about incompetent work(ers) "cheap bastards". Then, from his lofty perch he mis-spells the word "incompetence". Of all the words to mis-spell, under the circumstances! When we're taking a condescending position, it's best not to mis-spell words like "incompetence". It was funny. It was ironic, like something you'd see on Saturday Night Live or Lenno. I couldn't help but notice.

BTW, you'll notice that my pointing out that one mis-spelled word was only a tiny part of my entire response.

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2012 E350
2006 Callaway SC560

Beautiful wheels on your car. I have the same wheels which I bought from my son-in-law. The raschal did tell me that two of them are warped. I am looking for a shop in or near Concord, NC which can repair them. I got to get rid of this vibration. Can anyone tell me where to get this done. I also need a fresh set of lug bolts for all four wheels and two of the center caps.

Thank you

dan howard