Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 16:04:50 -0700
Reply-To: Jeffrey Schwaia <jeff@VANAGONPARTS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Jeffrey Schwaia <jeff@VANAGONPARTS.COM>
Subject: Re: Exciting things happening at Van-Again!
In-Reply-To: <01c201c5ba2e$fbd06e10$0a0ba8c0@RON>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
This is a tough dilemma. On one side, some will say that the mechanic
should be paid for how much time he put into the repair, others will say
that a good mechanic should get paid for the job and not just for the amount
of time spent on the job.
It reminds me of when I was a lowly wrench at a VW shop (Harvey's Automotive
in Leucadia, CA) in the '80s. After learning all the little tricks, I was
able to do a Vanagon clutch in about an hour and a half. IIRC, book time on
a clutch was around 4 hours and that's about how long it took the other
mechanics that were not as familiar with the Vanagon to do the job.
So... do I get the same amount of labor as the other mechanics (4 hrs)?
Does the customer get the job for less because I was able to do the job in
half of book time?
Or... is it that the job pays 4 hours and that's how much you get regardless
of how long it takes?
I understand that diagnostics are a completely different animal, however,
the same problem presents itself. A highly skilled mechanic may be able to
diagnose a problem in 1/4 the time of an average mechanic. The highly
skilled guy probably spent many unpaid hours getting to that level of
proficiency (the same time the average guy is currently spending). Should
he get paid for his extra knowledge or just for the 5 minutes he spent on
the problem?
Interesting issues...
Cheers,
Jeff
www.vanagonparts.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM]On Behalf
Of The Bus Depot
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2005 12:52 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Exciting things happening at Van-Again!
A repair shop owner commented on how he
had diagnosed a troublesome problem on a new customer's car in five minutes
with a few specific steps, while two other shops had spent hours unable to
track it down. You'd think such a report would elicit praise. Quite to the
contrary. The columnist for the trade magazine replied by warning the
mechanic not to diagnose problems (correctly) too quickly when a customer is
looking. He said it makes the job look too easy and does not allow the
mechanic to fully bill for the value of his expertise. Basically he was
saying that the mechanic should have futzed around under the hood for
another 20 minutes after actually finding the problem (presumably on the
customer's dime, and time) just to make it look good. To reiterate, this is
a major trade magazine's own columnist advocating this behavior, not just
someone writing in! In the very next issue of the same magazine, another
columnist wrote an article decrying how the auto repair business has an
undeserved reputation among consumers for recommending or billing for
unneeded repairs. Maybe it's because one of their own trade magazines
advocates it! Go figure! I fired off a letter to the editor making this
point. Not surprisingly, it wasn't published.
