Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Sometimes a job might pay 6 hours labor, but actually take them 8 hours to complete the work because of a stubborn bolt, or perhaps they aren't familiar with the particular vehicle. In these cases, usually the Mechanic eats the lost time.
True, but more often then not it takes less time to complete the job, but the customer isn't getting a refund for the time difference are they.
I travel 4 Western states calling on shops for management systems software and every one I've ever called on that uses the published flat rate tables bills in one tenth hour increments as transferred from the tables to the estimator software.
The only way I've ever seen a "half hour" increment is posted as a minimum shop labor billing time.
My experience is the same as yours. I see shop bills from all over the country and almost all of them bill to the tenth. The thing is a lot of functions are rounded off by many shops when they bill on packages like 1.0 diag or a flat 1.0 listed for a packaged charge on a brake job. However, anything more complex is always billed to the actual billable job code which is to the tenth like .3 for X or 2.8 for Y.
The one thing I do see some shops do quite frequently is bill multiple steps of one job individually. Like, replacing a timing belt takes 3.5, but then they add on 1.2 for a water pump replacement and .3 to change the accessory belt...stuff like that which is all actually part of the 3.5 for the timing belt change. (I made the numbers up, but you get the point).
True, but more often then not it takes less time to complete the job, but the customer isn't getting a refund for the time difference are they.
"more often than not it takes less time to complete the job" ... don't count on it.
One of the consistent problems I'm seeing in the auto repair trade these days is that the manufacturer's have been greatly reducing the flat rate times for services in the last few years.
The assumption is that everybody has nearly top-rate hand skills, and the DTC codes/troubleshooting trees downloaded on the scanner will guide a tech to a repair area quickly and they will use the appropriate tools to locate faults or failed items and repair them quickly.
The "good old days" where top techs in a lot of dealerships could bill 80-120 hours flat rate per week working 40 on the clock are pretty much long gone in this industry, along with the customary 50% flat rate paid to the techs.
Gravy jobs ... like I watched one 'benz tech do a factory campaign on a carburetor problem which paid a couple hours per car; he had 20 cars for the campaign lined up in the parking lot, opened the hoods on all, and went down the row rejetting the carbs per the campaign, but he'd figured out how to do it in a fraction of the time. He had all 20 done by 4 PM that day. Not bad for him, 80 hours flat rate in less than a day ... with the complicity of the shop foreman who handed him all the tickets instead of assigning them in rotation to the techs who were qualified to do the work. The trick was he was drilling out the carb body to gain access to a jet instead of removing the top portion of the carb per instructions to access the jet in the main body of the carb, then plugging the hole he'd drilled with a metal plug. Nice work when you could get it, and there were similar campaigns done through the years that netted comparable labor premiums to the techs. M-B caught wise to this (as did other manufacturers) and radically cut the time down for such procedures. They caught this dealership because the parts dept forgot to phony up the warranty tickets with the body gasket that should have been needed to do the job ... the dealership was doing a couple hundred carbs but hadn't ordered those gaskets.
Bottom line: I call on a lot of shops where they're paying 40 hours on the clock wages to techs who can't get 30-35 hours of billable time out the door each week. Those lost billable hours are death to profitability in many shops and without adequate management tracking software, it's amazing to find out how many shops are in this predicament ... hardly making any money given the costs of overhead, insurance, utilities, debt service on expensive tools and shop equipment (those guys aren't using the $49 scan tool from the parts house, they're using pro stuff that can easily exceed $12,000 per unit ... supported by hundreds of dollars per month in information software), and state/federal mandated employee expenses (U/I, W/C, FICA, etc).
For the shop to survive, the customer must pay for these expenses. But I'm amazed at how many shop owners would be better off financially if they'd auction the place off and invest the money in a passive ROI vehicle, then go to work flipping burgers at a fast-food restaurant.
FWIW, one of the things that sets me apart from so many posters on this forum is that I'm the pro shop management consultant that's walking into a lot of shops every week and I get to see their books as well as watch their guys in action. Sometimes, I'm the person that has to tell the shop owner that he's (or she's ... I'm setting up a woman owned shop next week with our products) got a non-productive employee and it's time to let them go or to assign them an entirely different set of responsibilities in the business. All the more painful when the non-productive employee is a relative to the shop owner.
My experience is the same as yours. I see shop bills from all over the country and almost all of them bill to the tenth. The thing is a lot of functions are rounded off by many shops when they bill on packages like 1.0 diag or a flat 1.0 listed for a packaged charge on a brake job. However, anything more complex is always billed to the actual billable job code which is to the tenth like .3 for X or 2.8 for Y.
The one thing I do see some shops do quite frequently is bill multiple steps of one job individually. Like, replacing a timing belt takes 3.5, but then they add on 1.2 for a water pump replacement and .3 to change the accessory belt...stuff like that which is all actually part of the 3.5 for the timing belt change. (I made the numbers up, but you get the point).
That's because the flat rate tables break out the "combination" repairs.
So a timing belt replacement is X hours. But it's good shop practice to replace the water pump while there, so that's an additional Y hours. And the tensioner assembly replacement is additional time. And so forth, by the book. For me, any service/wear item that has to come apart to do a timing belt job gets replaced during the course of that job ... for example, I would replace accessory drive belts unless they were almost brand new on a vehicle when doing a timing belt install.
On a car like a subie, where the radiator fan assembly is best removed to access the timing chest area, I'll take the time to clean out the radiator and A/C condensor, too. You'll never be closer or have better access as a routine maintenance item; in our part of the country road debris and bugs plug up radiators, so removing them is a real benefit to the customer for preventing an overheating situation or high temps/pressures in the A/C system (which can lead to compressor failure, belt wear, reduced fuel economy, etc).
That's because the flat rate tables break out the "combination" repairs.
So a timing belt replacement is X hours. But it's good shop practice to replace the water pump while there, so that's an additional Y hours. And the tensioner assembly replacement is additional time. And so forth, by the book.
I get the combination times, our estimator software builds the combo as you select jobs; but many times, the shops are still double dipping and charging the non-combo times by billing everything as an individual operation. I see this mainly on the fleet end and it's one of the things we beat the shops up about the most.
There's a lot of good and a lot of not so good info in this thread. Guess it all depends on which side of the wrench you're standing.
And Drover, if you don't think insurance is important, what do you think will happen if some craigslist shadetree kills someone while test driving your car after working on it?
I get the combination times, our estimator software builds the combo as you select jobs; but many times, the shops are still double dipping and charging the non-combo times by billing everything as an individual operation. I see this mainly on the fleet end and it's one of the things we beat the shops up about the most.
This is one of the discrepancy's that I see in the flat rate tables from different suppliers.
One supplier stands out as having "combination" times
and another major player in the industry doesn't have too many of these. So if the shop is using that service's labor guide, they're lead to non-combo labor billing and it takes somebody knowledgeable in the industry to catch them at it.
People seem to feel like they were cheated if a mechanic finishes their car in less than "book" time. They don't think about the times when a bolt breaks, a mid-year change means the part the shop has on hand is not right and they have to go get the right part, or the job otherwise goes sour and takes longer than it should have.
If you can't find a shop that you like, both from a point of view of value and quality of the work, you can always do what I do, and DIY. Ironically, the more I DIY, the less I gripe about the cost of the few jobs that I do farm out...and there are a few that make more sense to farm out, for example a good exhaust shop can form the exhaust pipes from rolls of tubing, and by doing that they save a good bit of the money over pre-formed pipes, to pay for most if not all of their labor. And, even here in the high desert, working on exhaust systems is usually not that much fun...just one example.
People should think about what it costs to run a car in an integrated way, if you do the math, usually fuel costs swamp everything else, unless the car in question is an exotic. The cost of having a proper repair done by a good shop is frequently a good value. And a good indy shop is not going to monkey with your bill, or try to sell you some sort of nonsense "flush" that likely will do more harm than good. These latter 2 tricks are usually done by chain shops, when they are done at all.
True, but more often then not it takes less time to complete the job, but the customer isn't getting a refund for the time difference are they.
Are you going to pay them more if the repair takes longer than the quoted time? I doubt it. So why should they refund anything to you if they get it done sooner?
And Drover, if you don't think insurance is important, what do you think will happen if some craigslist shadetree kills someone while test driving your car after working on it?
Wouldn't want to be in your or their shoes.
I don't recall saying I don't think insurance is important.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
