Maintenance Rip-Off?

Well, if you later see your filter for sale on Craigslist, you'll know where it came from.

 

Here's the best reason why:
Can't see the forest for the trees kind of thing.

The best way to insure your income, and maybe increase it, is to make DAMN sure that your customers continue to be 100% happy with your service.

Do your job right and the money will follow. Focus on the money instead of good customer service.......and things will go downhill because a lost customer gives you ZERO revenue. THAT should be on the first page of the "flat rate" manual.

Some companies actually understand that.
Your broad brush condemnation of an entire industry just shows that you are biased.
It seems that you are stricken with: Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up.

 

you’ve never been a mechanic before so you don’t know how the job works. You really think dealerships out there looking out for customers? They can care less about customer satisfaction hence we’re all on these forums asking millions of questions on how to repair and replace certain things that are easy to hard. If the dealerships are there for the customers, they would honestly give free inspections and not use that to try to upsell to customers on things that doesn’t pertain to their concerns.

dealerships are privately owned and the owner has the right to make their own rules with his company and follow the brand guidelines. Some owners are greedy and some aren’t. Some owners like to reduce the services that he pays the mechanics and service writers per repairs. Mechanics are the first person the dealerships screws on pay, so what do you think mechanics and service writers do to make up for the reduction in pay for the service he has performed? Recommend services that are easy and sometimes unnecessary to do to make up for it.

Mechanics that are flat rate has to make a living, you think diagnosing noise complaints make them money? Hell no, it’s the upsell on easy services that makes them money. If you’re an hourly rate, I understand they don’t care because it’s an hourly job. But if you’re a flat rate, you know damn well they will recommend all those services that people be asking on this forum about.

if you’ve never work in the auto industry before, I don’t expect you to understand it. I maybe be biased but I’ve been reading on yelp, and other forums of dealerships being shady with customers and have yet to read anything that is like what you said is an honest dealership. Even you said it in the first message that “finding them can be very hard sometimes”.

Honestly, now you’re just speaking from your opinion instead of facts. So I’ll just leave it at that.

 

Our local Honda dealership had one great Service Manager: he would come out personally, whenever there was some significant problem, explain it, lay out the optiions. Very nice guy.

He didn't last long, and I heard from a work colleague who happened to be friends with him, he went to a local community college, was teaching auto mechanics.

You get the sense there's a real tug-of-war, between the franchise owners and service writers, and the mechanics that actually get things done.

 

service writers have a quota that they must hit from the GM, even if they want to be honest, it’s hard in this industry because the GM wants to make the owner happy.

 

Funny thing, if some dealership would buck the trend, you'd think savvy owners would flock there: you get more bees with honey. I get the sense Luscious Garage was like that? But @Raytheeagle says their prices are sky-high?

Maybe that's part of it: owners dig in their heels, demand low prices, call them all stealerships, and it becomes self-fulfilling prophesy?

 

Yes. That's what I was planning to do - clean the cabin filter the day before my 10,000 mile checkup. I was just wondering if anyone else here had already done that before.

 

i always do it. i only let them change the oil during the 2 year free maintenance

 

Coming up on 9 years on the original cabin and engine filter, albeit only 84K kms. Relatively dust-free west coast environment too, I guess. The cabin filter's looking a little grungy, but meh. The engine filter: there is no way I'd change it; you can just see a hint of soot if you look at it on a shallow angle. And pay someone to look at them, likely chuck them them? Fugedaboutit!

 

You should hear their price for a head gasket replacement .

I’d be a second mortgage for some.

The price to be paid for living in the Bay Area .

 

And how, exactly, do you think you know that ??
Hint: You don't.....any more than you know exactly how thousands of independent businesses operate across the country.
(Remainder of rant ignored.)

 

i know that because I used to work there, it’s a dealership, not independent shops. Independent shop has their own ways of doing business.

believe what you want to believe and keep looking for that honest dealership that you keep praising about, at the end of the day, I’m not hurting since I do my own maintenance. Facts are facts, keep spreading your opinions.

 

Facts vs opinions. Too political for me

 

So it's obvious that you think everything that comes from YOU is a fact, while anything from anybody else is just an opinion.

The fact for me is: Over the years.......a LOT of years.....I have managed to find service shops wherever I lived that are mostly honest and don't push things that aren't necessary. Of course, that sometimes was after trying several different ones first.

And finally.......the manufacturers are much more concerned with keeping happy customers than with keeping dealer profits up.
In general, they couldn't care less if a "dealership" goes belly up........because somebody else will step right in to fill the gap.

I'm done. It's pretty obvious that nothing useful is going to result from continuing this discussion.

 

there’s something we can both agree on. Good day.