Cars in for warranty work.

:....( WAAAAAHHHH my 50mpg economy car rattles a little bit!

...First world problems, huh.

 

This isn't a manufacturer policy, it's an industry policy. Make the car reliable enough & you don't need a mechanic. If almost all of the work is changing oil why is a dealer going to want to pay big bucks when there are plenty of people willing to work for minimum wage? Who's going to want to pay a high labor rate for an oil change?

If paid by the hour then the slow workers are rewarded.

Let us all be careful about what we ask for.

 

There are a few comments on that YouTube video that seem to indicate that not all dealers pay the mechanics on commission, and that it possibly varies by region. The payment sounds a little bit like how warranty payment worked for us when I did computer repair, except my employer took all the risk (that's one reason that it's justified when they charge users $60+/hour, but pay me ~$10/hour). So if a warranty repair took 3 hours to diagnose and repair but the manufacturer only paid for 1 hour, I still got paid 3 hours - but my employer didn't.

Warranty repairs also paid for performance; we were graded on the number of repeat fixes (if a customer comes back more than once in several months), the number of parts used per repair (to avoid the "just replace everything" problem the mechanic mentioned), and how quickly we finished the repair and returned the computer to the customer and the failed part to the manufacturer. If we did well on these metrics, we were paid more for each repair; so although we did fewer repairs (because we used fewer parts and had fewer repeat customers), we would get paid more for the repairs we did do in order to make up the difference.

 

I don't know about Toyota, but my Lexus dealer definitely treated warranty work as a moneymaker. Every single time I took my Lexus in for maintenance (while it was still under warranty), he'd fabricate a problem, such as "customer complains of noise" (for which solution is to add insulation), or mention a known problem/TSB to correct, all without my saying anything. I'm sure all the Lexus customers loved him as they must've been under the impression he was doing them a favor by being proactive.

 

I owned a 2007 Matrix that I bought new. I put 41K miles on it and there were no rattles or squeaks. My 2011 Prius II had plenty when brand new in February-though it is summer now and I don't hear them (plastic has expanded). I am dreading winter.... I was disappointed in the fit and finish of the Prius compared to my Matrix XRs.

/randy

 

Most of the cars i have owned made noises like described in several threads but only when it gets below zero, but hell my teeth chatter at that temperature anyway.

 

and look where they're headed.