Flat rate guide

Up to about 612/430/599 it was a part of the service/parts discs but since then its all online with no public access.

They were a joke anyway. Only thing they were ever used for was warranty work because we had to and the reason warranty work was such a money losing proposition.

They were very poorly and inaccurately done.

 

Agree with Brian. If you really want access you can purchase a subscription https://techinfo.ferrari.com/products/subscriptions
but the times are probably 60%-70% of what it actually takes to do a job properly. most dealers use a markup of 1.3 or 1.5X for retail work.

 

Holy cow. I worked with GM for 12 years and can tell you that Flat Rate was the #1 reason I changed careers! I fought it as hard as a 20 something year old man could, but the whole automotive repair world is structured around this payment system, and is downright as close to fraud as one can get. I absolutely cannot imagine trying to service a Ferrari on this system especially with the amount of care that is expected by both the customer and the dealer, as Rifledriver stated it was a joke. This payment system actually takes a really good young tech with lots of promise and turns him into a hacker and eventually a thief. I'm not sure why anyone on the outside would want a Ferrari LTG other than for having a few laughs.

 

Most people with a lot of exposure with flat rate over many makes consider Ferrari the worst they have seen. Ferrari only pays labor on warranty in the NA market so the books only really exist for us. It is bizarre. Job A is all inclusive. Job B gives twice as much time as job A but is required to perform job A.
A job that takes hours will pay minutes. A job that takes minutes will pay hours. Its why dealer labor rates are so high. There is a lot of warranty work performed at a loss and it needs to be made up somewhere.

Also many cases of just being stiffed. I know 3 dealers including my own that replaced transmissions with prior approval. Same trans, same model. In my case our service rep even drove it because he happened to be making a visit. All 3 were returned and claims denied because no fault found with the transmissions.

 

This is what I was referring to when I said that it is unfortunate when a good tech gets transformed into a liar and thief just to try and make a living. The only work that was profitable to the techs in a dealership was customer pay.

 

Northern California was one of the last hold outs I am aware of still paying hourly...no flat rate. When it left, so did I. Actually I could have stayed. I was working for a company that took very good care of me and nearly let me write my own ticket but it quit being an environment I was interested in. It also corresponded exactly with a long dramatic rise in repair costs and difficulty in attracting quality people. At Griswold Co the service department had a higher average education than management or sales.
You never see that anymore.

Few in the industry today have any idea what it was like. Why I will never recommend it.

 

They denied the claim and actually sent the transmission back to you ?
That rep should be able to trump the claims system as long as the claim was clean, the tech was trained and the work pre-authorized - even IF the dealer was just throwing the part at it. Unless the claim was old or messed up or the dealer was on restriction. OR the dealer had a very bad relationship with the factory.

Sometimes dealers return cores late or with fluids still in them or missing parts which can void a claim too.

That’s unfortunate though.

 

All I can add is that you are that good and worth every penny. I wish you were still in my neck of the woods, I would definitely pay hourly or however made sense.

 

S.O.P.

 

Thanks John. I do have to confess I do not miss California. I lived there 58 years. When I come home and see the "Welcome to Texas" sign I say to myself "Im home". Never felt that way there.

 

We had chargebacks and rejections come MONTHS after documented approval, payments, and reconciliation. When they need money for something it's easy to lever the dealerships into paying things "back."

Sad that it is such an enthusiast, but miserable life. Ferrari was indeed the worst. Subaru BY FAR the best. Japanese and German float in the middle depending on the car's Hx and whatever TV/Carvana warranty you show up with. If you as a customer show up with anything SHIELD in your warranty paperwork, we would politely decline servicing.

 

No they will deny the claim, you don't get anything back. Good luck protesting if you make to much noise they start leaning on the sales department about loosing allocations and that puts a stop to it. We received engines for cars with no invoices, with no invoice you cannot charge the engine to the warranty claim so all we got was the labor. Warranty markup for an F12 engine was 30% so the claim was short $30k. Its the way Ferrari is and they get away with it.

 

It will be a cold day in hell before any fixed ops or warranty concern gets in the way of allocation. That is not a thing. Some service folks on the dealer side might think that - but it is not. Different buckets completely. Different levers to pull. Different reps too.

 

Expensive components were all shipped uninvoiced. Aside from cheating the dealer out of the contracted reimbursement I understand it is a violation of federal law because of the effect it has on records that may be federally accessed.

 

Actually I had a Ferrari rep tell me to my face many years ago "Your allocation is X cars per year. There is nothing in the dealer contract that says we cannot give you X Mondial Coupes on December 30.

 

You are completely incorrect. I have been in the room when the GM was having the discussion with Ferrari and I was told to drop the subject.
Another one is labor rate in our state it is state law they must pay the retail amount for a repair,. When I pursued that I was also pulled aside and drop it because if I won and paid the retail cost they would punish the dealer in other ways.
Edit: Sorry Brian got my response on the wrong thread. You and I are on the same page and have had the same experiences.

 

Yep but if a part is drop shipped from Italy and doesn't go through FNA there isn't really any paper trail and Ferrari didn't care. I will state this occured before they went public.

 

People do not realize how punitive they are.

The story above was told to me by a sales rep I got along with particularly well when I asked how they closed another dealer. They make it impossible to operate profitably then when desperate they offer a cash deal on all remaining inventory parts etc. Dealer sued, it was back in the early 90's. May still be getting dragged through court for all I know.

 

It obviously cant be the factory. They're angels.

 

We never did any non factory warranty.

 

Just wondering why you would want this info? Looking to chop down a shops labor rates? Looking to pay less for real work?

 

I have a couple labor time schedules for Ferraris. I had an insurance claim for a new convertible top on a 360 a few years back. I tried to use their times to create an estimate. I spent a couple days trying to understand it and interpret it. I ended up winging it, and was way under what it actually took to get done. Fortunately the insurance adjuster knew even less about it than I did and paid the actual bill. Happy ending.
Everything I do is time & materials. Now that there's a dealer near here. I've seen that I'm too cheap most of the time. My rate is going UP!

 

And so it should.