Where has customer service gone?

I have yet to see an independent's shop look anywhere close to a Ferrari or even Porsche service area.

The day I do, though, is the day I find my new Pcar mechanic.

 

Where is your shop located?

As far as your audi, or any car for that matter. Let me let you in on a little secret that you might also know. With new cars, they actually make most of the money off you from service not sales, certain cars that have that complementary service throughout its warranty period have that profit factored into its selling price. As far as what they put you through it is something strange, they are usually obligated to tell u about service bulletins. I'm not sure why they lied to you. Are they the only audi dealership in town?

 

The quality of service is hit or miss out there. A good example of this is a customer took his ATV to an independent shop because the thing had no power.

That shop replaced the piston and rings and cam chain.

The customer brings the unit in a month later complaining of the same issue.

When I checked it out I found that the engine had 40% leakage past the valves and rings.

In tearing down the engine I found the cylinder was out of spec, valves dished, cam lobes eroding and the oil pump pressure to be way to high. During the rebuild I found that the other shop had used the wrong puller on a clutch pack and over torqued the drain plug damaging the engine case.

The customer had to pay for all the repairs listed and the other shop would not stand behind there work and did not refund that customer for the original repair.

I have even seen where another dealer "fixed" an oil leak 3 times yet the unit still leaked. When they brought it to us they changed out every seal and gasket near the leak except for the o-ring that was the issue.

 

thats funny. apparently some do judge a book by it's cover.

 

Customer service?

India.

 

I have yet to find an independent that hires secretaries that are as pretty as the ones at the Porsche dealer.

The day I do though.....is the day I've found my new independent Pcar mechanic.

 

Dealers tend to actually get worse satisfaction scores than the leading independents, because dealers have a constant stream of new customers. While dealers do make their money on service, the push of a dealership owner is primarily to create more customers. Because of the warranty customer base, dealers are more expensive.

Independents, like anything, are hit or miss.

It's funny, because most of the long-term marque owners I know haven't used dealers in decades. Most of the Porsche guys I know in the Northwest use Denny Akers, while F-car guys either use Carlo. Personally, I use Bartmandial8 at Madrona Autoworks for all the stuff I can't handle myself on any of my cars (from brand new to 1929) or Bill Borum for deep-geek Ferrari-specialty stuff.

 

Do you take pictures of prior damages and issues before you get into a job. For example if that drain plug is sealed with a lot of silicone do you take a picture to show the issue so you aren't blamed with stripping the threads?

I know on my car I have receipts showing that all plug wires were replaced 2K miles before I purchased it. When I pulled the caps at the major the wires were mismatched. I replaced them. I'm not sure that they did the caps and rotors they charged the prior owner for. He was so upset with them for other reasons he wrote a long complaint letter and they responded, I have all those docs. The tech was an ex dealership tech. All I can figure is that he hates what he does but doesn't know what he can do to make the money otherwise. Tragic. laziness and short cut taking is a killer on these cars. I went to a local dealer where I was working for the crush washers for my trans fluid change. They gave me 2 correct and 1 incorrect and told me the whole process only took 3. I questioned that and they were sure. So I was short two in the process. Bummer.

 

"My name is Peggy. What is problem, please?"

 

I get a chuckle everytime I see that. Really a well-done commercial.

KevFla

 

Would you subject your Family to a physician with a dirty office?

 

The office is not treating them, the doctor is.

 

If more shops thought about that, there would be a lot more good shops in this world.

I think the local dealership is pulling this crap because as you said it is the only game in town, there will be the odd customer that would be so fed up with their bs that they would go 1 hour away just to get away from the local dealer, but most would shrug and drop their car into the only dealer in town. Monopolies are terrible things. In my opinion, and I stand by this statement no matter what anyone says, competition breeds greatness, when there is a rivalry, things tend to get better.

P.S. Damn it man. I read your post at the wrong time, and now I am eating lots of delicious and fattening buffalo wings, I hope you are happy.

 

But the point is valid. Part of what we all do is judge a book by its cover. If a shop is tidy and well organized, you get a sense that they take pride in their work,

The three best mechanics I've ever dealt with, one a Ferrari Dealer, on an independent who services all makes, and the other a classic Brit car mechanic, keep spotless work areas, it's just an indication to me of a meticulous attitude, and that's what I want in a mechanic, a meticulous guy who is careful in what he does.

Of course, he also has to know his ****, and that'll show up pretty quickly in the quality of his work. All three of these guys, BTW, 100% guarantee their work and have backed it up once each when I had a problem. That's once each out of 20+ years of using them. One error in 20 years, so not a bad record at all. 2 of the 3 were parts failures, the third was a mis-diagnosis.

DM

 

I agree, I find that an odd specification for being insistent about.

Way back when I drove MG-B's the best place in the REGION was a sh*t hole in a downtown slum area that you had to think twice going to. But once you were there you were greeted with a smile by a very well worn "tech" that knew everything about the marque. It would not have mattered where he worked out of, he had my business. I never had an issue or felt like I did not get exactly what I came for.

Now I see all the glitzy F-Car places and the larger P-car sales areas etc., but the glamor does not have any effect on me as I am a substance guy, not a pretty boy. But to each his own.

I must say though that I have had customers come into my humble auto business and say "...when I am here I feel that I wont be charged for all the glitzy overhead that the over the top fancy places gouge me for..." and I like that. My place looks appropriate, and comfortable and the staff keeps the back work zone as clean as a shop that sees 5000 cars a year can. It overwhelmingly sees more customers than any other shop in my region (without looking like a Vegas Ferrari or even West Coast Porsche service area).

I must just have a lot of substance customers.

Oh! And Speedy. I just had a 2006 F430 in that received a "service" at one of those glamor places too. The customer was complaining about a leak. I removed the belly pan & found about 1/3 qt of fresh oil in the pan. The "tech" at the beauty dealer just did a messy job. It looked a lot like the job you described - with the liquid gasket on the sump, found two quarts overfull, etc. I had the customer come in and look to see what he had going. He just rolled his eyes and told me "that was about $2000 for that privilege". I cleaned it up (no charge) and sent him down the road dry. So much for marble floors and espresso machines.

 

I stopped by my local pcar dealer a few months back for crush washers to change the oil in my 996 GT3. You're supposed to change them every time, so they must have a box of them, and know exactly where they are, right? It took the (long time) parts manager 10 minutes to figure out what I needed, and he only got one right. I suspect they never change them.

This same dealer scratched up my perfect bumper and said nothing. Noone blinked when I called 30 minutes later so they knew they had done it - they were just hoping I wouldn't notice. They remove rear bumper covers from 911s all day long but it apparently never occured to anyone to have a spot other than the floor to store them while they are off.

But their shop is spotless...

 

A dirty shop can mean a busy shop! Is a pretty girl always the best girl?

 

That pretty much sums up my work bay I have been so busy as of late that I have been billing nearly 20 hours of labor a day. We are still 3-4 weeks behind right now.

I had to fix 2 oil leaks yesterday because another shop that went out of business did the repair but did not tighten up the nuts that held on the yokes to the shaft.

Bad customer service is not just at the shop level. I have seen a Mfg. that had an engine get taken out due to a bad intake boot letting dirt into the engine. they only wanted to rebuild the top end of the ATV. 2 months later it came back because the dirt in the cases ground down everything else in the bottom end. Not only is the owner pissed I am also pissed because I have to do the job a second time.

On the other side I had a Mfg. warranty a failure a year out of warranty and no service bulletins dealing with the failure. Most other Mfg.s would tell the customer to get stuffed..

 

I have friends who own independent shops. They have to compete with internet "experts" whose misinformation overwhelms the truth. They have to cope with the general public mistrust of mechanics. They deal with stupid, intrusive local, state and federal laws that raise their cost of doing business. It's a physically demanding profession, and it takes years to really learn all the subtleties of many years of production of a marque. So, I salute you.