Your car needs work. So where do you go? The dealer? The discount auto-shops?

The fact is that if you are not a knowledgeable auto mechanic you’re probably being taken advantage of by large repair shops and dealers.

These shops hire service writers who know little about repairing cars. These people are salesmen and their job is to sell work. Many go a step further and lie to cover up their mechanics incompetence. They’re job is to keep the service bays busy. That’s what pays the bills.

These larger shops boost their business, pushing the line between what you really need and what they really need. They have to cover their overhead each week no matter what. The fact is that if these large shops ran their businesses honestly they wouldn’t be able to afford to survive, that’s just the way it is.

Here’s a phrase you don’t hear often; “I’m sorry, we made a mistake and we’re not charging you.” If you think that car mechanics are infallible, your seriously mistaken, they’re not.

In the repair business there is a simple hard but true fact; the more cars you repair correctly the less work you will have. The better you maintain them the less often they will break down. It's a self destructive contradiction for a business when you think about it.

There are so many things a mechanic can do wrong that would cause future repairs to be needed, you wouldn’t believe it. This is why so many people have lost faith in mechanics and the longevity of used cars. And here’s the rub, the reality is, the less skilled the mechanics are, the busier the shop will be. Sad, but true.

As small car repair shop owner, if I did not specialize in all aspects of auto repairs, including bodywork, restorations and the buying and selling of cars, I would never survive in this business. I couldn’t.

I could write a book on the dishonest things I have had shop owners tell me to do while I was employed by them to increase their profit. I was given no choice; if I refused they’d say “leave, your fired.” I would pull a car onto a $40,000 dollar alignment machine and be told by the shop owner “if you don’t sell them the weakest part in their steering, and let the car leave with just an alignment, your fired.” That happens every day.

If you could look at shops records from running a brake special for 49.95 and check on how many cars left that shop with a bill of 49.95, I can almost guarantee it would be zero. The special is the hook they use to get a car in so that they can find other work that they will insist needs to be done.

These dishonest shop owners are the reason I had to open my own repair shop, so at the very least, my friends and family would not be taken advantage of. I live my life by ten simple rules and one of those rules is ‘thou shall not steal.’

Don’t lose faith in used cars; there are still a few honest shops out there - like mine. You’re much less likely to get taken advantage of by going to a small shop ‘off the beaten path’ with low overhead and truly good mechanics. Unfortunately, in many cases you don’t stand a chance of getting a fair deal from a large or franchised shop.

In my experience if a shop has 10 mechanics there are probably only three that are educated enough to be working on your car that day. I am an ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) certified Master Technician for 20 yrs. I was forced to take their tests and pay them in order to obtain licensing to open my shop. I passed all nine tests easily, ten years after I graduated Lincoln Technical Institute.

How ridiculous is it to give a mechanic a written test to see how good he is at fixing cars? I know ASE masters that are the worst mechanics and great mechanics that couldn’t pass a written test to save their lives and sadly, this greatly affects their lives and their salaries. Shouldn’t the test be ‘here is a car with a problem, tell us what’s wrong with it, what part failed, and why or what caused that part to fail?’

That would be the correct way to test a mechanics skill, but that’s not how it is done. Don’t let the ‘ASE certified’ fool you. A good mechanic works by his skill and his reputation. Ask around. Or call me.
 

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