According to the Bureau of Automotive Repair’s website, the BAR’s purpose is to:
According to the Bureau of Automotive Repair’s website, the BAR’s purpose is to:
Before I begine let me say I know that it’s been a while since my last update and I apologize for that. There’s been a lot going on. That being said, let me be the first to welcome you to http://www.CINELLIthoughts.com, the only place where you can find out the truth about the automotive industry. My name is Federico Cinelli and I’ve been in the industry for the past ten years. While I can’t say I’ve “seen it all,” I have worked at both dealerships and independent shops across the country and can say with confidence that I’ve seen enough to know that it’s time for change. That’s why I’m choosing to speak up. -Federico Cinelli
The one question no mechanic wants to hear? “If I buy my own parts, can you just put them in?” The fact of the matter is, it’s ridiculous for a customer to go out of his or her way to Google search a cheaper part because all you’re really finding is every bullshit after-market part “made for your car,” instead of the part that is supposed to go into the car. That those same customers will still want me to warranty their job with that in mind is absurd. That’s not how it works. Have you ever gone to a restaurant with your own piece of meat and asked the cook to prepare that for you instead of the food they have on hand? Or to a hair salon with your own water, shampoo, or scissors to use it for the sake of taking money off the bill? Of course not. So why would you expect a mechanic to bend his or her standards, or get mad at them when they refuse to? Because that’s what your question is essentially asking them to do…
Some mechanics still stand by their work, still use quality parts, and still expect the same courtesy to be extended back to them. While I grant that a lot of mechanics shouldn’t even be allowed to even sit in a car, let alone fix them, it’s up to the consumer to find one that he/she can trust, especially in a marketplace where no one is holding mechanics/shops/dealerships accountable for the work. Will there always be a cheaper option somewhere? Of course. But you have to understand: the parts that you find on the internet aren’t the quality of the OEM parts that are estimated. No matter what anyone tells you, the parts are cheaper for a reason. Try to think of it as having a professional body shop paint your car as opposed to you sanding it down with a brick and then painting it with a brush. There’s a difference.
Kind of like the difference between a professional mechanic diagnosing a car and a customer walking into a garage and declaring, “It needs a ; I read it on a forum,” and then demanding an estimate. How in the world can you trust some kid on a forum who has never seen or driven your car? How the hell could he possibly know what set your check engine light off? He can’t. Which makes it all the more infuriating when the part that the customer originally brought doesn’t fix the car, and the customer comes back demanding the car be fixed for free. After all, I’m the asshole that replaced the wrong part. That customer always seems to forget that all I did was replace what he wanted replaced using the instructions that he brought me from the web forum, all so he could insist on not having to pay a diagnostic fee. Maybe XxMechanicMETALxX666 from carfixers.com should pay for it the second time around? Because I sure as hell am not.
What I’m trying to say is this: please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t disrespect your mechanic unless he/she deserves it. Some of us work hard at what we do, and we’ve spent a lot of time with our heads in the books, studying up in classrooms while developing our skills in real-life garages under real-life cars.
If I had it my way, the industry pay-scale would be turned inside out. Fuck flat-rate, bullshit pay, and fuck anyone who agrees with it. Let’s pretend it was never implemented; let’s say it went like this.
For some reason, shop owners think that they’re untouchable and no one can fuck with them because no one’s pushed back yet. Things have to be even if a shop is going to max out its earning potential. Tension will rip apart a shop. I see it happen every day: mechanics work with their boss’s bullshit comments in the back of their minds and break things; they drag their feet just to piss the boss off because they’re not getting what they want; they refuse to help coworkers with jobs because they think they should be getting paid more… no one wins. It’s called a TEAM for a reason. Mechanic, technicians, and co-workers should be working together, not against one another to try and look better in the boss’s eyes when the next payday comes around. It’s sad, STOP MAKING IT A COMPETITION! WE’RE ON THE SAME TEAM! Workers should push each other to do better, not hold one another back. They should be collaborating on difficult diagnostic jobs and discussing what’s going on, figuring out problems together. As for shop owners, when a worked breaks something, they shouldn’t make him/her pay for it. They make you how much money? Give me a fucking break. Mistakes happen.
Imagine if the industry ran like this. Mechanics would go to work every day knowing that money was the last thing to be worried about. They could finally relax, clear their heads, and fix cars, instead of racing the clock or listening to another bullshit story about how they’re “costing the shop money” when the fact of the matter is even if they were to make thirty dollars an hour, flat-rate and a job paid ten hours of labor, and then lets say that the shop labor charge was one-hundred dollars an hour. A tech would have to work on that one vehicle for thirty five hours before it “cost” the shop any money at all. And that’s not even accounting for the money the shop owner has made on parts’ markups.
Could it work? With the right people? Absolutely. And I guarantee, if everyone were paid their worth, even if it were based on a hands-on testing or some kind of entrance exam to determine one’s basic understanding of necessary systems and orders of operations, it wouldn’t be such a cut-throat market to be a part of. Customers could walk into a shop and see everyone smiling, not just the asshole behind the desk counting the money in the safe for the umpteenth time. …fuckers.
For example:
Employee’s flat rate wage= $20.00 per hour.
Given/Assumed time to remove and replace front brake pads and rotors= 2.0 flat rate hours
Employee’s actual time spent on job= 0.5 hours
Employee pay= 2.0 flat rate hours x $20.00 per hour = $40.00 for their 0.5 hours of actual labor
On paper the system can’t be beat.But, if an employee were to spend 10.0 actual hours on the job the pay still remains at 2.0 flat rate hours.
The workers in the industry refer to the total number of hours accumulated as “flagged hours”.Also, a technician isn’t given base pay. If there is no work and he/she hasn’t fixed a car, then the technician receives a check of $0.00 at the end of the pay period. To keep this from happening, most technicians end up stick to one type of job—something they can complete routinely—instead of testing themselves, unlock their potential, and expanding their expertise.
Vocab. Lesson:comeback: when a customer returns to the shop with the same complaint [within the 12-month / 12,000-mile warranty] after the shop has already attempted to fix the issue but obviously failed.
wheel-off: when the technician forgets to tighten one or more wheels on the vehicle and it falls off while the customer is driving.
oil-out: when the technician lets the car leave after an oil service is performed and the oil cap wasn’t put back on or they forgot to put oil back into the engine after draining it)
The rub? When the customer comes back with the same problem, the boss will yell at his mechanic, usually in front of the client, to make him/her feel that the boss is on their side, that they’re punishing the employee that screwed up even though that same fucking boss—and an arbitrary number on a computer that dictates how long any given job “should” take– was the cause of the employee rushing in the first place. The repair SHOULD be free of any charges, but now that the boss is “on the customer’s side,” and that they’ve gained his/her trust back, they start talking jargon that is so complicated and convoluted the customer won’t remember any of it long enough to Google when he gets home. Instead of a free job, the customer then gets hit with another bill on top of the first one. Hook. Line. Sinker.
But, this never happens because having a car is a necessity. People would (and do) rather cancel their health and dental insurance instead of lose their vehicle.
I think maybe I should just stop looking at peoples reviews that they put up on the Internet concerning how they feel about the vehicle that they had purchased new. No one really seems to understand what’s really going on and I really don’t fucking know how it can be just ignored as a possible senario and everyone just points the finger to the manufacturer.