Still Waiting

randallb wrote:
Now for the other side of the coin. I used to book my shop at 7 hours/day per mechanic. This would leave plenty of time for additional repairs that the owner thought of the night before. It would leave time for some, not always all, of the additional repairs that the customer did not know they needed. It left us time to be thorough and conscientious about the repairs we were doing.
9AM rolls around, the doors have been open since 7AM, and one of the 6 customers scheduled has shown up. No calls, no contact at all. Then the next day everyone scheduled shows up and some of the a$%^oles from the day before show and expect their car by 5PM. When you tell them it is not going to happen they go ballistic. As a shop owner you can give some customers a $100.00 bill when they walk in, kiss their butt when they leave and they still are not happy. This is a very small percentage of customers but they are the ones that cause a good deal of your repair scheduling issues. A business owner can not depend on everyone showing up when they say they will and has to make adjustments for the clueless. I stocked a lot of parts because I was a vehicle specific repair facility but the shops that work on anything; RV, car or truck, can not do this and become dependent on their suppliers to get them parts in a timely manner. This also does not usually happen.
Good Luck but quit blaming the shop. One bit of attitude and the incentive to make you satisfied goes out the window.
Randy

Randy,

Maybe I am the rare customer but each and every time my bike was in for work, I made an appointment, brought it in at the appropriate time and paid 100% for the parts up front. I have done this many times because these shops are small and its not right to expect that this guy forks out the cost of my parts and then has to wait for payment. Every single time the job was done, I was there within 24 hours with cash to pay the remaining balance.

So YES I can blame a shop when they take my bike, take my money and then don't do the work within a reasonable amount of time. I understand that jobs can run over but a 2 week job should not take 8 months. That is non the shop not the customer.

As for the RV shop they identified the problem on Friday but had not ordered the parts to fix it by the time I called on Wednesday. That is 3 work days without even ordering the part. How is that on the customer and not on the shop?