Sticker shock

[Turtle_n_Peeps]

So I got tasked with the job of taking care of a small fleet of vehicles at work.

My boss tells that one of our vehicles (an 09 Ford Explorer) was making a funny noise and wanted me to check it out. I took it for a test driver and sure enough, it was making a very strange almost like turbo noise. It almost sounded like a set of planetaries going out in the tranny.

I take it to a local shop that a friend owns and he checks it out but he can't find out where the noise was coming from so my boss said take it to the dealer.

So I make an appointment at the dealer and they can't reproduce the noise. Super nice tech. He took me for a ride to see if I could hear it again. Nope, gone. All well.

Anyway I haven't been to a dealer in a long time and when I looked at their labor board I about had myself a heart attack! $158.00/ hour!! $158.00/ hour!!

I'm out of touch!

Is this what some of you outside of Kalifornia are seeing at your Ford dealer?

Just wondered.

[travelnman]

Have seen worse but the trend is higher and higher. The more folks strike, hold their services, protest, ask for higher wages for unskilled jobs, demand more because the neighbor got a raise the higher things go. Except for milk and eggs what have you seen get cheaper? Its a never ending circle until the dollar is worth what a penny is now. Then the government reaches out for more with higher gas taxes. My state just doubled the gas tax, the county added more and so did the city while the feds can't wait for their chance. My grandfather said during a poker game that when he runs our of money he just goes and gets some more. I think that's how our government works I know the cable company works this way. So when you see labor rates like this instead of going into shock take note for your next salary review, this is the way the system works. I had my wheel bearings greased this year on the RV and a brake inspection. The bill was $400.00 and I don't think the dealer really wanted to do the job.

[TugCE]

Just yesterday I was talking with my BF (known each other close to 50 years), he's a senor service adviser for a very large Mercedes-Benz Dealership in the North East. He started out swinging wenches and worked at both smaller and very big dealerships.

We were talking about how the dealerships charging "Book Time" for repairs has effected the quality of work. Some of the time "paid" does not even come close to the time that the "Tech" has to spend to complete the repair. This leads to the tech sometimes working on several different vehicles at the same time and billing hours on each one. When I called these "Techs" part changers and not real wrenches, I was surprised when he agreed with me. With all of the computers that all of these new vehicles have makes all these Techs part changers because, they can usually only change a part if the computer says to replace it! Now there are times where they do actually diagnosis something but when they do, it tends to really jack the cost way up!

[free_radical]

Turtle n Peeps wrote:
So I got tasked with the job of taking care of a small fleet of vehicles at work.

My boss tells that one of our vehicles (an 09 Ford Explorer) was making a funny noise and wanted me to check it out. I took it for a test driver and sure enough, it was making a very strange almost like turbo noise. It almost sounded like a set of planetaries going out in the tranny.

I take it to a local shop that a friend owns and he checks it out but he can't find out where the noise was coming from so my boss said take it to the dealer.

So I make an appointment at the dealer and they can't reproduce the noise. Super nice tech. He took me for a ride to see if I could hear it again. Nope, gone. All well.

Anyway I haven't been to a dealer in a long time and when I looked at their labor board I about had myself a heart attack! $158.00/ hour!! $158.00/ hour!!

I'm out of touch!

Is this what some of you outside of Kalifornia are seeing at your Ford dealer?

Just wondered.

I drive Chevys only so never had that problem LOL

Find a good local mech and avoid Stealers,
Or fix it yourself

https://youtu.be/-skXw0I05Jg

[JALLEN4]

Lynnmor wrote:

JALLEN4 wrote:

Ron3rd wrote:

BarabooBob wrote:
I gladly take my F150 to the local Ford dealership. They properly service my truck and get it back to me when promised. They are not the cheapest here in town, but, I had problems with a couple of other shops getting the work done. One other shop had one of my vehicles for 3 weeks because they kept doing other jobs while my truck sat on the lift. The Ford shop gets my work done and the vehicle back to me asap.
They beat all of the other tires shops when I needed new tires. Great service.

Stick with that dealer then. They have obviously earned your business. All the dealers I've dealt with the past 30 years sucked big time and would never use them for any repair other than warranty work

You truly need to think about what you are saying. If, over a 30 year period of time, you have never received proper treatment from a dealer's shop...you might want to reconsider where the problem actually is.

Perhaps he actually checks the work and is in touch with reality. My last dealer visit resulted in a damaged hub cap and a brake hose pulled tight across the coil spring. I have had bad and dangerous worked performed by dealers and other shops since I started driving many decades ago. But go ahead and always blame the victim.

Nobody is "blaming the victim" but that is a good attempt to shift the conversation. It is just ridiculous to state that over a 30 year period of time no dealer ever did anything other than poor work. There are millions of satisfactory reviews of shops on the internet including on this forum. Sounds good though to those who want to think everyone is taking advantage of them always!

[JusBud]

colliehauler wrote:

JusBud wrote:
I guess I got a bargain at my local RV shop.
$100/hour.
I don't think they have shop towels or any other cleaning supplies lol
I was waiting for the junk yard dog to come out but in fact it was a pig. No lie.
But he was the only shop that would work on my basement air.
When I had the workhorse brake recall done by another shop they were $125/hour and very nice shop. No cost to me but I will gladly spend the extra $25 and not be greeted by a pig lol

Was the pig the one working on the motorhome? It doesn't matter if the shop is immaculate if the guy doing the work is unknowledgeable of what they are doing.

Pig was just the door greeter.
Although the actual mechanic looked like he could use a bath.
Of course it matters if the shop is immaculate. Means they care. And if they can also repair it correctly then it's a win win.
The immaculate shop was working on newer high end coaches while the other shop had all older coaches.
Both shops fixed my coach correctly
So the immaculate shop still wins overall

[Grit_dog]

Some of the other comments....while the hourly rate or flat rate for labor seems excessive (of course businesses will charge wha the market will bear), until one understands the cost of running a business, any business that has full time employees, stick n bricks shop, high $ equipment and high risk activities, you won't understand why the mechanic "only" gets $30 of that $150/hour rate. Oh and the $30 wage is more like $50 cost to the company.

Of course I can do work cheaper in my garage at home, and do. My "shop" is not a business expense, my tools are plenary compared to most shops therefore not as efficient and my overhead expense is basically limited to the cost of beer and, well, that's about it!

[Grit_dog]

^ Gotta agree with Lynmoor on this one. I try to steer clear of dealer service and repairs but have to say the majority of dealer visits have resulted in shoddy work or other issues, like 2 months and 3 attempts to get a transmission repaired correctly. The one guarantee though is you can be rest assured that you'll pay considerably more for the shoddy work than you'd pay for the work to be done at any non dealer repair shop!

To counter that, though, I did have 2 great dealership experiences about 19 years ago within weeks of each other. Had a new truck with a bad rear gear setup. Smoked one axle at a few hundred miles off the lot. Dealer stepped up and rented us a box van as a loaner as the truck was towing a cargo trailer to be loaded up for moving household.
Same truck, completly new 3rd member, did the same thing a few weeks later, different state, 1000 mi from home and 1000mi from destination.
They worked late Fri night trying to get me back on the road, searched the next day for a 1 way rental with a trailer receiver (none available). Rented me a van, gave me a 100k extended warranty for my troubles and bought a 1 way plane ticket for me to come back and retrieve the teuck after it was repaired!

Wish I could say as much for most of the rest of my experiences.

[Lynnmor]

JALLEN4 wrote:

Ron3rd wrote:

BarabooBob wrote:
I gladly take my F150 to the local Ford dealership. They properly service my truck and get it back to me when promised. They are not the cheapest here in town, but, I had problems with a couple of other shops getting the work done. One other shop had one of my vehicles for 3 weeks because they kept doing other jobs while my truck sat on the lift. The Ford shop gets my work done and the vehicle back to me asap.
They beat all of the other tires shops when I needed new tires. Great service.

Stick with that dealer then. They have obviously earned your business. All the dealers I've dealt with the past 30 years sucked big time and would never use them for any repair other than warranty work

You truly need to think about what you are saying. If, over a 30 year period of time, you have never received proper treatment from a dealer's shop...you might want to reconsider where the problem actually is.

Perhaps he actually checks the work and is in touch with reality. My last dealer visit resulted in a damaged hub cap and a brake hose pulled tight across the coil spring. I have had bad and dangerous worked performed by dealers and other shops since I started driving many decades ago. But go ahead and always blame the victim.

[JALLEN4]

Ron3rd wrote:

BarabooBob wrote:
I gladly take my F150 to the local Ford dealership. They properly service my truck and get it back to me when promised. They are not the cheapest here in town, but, I had problems with a couple of other shops getting the work done. One other shop had one of my vehicles for 3 weeks because they kept doing other jobs while my truck sat on the lift. The Ford shop gets my work done and the vehicle back to me asap.
They beat all of the other tires shops when I needed new tires. Great service.

Stick with that dealer then. They have obviously earned your business. All the dealers I've dealt with the past 30 years sucked big time and would never use them for any repair other than warranty work

You truly need to think about what you are saying. If, over a 30 year period of time, you have never received proper treatment from a dealer's shop...you might want to reconsider where the problem actually is.

[Ron3rd]

BarabooBob wrote:
I gladly take my F150 to the local Ford dealership. They properly service my truck and get it back to me when promised. They are not the cheapest here in town, but, I had problems with a couple of other shops getting the work done. One other shop had one of my vehicles for 3 weeks because they kept doing other jobs while my truck sat on the lift. The Ford shop gets my work done and the vehicle back to me asap.
They beat all of the other tires shops when I needed new tires. Great service.

Stick with that dealer then. They have obviously earned your business. All the dealers I've dealt with the past 30 years sucked big time and would never use them for any repair other than warranty work

[colliehauler]

JusBud wrote:
I guess I got a bargain at my local RV shop.
$100/hour.
I don't think they have shop towels or any other cleaning supplies lol
I was waiting for the junk yard dog to come out but in fact it was a pig. No lie.
But he was the only shop that would work on my basement air.
When I had the workhorse brake recall done by another shop they were $125/hour and very nice shop. No cost to me but I will gladly spend the extra $25 and not be greeted by a pig lol

Was the pig the one working on the motorhome? It doesn't matter if the shop is immaculate if the guy doing the work is unknowledgeable of what they are doing.

[JusBud]

I guess I got a bargain at my local RV shop.
$100/hour.
I don't think they have shop towels or any other cleaning supplies lol
I was waiting for the junk yard dog to come out but in fact it was a pig. No lie.
But he was the only shop that would work on my basement air.
When I had the workhorse brake recall done by another shop they were $125/hour and very nice shop. No cost to me but I will gladly spend the extra $25 and not be greeted by a pig lol

[BB_TX]

Tvov wrote:

BB_TX wrote:

JALLEN4 wrote:
Here is an idea. Why don't you guys who obviously know everything about how these service shops should be run, start your own. You will obviously be rich nearly overnight and us dummies will never have to wait to make an appointment again while we enjoy your cheap prices!:R

Exactly. Unless you have owned a business you have no idea the multitude of overhead costs that must be covered by means of the income you collect before you can even think about a profit for yourself.

I think the biggest issue most people have is the "estimate" price that shops give... it rarely includes all the add-ons, such as "shop rags" and disposal fees. So if you are given an estimate of $500 for mechanical work, then have it done, you end up paying like $650 due to add-ons and fees.

That is what upsets / annoys most people.

Guess it depends on where you take it. Had my truck in to my Ford dealer for some work last week. Service advisor told me over the phone what it would cost. Picked it up next day and invoice as exactly what he said. That has always been the case.

[Tvov]

BB_TX wrote:

JALLEN4 wrote:
Here is an idea. Why don't you guys who obviously know everything about how these service shops should be run, start your own. You will obviously be rich nearly overnight and us dummies will never have to wait to make an appointment again while we enjoy your cheap prices!:R

Exactly. Unless you have owned a business you have no idea the multitude of overhead costs that must be covered by means of the income you collect before you can even think about a profit for yourself.

I think the biggest issue most people have is the "estimate" price that shops give... it rarely includes all the add-ons, such as "shop rags" and disposal fees. So if you are given an estimate of $500 for mechanical work, then have it done, you end up paying like $650 due to add-ons and fees.

That is what upsets / annoys most people.