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Celebrating Our Nineteenth Year in Business |
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Shopping
for auto repair: I get calls every day asking for a price on
work. It really is difficult to quote a price without inspecting or
diagnosing the problem myself. Most of the time I find the car needs
more, less or something completely different than what the customer
thinks or knows what they need. With this in mind when shopping for repairs a
customer should really be asking what qualifications a repair
business has, their employees have and what level of quality of
parts it uses. In the
state of California there are no minimum standards for an auto
repair business. All
you have to do is pay the state $200 and have a shop that is
properly zoned or be mobile. There is no test that the owner has to
take. No minimum amount of experience is required. No minimum amount
of tools or equipment is required. The same goes for the employees.
There is no minimum amount of training or experience required to
work as a mechanic. The state does not license auto technicians even
though it is one of the most complex fields of work out there today.
The only thing the state does is respond to complaints and
enforces laws. The situation is different for smog test and repair
shops. In their case intensive testing and at least two years of
experience is required. A minimum equipment list is also required
and inspected. Yes, the state can close a shop for incompetence and
fraud. Do you want to be one of the thousands of customers that go
to the cheapest repair shops that have no training, experience or
proper equipment? Which repair shops do you think have the most
complaints with the Bureau of Automotive Repair? The best shops get all the training they can.
They voluntarily take Automotive Service Excellence tests to become
certified. They encourage their employees to do so as well. The
owners and employees spend many hours every day reading and learning
new technology. They take pride in professionalism. These shops also
purchase at great expense the proper equipment to diagnose service
and repair the cars they work on. All of this takes a huge
investment of time and money. Do you think these top shops are going
to be the cheapest? Many times they can save you money by properly
diagnosing a complex problem instead of just hanging parts on a car
hoping the check engine light will stay off. The new car dealers are
not immune to this either. I have had customers been told they
needed thousands of dollars in repairs just because one fault code
was set by the self diagnostics.
Since the theory of operation of how the particular system
was not understood they made a misdiagnosis. I found a sensor was
defective in a way that did not set a fault code but would not allow
it to work correctly. In this case a one hundred dollar part and
labor repair solved the problem. Not three thousand dollars worth of
catalytic converters. Even today’s cars or diagnostic equipment
are not capable of telling a technician exactly what the problem is.
All of the information from tests and live date has to be
interpreted to come to a conclusion of what the actual problem is.
With this kind of complexity it takes ongoing training and years of
experience to fully understand and solve problems. Experience and
excellent observation skills can also spot a potential
problem in the middle of a repair. For a little more labor and the
cost of the part hundreds of dollars can be saved by not having to
disassemble that area of the car a second time in a few months. Many
shops do not make this effort or purposely avoid it to get more
labor money out of you down the road. Replacing a timing belt and
not replacing the water pump or drive belts is a good
example of this. I have witnessed this many times from other
shops and new car dealerships. The quality of parts is also very crucial for a
long lasting repair. Did you know the state only requires a warranty
of 3 months or 4000 miles? Using low quality parts can probably get
you past that but would you want to pay again in four months? With
the global economy there are counterfeit parts coming from Asian and
Eastern Europe that are terrible. In many cases they are not even US
Dept of Transportation approved! The best parts like Original
Equipment Manufacture last tens of thousands if not over one hundred
thousand miles. Top quality shops don’t want to see your car come
back with the same problem and go out of their way to use parts that
will last the longest. Wouldn’t you rather pay for a quality part
that will probably last longer than you own the car for? Auto repair is a complex business and every shop is different. Ask the right questions so you know you are comparing apples to apples and not sour kraut.
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