Bargain Oil Changes - A Rebuttal

As for the quality of the help, well just because a guy is making minimum wage to change oil and filters does not, necessarily, mean he doesn't know what he's doing. It just means the chances of getting inexperienced or incompetent help increases. I don't know how many engines I have replaced because of this. It proves the old saying, "You get what you pay for". You pay good money, you get good help. These places work on a slim margin so they can't afford to be generous with their pay plans.

I have no doubt that the people who work for you are competent. It behooves the store owner to get rid of the bad ones and keep the good ones. There's not much profit in doing an oil change if you have to put an engine in that vehicle a couple of weeks later. That's why when a bank teller makes a mistake, they are fired, no matter how small the mistake is or if it caused the bank to lose money.

With mechanics it is as it is with fast oil change stores. There are the good and the bad. I used to work at a Firestone dealer in Jackson, NJ where the owner was as crooked as the day was long. He painted customers starters and charged them for new. He would charge for a four wheel alignment and just wire brush the adjustment points to make it look like we lined it up. This guy knew all the tricks to screw and cheat his customers. That is why I left after a few weeks. I don't play games like that and I won't be a party to it.

Your point about parts prices is a good one. Now I'm sure you don't to deny the right of a repair shop to make a profit. In my shop I work on a 40% markup. This is what I need to make a profit, cover my expenses and just plain stay in business. So a part that costs me $100.00 get's marked up to $140.00. The can of baked beans you buy at the grocery store is marked up 35% to 50%. It's a fact of doing business. I have had customers come in and ask If I would put in a part that they have bought. I ask them if they ask the Diner to cook the eggs and bacon they brought in.

I won't do it. Not because I'm mean or a hard ass, but because if they come back two weeks later with a defective fuel pump and I tell them I have to charge the labor to do the whole job again, they get mad at me.

And when I hand them the bad fuel pump and push the car outside so I can work on other cars while they go back to where they bought it to get a new one, they want to know why I can't leave the car on the lift. I've even had customers lose their receipts and want me to take their parts back for them.

So now you know it's not just the part you pay for, included in that price is me to back it up. Still think my 40% markup is unfair?

Now we need to discuss labor and labor rates. Most states require shops to post their hourly labor rate in a prominent place. This way the customer knows what he is going to pay per hour. A shop can charge as much as he wants per hour. The national average being about $65.00 an hour. Which, by the way, is what I charge for labor in my shop.

As you may or may not know, there is a flat rate manual. This manual gives the times a particular job takes to do. For example, the flat rate to replace a water pump on a 1989 Chevy G20 Van with a 6.2 liter diesel is 3.2 hours. That is what the customer is charged. If the job takes a shop 5 hours, the customer still pays 3.2 hours. Prime example is a Ford heater core. The book pays 8 hours to replace it. In actuality it takes about 12 hours. But I can only charge 8 hours. Any more than that and he'll go down the street and I'll lose the job. That's why I will not do them anymore. I send them to the dealer for a new heater core.

Additional Information provided courtesy of AllDATA