Your entitled to your opinion. I want to disagree though.
Why should any repair shop be adding the cost upfront to work that may be needed if the part doesn't work. That's crazy! If they do the work correctly there should not be a problem.
There is nothing wrong with the board other than the motor and I don't consider changing the motor tinkering.
Good for your shop making $150 an hour. Sounds excessive to me. How much does the mechanic get $35.
I would do the job myself and pocket the difference and I can afford to pay the $4700.
How can you expect a working man to pay that amount of money?
This is exactly why there should be no hourly labor rate! All services should be a la cart for complete job and stated up front!
Some are easy , some are harder...you win some you lose some but it all averages out.
When you pay someone to paint your house or a fence or paint you car, or put in a water heater or HVAC system....They tell you up front how much it will be.
Now if they charge you 1500.00 to put in a water heater and are done it 30 minutes, which is possible with electric...you might feel cheated. Probably not though because most don't really know what the heater itself costs.
They can break it down however they want but no hourly rate removes the tinkering issues.
Let's back up and be honest here. Auto repair is a dishonest business!
If that offends you, then you either work for or have worked in the industry.
I will stand by this statement and offer facts to back it up.
In the old days a local garage owner told you he would tune up your car for 32.00 lets say.
Didn't know exactly what he was replacing or doing but he was honest and trustworthy and ethical and always did you right. You knew it would be running right when you picked it up.
Then the world went picky and itemized like. So they started showing parts...in this case about 17.00 and labor 15.00. Was he making a killing?? Heck no.
He could stick 6-8 plugs in a car pop distributor cap. rotor button, points and condenser, and wires in about 45 mins. Less on some cars.
He wasn't making as much money as the buy working at the bank, or the manager at a local store but was surviving.
Then either because they wanted to make more OR not make it look like labor was so much (almost the same as parts-which BTW use to be a rule of thumb on lots of services as max cost) they started MARKING UP parts to pad the labor rate.
As long as we can all agree that shops started making up prices of parts to to "keep labor lower" ...I will present this as evidence that the industry is unethical and dishonest from the get go.
We can ague other semantics of car repair but all that really matters is how much will it be to put a new started on my car? You can pay 80.00 for it and charge me 110 labor and 90 to install I pay 200.00. You can charge me the exact 80 you pay and 120 labor and I still pay 200, but that doesn't sound as good and doesn't keep my your local hometown friend fixing your cars for everything they need.
You could charge me 160 for part and 40 for labor and If I didn't know what I could get a starter for you would look like a really nice guy.
DISHONEST, unethical . Call it what you will but it's deceptive marketing, or as least deceptive something.
I have run 2 businesses throughout the past 24 years and not to toot my own horn but I am such a sticker on ethics and fairness that I of course cost myself money.
I should just say who cares. Everyone else does it and i could make almost double a year but I'm an opinionated bastard and refuse to.
In one business I provide parts on almost a daily daily basis and never mark them up. I also have cheap labor rated. I have comparison shopped and I end up being about 50-70 percent of all the other retail competitors in the area.
I charge for the job even though it's a repair business and not by the hour as all other shops do.
Yes some end up being a lot of work for the same money where others are super simple.
It balances out.
My other business is one that has an extremely high profit margin vs costs for each service performed. Kind of like painting car used to be. The could get the paint and all materials for under 200.00 and then charge 2000.00 for the job. 10X!!!!
This is basic and not considering equipment costs over the years, rent if a shop or storefront, advertising, insurance, fuel, utility bills, phone, etc.... but you get the idea.
Bring in a lot of money for a short period of service with little to no spending money to do the one service.
I have been both ends of it too.
When I started I was tied with the cheapest other competitor in the phone book and area.
Then 6 years later I raised prices a little and increased what the customer received and was still in the cheapest 20% of companies.
Then 7 years later I added a service that only 1-2 other companies had and was in the top 10 percent of companies in my pricing.
Maybe by my own logic that is unethical to charge more just because everyone else is but I started offering a service I never had done before and I priced to see what that service was going for and I went a little lower.
I could have been half of that and still made money, but there are reasons you don't want to be too cheap.
A lowballer company is soon despised by all the competition and they talk bad about you to potential customers often making stuff up. Potential customers are often scared away at a price too much lower than average. They figure must be a reason and must be lower quality etc.
I just always make sure I give deal , better than average and sometimes best around.
Car repair industry is way too big and greed has taken over.
I have also know several shop or multiple shop owners and they are all loaded.
All those 900.00 tune ups will buy big houses and nice new cars.
I'm not a big religious person but I hope we all get rewarded in the afterlife or at least treated equivalent to how we treated others, but maybe I'm just leaving money on the table that I could really use. But, oh well. I'm set in my ways.
So I'll just keep pluggin and chuggin and paying the bills.
