Hello again

It’s Sunday now and ’tis the only day of the week when I try and NOT go to the garage at all. As I mentioned in my last post, I would let you all into a little secret. Well, it’s not so much of a secret as just something that’s not very well known of outside the garage trade.

It’s to do with one fundamental difference between the way we operate our garage, and the way that a large number of main dealers and national fast-fit chains operate.

So, what’s the main difference you may ask? It’s all to do with the way that the technicians are paid, and how that ultimately affects both the quality and amount of work that’s carried out to your car.

In order to understand the system, we’ll first look at the way that we pay our technicians.  Ours receive a fixed salary, based on age and experience and it’s the same every month. The salary we pay is at the higher-end of the range for vehicle technicians, and is between £19000 and £30000 p/a.

Now, let’s look at the way that most main dealers pay their technicians. They’ll normally receive a ‘basic’ salary of between £16000 and £20000, but operate a ‘bonus’ scheme that enables the technicians to boost their earnings to maybe £25000+.

The way they earn their bonus is by either completing the sceduled job in less than ‘book time’ thereby meaning they can free-up time for more jobs (if there’s any left), or (and more commonly) by ‘finding’ additional work on a customers car that may or may not need doing, in order to ’sell’ more hours on a job.

An example of this might be as follows:

Mrs Jones has her Ford Focus booked-in for an annual standard service. The ‘book time’ for this is 1.5 hours so the technician does the service, but as he’s done so many before he can do it in 1 hour instead. Now, at that rate, even if he had 5 identical services to do in the day that’d be just 7.5 hours of work (out of an 8 hour day, so he’d not sell any extra hours that day, and so would just get ‘basic’ wages. So, let’s imagine that the brake pads are almost worn out on Mrs. Jones’s Focus. That’s an extra 0.8 hour to change them, yet as they already have the parts in stock, and the car’s already on the ramp with the wheels off, it’ll really only take him an extra 10 minutes or so. So, the service and brake pads that should take 2.3 hours has only taken him 1.2 hours. If every service that day also needs brake pads, and he changes them as quickly, he’ll effectively ’sell’  11.5 hours of labour in an 8 hour day. That means 3.5 hours of ‘bonus’ and an extra £262.50 of profit for the dealer. (assuming a £75 p/h labour rate)  So,the dealer pays the technician a percentage of this and his salary is boosted by a considerable margin. Imagine this every day, and with maybe 12 technicians, and you’ll see how profitable it is for the dealer, and for the technician.

So, what’s wrong with that you might ask? Well, in theory nothing as long as it’s run with honesty on the part of the technician and service reception. The fundamental flaw (to the paying customer) of the system is that it actively ‘encourages’ technicians to generate additional work, whether it’s necessary or not, in order to keep their salary at a higher level. If they were totally honest, and ONLY changed additional parts when they were WORN-OUT, they’d probably earn significantly less. Unfortunately, this encourages the replacement of parts that in many cases aren’t worn at all! Due to the fact that 8 out of 10 customers rarely question any additional work they’re told they need, the dealers can make a fortune. I’ve even heard of cases where over 12 hours of work have been charged to a customer’s vehicle in one morning of 4 hours!

There are two main problems with this bonus scheme. Firstly, it could encourage technicians to ‘invent’ additional work that’s not required, in order to boost their income to a reasonable level. Secondly, it encourages technicians to rush jobs in order to get the car out of the workshop and start the next job!

None of these scenarios are good for the customer, yet are very good for the technician and for the main dealer.

The difference is that our technicians get a top salary regardless of any additional work they find is required. It’s of no benefit whatsoever to them to simply ‘invent’ additional work as they’ll just have to work harder, but won’t get any more money. They’re not rushed to finish a job either and because we don’t keep any parts in stock, if a car really does need some brake pads we’ll simply order them from the local motor factors and try and get on with something else while they’re waiting. Besides, we keep ALL parts that we replace for 48 hours, so we can show the customer just how worn they were, and why replacement was absolutely necessary!

It’s not just main dealers that operate these schemes. Many national fast-fit  centres offer incentive schemes for staff to sell more bits, whether they’re needed or not! Fortunately, their expensive advertisements on TV never mention this, so the next time you’re lured-in for a ‘free’ brake check, don’t be too surprised to find that your car ‘needs’ a complete new braking system, as well as 4 tyres, a new exhaust, a new battery and a new set of shock absorbers!

Anyway, enough of my ranting and if you happen to be reading this and work for a main dealer or fast-fit and wish to disagree, please feel free to post!

Back to the grind tomorrow, so off I go to bed!

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