3/13/1

The question has been asked about shop charges. Are shops charging the customer too much? If you're the consumer you won't like the answer, because the truth is you're probably being charged to little. For too long it has been the habit or norm to play down to the desires of equipment owners of low cost disposables. Well, play time is coming to a grinding halt. You bought a disposable, so dispose it, don't fix it.

Full sales and service shops have forever walked a line between the consumer and the Big Box stores. The Big Boxes have driven many smaller full sales and service shops out of business. With sales down due to the mass merchants volume sales prices coupled with fewer qualified, experience repair people, the need to cut back on what is accepted in the shop for repairs is a must. In an effort to recoup lost profits, the answer is to raise shop hourly rates. In addition, the common practice of not charging for the full time to repair something that is badly worn, neglected or tampered with, is being eliminated or at least reduced. Necessity is the mother of invention, or re-invention in this case. Got a hundred dollar mower you bought at the Big Orange Box? Did you let that sucker set the winter over with fuel turning rotten? Heheheh. Let's see, your choice pard, That's a 75 dollar bill to fix or you can go back to the Box and buy a new one.

Sound un-real? I'm here to tell you, it is real. Sound un-fair? Well it ain't! By the time that mower is written up, put on the bench, diagnosed, repaired and tested, you've been called to inform you it's done, paid for and brought back out to you, accumuated time is easily 1 hour. With shop rates in the 60/hr range, add on parts used to repair and the governments share, you're looking at around $75 for your error in not maintaining properly. Feel sick?

Hey, who wants to work for burger flippin wages? I've got over $15,000 tied up in personal tools so don't 'spec me too. The shop I work for has literally hundreds of thousands of dollars and over 30 years invested in a business that makes less profit today than 10 year ago. As Alice Cooper sang, "No more, Mr. Nice Guy", The Big Box's want to play dirty, and you want to support them, that's cool. We {the independent full sales and service shops} will survive. Our numbers may be reduced, but we'll adjust and survive.

There will always be people who want more than disposable equipment. I suspect that in time, the trend will reverse. After all, disposable equipment isn't exactly environmentally friendly, is it?

But for now the name of the game is survive. To do so means charging a more accurate accounting of what repairs are really worth, without regard to what the equipment is worth. A $30 dollar gallon of paint cost just as much on $500,000 house as it does an old shack. Small engine techs are getting real pissed at being classified and paid as second rate mechanics. Auto mechanics earn far more while doing and knowing less. They no longer diagnose anything. They just plug their shop computer into your cars computer and it tells them what is wrong. Shoot, they ain't nothing but glorified parts changers. Worse, they only work on one brand. How hard can it be for even a half assed mechanic to learn to use a computer to diagnose problems on a dozen or so models of one brand?

The small engine tech has no computer telling him what's wrong, he has to do it the old fashioned way, brain power. We don't work on just a dozen or so models either. Let's see, Briggs, Tecumseh, Honda, Kawasaki, Kioritz, Zenoah, Kohler, Suzuki, Stihl, Husqvarna, Mitsubishi, U.S. Engines, those are engine brands alone that my shop deals with. They got all kinds of models too. Then there are all the equipment brands, I won't even try to name that list. They got all kinds of models too. Then there are all the different types of equipment. Mowers of all types, trimmers, hedgers, edgers, generators, go-karts, scooters, and they all got models.

Get the picture? The sub-standard image people have of small engine techs and the relative low pay is why there is a shortage of qualified small engine techs. When the shops finally get the whole picture as well, and start paying the qualified techs what they're really worth, you folks with disposables better put your head twixt your legs and kiss your, well enough already Bob. Suffice to say, the shop rates will take another healthy rise. It's catch up time. When I started driving, gas was 23¢/gal, a new Stingray cost less then the down payment on todays Corvette. Small engine techs are tired of being treated as if we were still in the 60's, and so are the shops employing them and charging you. Fair is fair and the full service sales and service shops can no longer afford to subsidize the Big Box's.

One more item about your friendly Box store. Be very cautious believing all they tell you. Not a day goes by when someone brings his Box mower or other power equipment in for "warranty" repair. "Well the rep at (insert box name here) told me to bring it to you guys to fix under warranty because it's covered." When we tell them we'll inspect it for them and if it is warranty we'll fix it, if not we'll call with an estimate, they get all hot and bothered, "he said you guys would fix it for free". Well listen up, until an authorized service center, not (insert box name here), has inspected the unit and determined the cause of failure, it ain't yet warranty. If the failure is determined to be user failure or abuse, it don't matter how convincing the "Box" clerk lied to you. And if it ain't warranty, and you refuse to pay the repair cost, you will pay the estimate fee. "No More, Mr. Nice Guy."!! Just doing business, and someone has to pay.

LMRM; Bob :<=