A garage called me to see if I could diagnose a job for them so I popped round one morning & had a quick look & gave them a figure for me to repair. Their reply was as unimaginative as it was expected.

“How much!”

So I broke it all down for them including the diagnostic charge, labour & parts.

“Yeah, that’s too much. He won’t pay that. Can you do it any cheaper?”

“I could do it for free, but I won’t. It’s not my car, why should I subsidise their running costs?” I asked in return. When he asked how much I charge an hour he then asked why was I so expensive. His argument was he has rent, rates, staff etc to pay & he’s cheaper than me, so why was I so expensive when I work from home?

“Because you & your staff can’t do the job, I can. You are paying for my knowledge & experience. You are paying for the problem to go away.”

Then the customer gets involved & says he can buy the parts cheaper than I can. At that point I declined the job, thanked them for their time & left. This wasn’t a recoverable situation in my opinion, better to walk away than to chase a job that starts this badly. About 5 months later the customer rang me directly & asked if I could do the job for him. They’ve had the car all this time, the head has been off twice & it still doesn’t start. They’ve bought a new key, fitted a new immobiliser ecu & a fuel pump.

I arrange with the garage to leave me some room to work in & the next day sure enough, the car is in the corner as requested. A few hours later & it’s running, finally! I charge the garage for my time & away I go.

What was the problem with the car above? Cam timing was (significantly) out & they fitted the cam wheels the wrong way round. They also reused the stretch bolts on the cam wheels…..so it’s just as well it didn’t start! I swapped the vanos wheels over, reset the timing using new bolts, & it started. Then, to prove a point, I refitted the old fuel pump, ecu & used the original key before trying it again, it started straight away!

Just to be clear, in order to save about £300 they lost use of their car for 5 months & paid for a fuel pump, ecu & a key. The parts alone cost just over £600! So catching lifts, borrowing cars for 5 months & paying £600 for parts not required makes the garage cheap, yet I’m expensive for fixing it in one day, at the price I quoted?

In the scenario above, the garage lost out on their labour, had a dead car on site for almost 9 months & the customer paid for parts he didn’t need. And they still had to pay me. How does that work?

The point I’m making? It’s cheap for a reason. Buy cheap buy twice.

It’s also true that quality demands a premium for a reason. And if you do something for free, it isn’t always appreciated as it has no value. That’s why I always charge & it’s not usually cheap.

In my opinion, the skill level is just too low as an average, across the trade. Too many Google mechanics!

The answer?

More or better training is needed. Yes it costs money, but it’s cheaper than the above scenario!