Tip #3 Technicians with inadequate skills

Sometimes old sayings really capture the essence of an issue.  In this case, "You get what you pay for" pretty well sums things up, though it does go a bit further.

Skilled, experienced technicians spends thousands of dollars on tools, diagnostic equipment and training.  The better shops also invest thousands in diagnostic equipment and training.  A shop or mechanic charging far less than the going rate is almost certainly doing that because they are not worth top dollar.

Why does that matter to you?  Let me share a story.  We recently had a car come into our shop that had been diagnosed as needing a new transmission at at cost of around $1800.00.  Now this price was well under what we would charge or what any of the top shops would charge for a transmission rebuild.  Fortunately for the customer, they did not simply purchase that repair at the lowest price.  We diagnosed the problem, and got fairly paid for our professional diagnostic.  The problem was a wheel speed sensor associated with the anti lock brake system.  The failed sensor fed data to the transmission computer which was confused by the bad data and was not correctly commanding the transmission to shift gears.  After the diagnostic, we replaced the failed sensor for around $200 and the car was fine.  The moral of this story is that it takes experience, skills and equipment to find the real issues with your vehicle.

Cheap labor and cheap repairs are usually not the lowest cost repairs over the long run.  But it goes further.  Many of the high priced dealers have technicians who read the results of some computer tests, don't bother to question the suggestions of the computer and jump into replacing parts.  Often these are parts that do not need to be replaced, so it goes further than simply paying the highest labor rate to get the best results.

As a consumer, you should ask about, and understand the skill levels of the technicians that will work on your vehicle.  For an oil change, you don't need a master technician with 30 years experience, but you certainly need that skill to oversee the work and to perform the diagnostics on your vehicle.  Anything less is like allowing a High School student to perform open heart surgery because they plan to attend medical school.

Today's top technicians are highly trained, highly skilled, well equipped and well compensated for their expertise.  Make sure the right person is performing surgery on your  vehicle.

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