Perhaps my question needs a separate thread, but For those of you that work in a dealership, if you tell a customer they need some sort of service done, such as a new air filter for example.
I'd say for small maintenance such as filters, alignment, etc. it's about 80% for and 20% against.
Here are my observations about DFW new car dealerships (as of November 2022). While these won't surprise most of you, they may be incongruous with GasGuzzler's observations: 1. New car inventory is waaaaaaay down, and the variety of vehicles from which to select sucks. 2. New car salesmen tell me (when I can find one) that increased interest rates on car loans have had a very strong negative impact on newe car sales. 3. Used car salesmen tell me used car sales volumes are way down - interest rates being the primary culprit. Low used car sales volumes cause lower used car sales prices. So the slump in used car sales is being caused by the economy. 4. I estimate new car dealerships now employ about 5 - 10% of the sales forces they did before the China Virus shutdown. And many (most?) dealerships now co-mingle their new and used car sales forces - no more separate used car salesmen. So I see a different picture of DFW's car market than does GasGuzzler.
I am just outside the infected bubble of DFW so my situation is likely different. Inventory being way down is relative. Before Covid we kept about 250 vehicles at this one location, likely 65% new and 80% trucks. There was a point where we had 11 new vehicles, all cars and small SUV's, no trucks. Right now we probably have 100 cars. 100 is a lot less than 250 but 11 is way worse compared to 100. We have a decent selection and sell a lot of cars for the size of the town. There is no slump in sales here so there's nothing to blame it on. It used to be the lack of product but we have that now as stated. A local competitor has HUNDREDS of new cars and is in a SMALLER town. We have the same number of employees we've always had and we have no new hires or newly gone people in the last 9+ months.
Maybe each of us would like to post our profession so others can highlight the negatives.
Who here is shocked to now discover there are bad players in all walks of life? Wondering if the auto industry has a higher percentage of bad guys than say ….. electricians, home builders, gun stores, banks, etc.? There‘s something like 70,000 new car dealerships in the country. Lord only knows how many hundreds of thousands of employees that covers.
That was my point earlier. This topic was started about a good dealership experience but there are people with buttons so hot they have to crap on the entire industry decide to post off topic about how they know about a dealership that is dishonest.
Politicians, bankers, and insurance agents are dishonest in many cases too but I don't go find a positive topic about one or the other to tell a bad story.
I'm not in the auto business so may very well be full of crap. Locally most of the dealership techs I know ( thinking 4 right now ) are all
paid basically straight commission. If they're not billing labor hours and selling parts they're not getting paid. plus some are on sliding
scales of pay as in more dollars billed gain them higher percentages. The incentive is there for dishonest techs to just maybe sell things
not really needed and the shear volume in a big dealership makes it tough to keep track of.
I think the whole tech pay system of dealerships leads to a lot of the issues people complain about. Couple that with every body owning
a car and all needing work at some point leads to dealerships being a popular target of how not to service customers.
100% correct. That is not the problem of the dealership, it's the system the manufacturer puts the dealers in. I can offer a couple small corrections although methods vary around the US. Most commissioned techs IN DEALERS do not get paid anything based on parts, only the labor they (or their team in some cases) complete. It's based off time but time is not actually relevant. Manufacturer says a certain job pays 1.8 hours so if it's warranty, the tech gets 1.8 X his flat rate. If he does the job in 1.1, good for him. If it takes two days, sucks for him. Customer pay times generally come from a guide and are usually about 142% of warranty time...because manufacturers try to swindle the techs. Sad? Yes. It's the manufacturer's system the dealers work under.
Back on topic, just for fun:
1) A friend called me about his dealer telling him that his cabin filter needed replacement. Friend said 'no' and asked me. This was 10 years ago and at that time the price was $95. We bought him a cabin filter for $10 and installed it in 10 minutes.
Cabin filter and engine air filters are big money makers around here; the last time I was inside a dealership to pick up some filters I spotted the sign that said 'labor charge $118/hr'; that was about 8+ yrs ago and it wasn't a Lexus dealer; it was Toyota dealer.
J.
A large luxury dealer in DFW was charging over $140 per hour when I left them for this job in 2001. Dealers are encouraged by the factory reps to make service specials on a menu. They are told to make it simple. One price for CAF for all vehicles, one price for EAF for all vehicles, etc. The techs are paid by the job and one CAF takes 3 minutes and another takes 28 minutes but they have to agree on something in the middle. Same with the cost of the parts. Some air filters retail for $80 and AGM batteries are nearing $300. The solution is vehicle specific pricing but to do that, you need service advisors that have a clue. The nationwide hiring issues across all industries makes this difficult.
Anyone have good results with extended warranty's? Anyone?
Sure. Buy the right one. We have good luck with Master Tech. The key is knowing what you are buying. What it covers and what it does not.
Called our Toyota dealer this week about a couple of problems on our Highlander (low tire light staying on) and Tundra (fuel gauge off 1/4 of tank) he curtly explained that they would have to run a diagnostic test on the vehicles. That would cost $175 dollars apiece. Then we could decide if we wanted to spend the money to get the problem fixed. I said I was not going to spend $350 to find out what the problem was when we already knew what it was. What a rip off!!!!
The tech spends time diagnosing your problem, researching the fix, and getting parts information. You decide not to do the repair. Who pays the technician for his time?
So take it to a private shop and pay them to replace the T(ire) P(ressure) M(onitoring) S(ensor) and the fuel level sensor. The TPMS is pretty simple but they have to drop the tank to replace the sensor.
Alternatively, you could do it yourself. We aren’t talking rocket science. Heck semi trained “technicians” can do it so how hard could it be.
The biggest reason repairs cost so much isn’t the cost of diagnostic equipment it’s that people don’t even know which direction to turn a nut much less anything else.
Often I see this and many times the next step when the first attempts were not successful is to search online and buy another unneeded part. When that doesn't fix the problem, the customer comes to us and says they have a bunch of aftermarket parts installed that didn't fix the issue. The installation is generally suspect too. Sometimes we have to "un-replace" all their parts (if they have the originals) to start the diagnosis over.
Maybe one day I will start my own topic and address all the common misconceptions. It's no different than saying FPS causes leading and you can't load outside of published data...noise that gets repeated mindlessly on the internet.
