I quit doing the radio show when I had to have spinal surgery. To get to do the radio show I had to pay for advertising for my shop and I knew then that I was never going back to full time there so why advertise?
Programs about honest mechanics don't sell advertising. Stories about rip-offs make good copy.
After all, the actual "agenda" of media is pretty simple. They dish out topics to a certain demographic that they want to attract and then, once they've attracted them, they "sell" those people to other corporations.
The media is "for" or "against" much of anything. As long as the demographic they want to attract keeps on coming, then they're going to keep on doing what they're doing.
If, suddenly, nobody's tuning into garage rip-off stories, then they'll switch to bad cosmetic surgery stories, or whatever.
Short answer: Don't take it personally. The media is not out to get out you. It all revolves around craven profit.
Absolutely. The auto repair profession insisted it could self-regulate and it hasn't done a very good job of it.
That's not to say I don't sympathize with some of the ways shops are treated. I think, for instance, that Yelp can be unduly harsh and needs some revisions.
Yelp will tell you they aren't responsible for the content placed on their website by consumers, many of whom have been influenced by the stereotypes portrayed by the media.
Ah, well.... I don't think the media is to blame for most of the bad Yelp reviews. It strikes me as often a case of bad communication between customer and shop. Also I'm amazed how many shops who get a bad review either a) don't respond, or b) respond inappropriately.
Then there's the problem of some shops, car lots posting phony reviews. Those are usually easy to spot though.
My opinion is that most repair shops are pretty lame at handling social media.
Ah, well.... I don't think the media is to blame for most of the bad Yelp reviews. It strikes me as often a case of bad communication between customer and shop. Also I'm amazed how many shops who get a bad review either a) don't respond, or b) respond inappropriately.
Yelp is nothing more than a bully, and responding is giving the bully his way whether the response is appropriate or not. In another time, what Yelp does would be seen as a form of extortion in spite of their denials that paying them doesn't influence how the reviews are handled. Then you have the troubling aspect that if someone posts a bad review it is automatically applied and at the worst be labeled as "not recommended" which only makes it a single click away and yet a good review especially from a new poster is visible only to the business owner, but not the average consumer. That is part of what you are referencing here...
Then there's the problem of some shops, car lots posting phony reviews. Those are usually easy to spot though.
My opinion is that most repair shops are pretty lame at handling social media.
I don't recall anyone ever doing training classes for how to deal with social media. Besides, the majority of shop owner/technicians are already doing fifty to sixty hour weeks working, a dozen or more each week dealing with normal business demands, another dozen or two dealing with continuing education demands and they still have to try and have time for family and household needs. And then there is that fringe online line community who insists on top of all of that they have to subject themselves to online bullying that they feel they have no real chance of dealing with successfully. That's not being lame, it's about concentrating on the things that they can control and just turning the other cheek with the ones they cannot.
So now we know who controls the media - those who pay? I remember Mr. Goodwrench ads back in the day. Maybe they backfired and made people think that their GM car would be in the shop all the time.
I remember the Mr. Goodwrench sign above the stall where I worked. I remember how marketing to sell new cars often attempted to stress that your new (at that time) car would need less service and repair than what ever it was you already had. That led to consumers being negligent with servicing their cars correctly and increased the likelihood that replacing their next new car would occur sooner instead of later. It was then common to see people blame the cars for the failures they encountered instead of the lack of servicing while the imports back then really stressed servicing to the maximum level and enjoyed better reliability ratings because of how the cars were serviced.
RE: Owner negligence--this has pretty much been a tradition with American car owners since WW II, long before Mr. Goodwrench was even born.
I think that's starting to change a bit now. What with service reminders and dealer "specials" and all the rest, I think owners are doing a better job.
I don't remember Toyota insisting on maximum servicing when I got my '82 Tercel new. It got my usual indifferent maintenance. Didn't mile it up much after '89 when we got our first minivan, but it still ran great for 17 years when we moved and I sold it at a yard sale. Only stranded me once in town.
The 70s Bugs did need valve adjustments every 3,000 miles.
We need to keep Doc away from Yelp unless he's under supervision.
But, for whatever it's worth, there are ways for shop owner to use Yelp effectively:
1. Do NOT argue with the customer online or defend yourself in an aggressive manner.
2. Mention your shop's long record of customer satisfaction and invite the customer to contact you privately to resolve the issue. If the issue gets resolved, ask your customer to amend their original review.
3. If the customer is, in fact, a lunatic you don't want to deal with, then merely express your regret that they were not satisfied with your service and mention your 4 or 5 star rating
4. If, in fact, you have multiple bad reviews on Yelp, then your credibility is in question and you may indeed have a problem going on with customer relations or competency in your shop. Since old reviews generally drop off the page, you can fix the problem on Yelp.
Yelp doesn't have the greatest reputation, although I found a good Subaru mechanic for my sister that way back in Virginia. He's closed down now, but she got a new Subaru that's still under warranty so she's going to the dealer anyway.
Yelp suffers because of all the phony reviews, but if you know how to scan the reviews, weeding out fakes and lunatics, you can at least avoid a disaster...if not actually find a good shop.
I've often double checked Yelp reviews against what I know from years of experience are top notch repair shops, and guess what? They all score 5 stars and rave reviews.
Excellence IS rewarded. If your shop does excellent work and you are getting slammed on Yelp, then your public relations sucks.
3. If the customer is, in fact, a lunatic you don't want to deal with, then merely express your regret that they were not satisfied with your service and mention your 4 or 5 star rating
Well at least you do realize that the business can in fact be the victim not the perpetrator.
Over the years I think I have demonstrated just how much I really know about the work that techs have to do and what its like dealing with the public. From first hand experience I can tell you without question that yes, the bullies can be very creative and what's worse is all they have to do is claim that someone has tried to rip them off and they are anointed full credibility, even when proven otherwise.
I can tell you one of the stories from 1986 when a guy had an 84' Chevrolet Citation 2.5l that was randomly quitting on the highway. My testing routine was pretty straight forward, I had to first prove if it was losing spark, fuel, or both and I did that with a propane fuel rig that I invented.
When the car cut out, I turned the propane on and was able to adjust it and keep the engine running, so it was fuel and not spark.
The next thing I needed to know was why wasn't the engine getting any fuel. I had the fuel pressure gage connected and confirmed that I had not lost fuel pressure, so then I needed to confirm injector pulse.
I had pre-planned the testing to allow me to see if I was losing power or ground to the injector and it was the ground command from the PCM that was missing.
The last thing that I needed to know was if this was an ECM or input issue. The spark was commanded by the magnetic pick-up in the distributor but was only used for fuel during cranking. Once started the ECM used a second hall effect inside the distributor in order to fire the injector. I had spark which confirmed the one signal but not the other. Using my multimeter and measuring the signal voltage, I had 10v at the ECM, it should have been around 5v. (approx. half of the 10v square wave) I switched the meter to duty cycle and the hall effect signal input was 0%. By doing that I proved that the hall effect had dropped out this time and it was not a bad ECM which BTW was also quite common to find.
I did all of this knowing that we didn't get paid anything for diagnostics, it wasn't right but that's the way it was. The real fun started when the service manager called the guy with the estimate and he instead of authorizing the repair, started complaining first to the service manager, then to the owner and then to the Chevrolet zone office. He showed up at the shop about an hour later and with the owner and service manager standing there demanded to know how I knew that the sensor was the problem. So I explained my routine just like I have here and he still pressed on and wanted to know how I knew the hall effect sensor had failed. So I explained to him exactly how the circuit operated including how a hall effect transistor reacts to a magnetic field. In the presence of a magnetic field the sensor turns on and pulls the reference voltage from the PCM down creating the signal. In the absence of a magnetic field the sensor turns off and the voltage rises back up to the reference. To make the sensor switch there are vanes in the distributor that pass in between the magnet and the sensor as the distributor turns allowing and blocking that magnetic field to pass which results in the transistor turning on and off.
At this point he simply said fine, go ahead and replace but if that doesn't fix it I'm not paying for it.
Replacing the sensor required removing the top engine mount to roll the engine forward and that gave plenty of room to access the distributor and replace the part. It paid .6 hours to do the repair and remember we got nothing for the diagnostics. After the service manager and owner left he came back over to me and admitted that before I explained everything he was certain that he was being BS'ed. He told me that he fixed TV's and had no idea that his car had something like in it let alone that "some mechanic" would have any idea how it worked. It blew him away that I had such a grasp of the system being that I was "just a mechanic", but he was impressed by the fact that I knew as much as I did.
The real surprise came later that day when I saw my time ticket. To make him happy Chevrolet zone authorized the part to be replaced under a good will adjustment which meant he had to pay the labor and they paid for the part. Instead of .6 I got .3 and once logged that customers complaint remained with my service record.
If this was an aberration or at least a rare occurrence it could be shrugged off, but I can tell hundreds of stories just like this one. In many cases the complaints were only about trying to scam the system to get a cheaper price and the consumers who adopted that practice quite often accomplished just that and they did so usually at the technicians expense.
Absolutely. The auto repair profession insisted it could self-regulate and it hasn't done a very good job of it.
That's not to say I don't sympathize with some of the ways shops are treated. I think, for instance, that Yelp can be unduly harsh and needs some revisions.
Funny, I've only really used Yelp for finding places to eat. However I will admit I'm terrible about giving good reviews (too lazy). I don't really use Yelp, so that's one excuse, but the one review I do remember leaving was decidedly negative about a shop that deserved it for multiple severe reasons. Since it was my first review Yelp treated me like a lunatic and put my review in the "click three extra times and make it hard to find" category.
Fortunately, the shop went out of business soon thereafter as they were circling the drain for quite some time. I wonder how many people, customers, and creditors got cheated out of money by these scumbags.
I do find that the food reviews are much too generous with the star ratings. I generally deduct a star to get an idea.
'18 Porsche Macan Turbo, '16 Audi TTS, Wife's '19 VW Tiguan SEL 4-Motion
So now we know who controls the media - those who pay? I remember Mr. Goodwrench ads back in the day. Maybe they backfired and made people think that their GM car would be in the shop all the time.
I remember the Mr. Goodwrench sign above the stall where I worked. I remember how marketing to sell new cars often attempted to stress that your new (at that time) car would need less service and repair than what ever it was you already had. That led to consumers being negligent with servicing their cars correctly and increased the likelihood that replacing their next new car would occur sooner instead of later. It was then common to see people blame the cars for the failures they encountered instead of the lack of servicing while the imports back then really stressed servicing to the maximum level and enjoyed better reliability ratings because of how the cars were serviced.
So if you get an American Car that you service religiously for maximum protection using the most "severe" maintenance schedule, and it still ends up costing more than an average Rolls Royce to maintain, what does that mean?
I'm sure that Americans are cheap and skimp on maintenance, but I'm also sure that happens to foreign cars as well. I don't buy that there is any difference there. The difference in reliability lies in the greater threshold for abuse some foreign cars seem to have, I think mostly Japanese cars are good at handling abuse, you almost can't seem to kill some of them. Also, German cars are designed to handle the "abuse" of driving 150 MPH down the Autobahn for an hour or two straight, while American cars have definitely have lower design thresholds like drive 55 stay alive, and they tend to "hit the limp mode" way sooner at the track. I think some of that has been improved by USA brands in recent years outside of only the Corvette, but that has been my observation.
I do, however, credit a lot of my stellar reliability with Audi's and VW's to doing the proper maintenance.
'18 Porsche Macan Turbo, '16 Audi TTS, Wife's '19 VW Tiguan SEL 4-Motion
If this was an aberration or at least a rare occurrence it could be shrugged off, but I can tell hundreds of stories just like this one. In many cases the complaints were only about trying to scam the system to get a cheaper price and the consumers who adopted that practice quite often accomplished just that and they did so usually at the technicians expense.
Seems like the problem here is the inherent shop system of penalizing the technician/mechanic for "goodwill" adjustments. That should come from higher up.
I think it's easy for owners to "take it out" on the peasants though. I remember a tech doing his job on my car in a very frustrated kind of way, and thinking back, it may have been because the owner owed me some freebies for a part he damaged previously, and probably told his guy to just take care of it, even though it had nothing to do with him.
'18 Porsche Macan Turbo, '16 Audi TTS, Wife's '19 VW Tiguan SEL 4-Motion
I've posted several positive reviews on Yelp- but only one negative review. That one concerned the Indianapolis Ford dealer that jerked me around last summer when I tried to buy a CPO Mustang GT they had advertised.
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
So if you get an American Car that you service religiously for maximum protection using the most "severe" maintenance schedule, and it still ends up costing more than an average Rolls Royce to maintain, what does that mean?
That you don't know what it really costs to have the Rolls serviced and are just assuming???
Seems like the problem here is the inherent shop system of penalizing the technician/mechanic for "goodwill" adjustments. That should come from higher up.
I think it's easy for owners to "take it out" on the peasants though.
I've shown what the work is really like and how it is a true profession and find this statement very disturbing with how it clashes with the training, talent and other demands if the career. This is rooted in the old stereotype and that needs to change.
I remember a tech doing his job on my car in a very frustrated kind of way, and thinking back, it may have been because the owner owed me some freebies for a part he damaged previously, and probably told his guy to just take care of it, even though it had nothing to do with him.
Eye's wide open, and the picture looks completely different now doesn't it?
Seems like the problem here is the inherent shop system of penalizing the technician/mechanic for "goodwill" adjustments. That should come from higher up.
I think it's easy for owners to "take it out" on the peasants though.
I've shown what the work is really like and how it is a true profession and find this statement very disturbing with how it clashes with the training, talent and other demands if the career. This is rooted in the old stereotype and that needs to change.
I remember a tech doing his job on my car in a very frustrated kind of way, and thinking back, it may have been because the owner owed me some freebies for a part he damaged previously, and probably told his guy to just take care of it, even though it had nothing to do with him.
Eye's wide open, and the picture looks completely different now doesn't it?
I just know I could buy a lot of expensive German car parts for the amount I wasted on unscheduled repair maintenance on that old '95 Neon, and none of the problems that car had could be attributed to servicing neglect. No, I was just trying to say that I don't let the Big 3 reliability woes off the hook due to Americans' habits of neglecting to do maintenance at proper intervals. Those cars that earned a lot of black dots in CR did so from top to bottom, from concept to final product there were deep flaws.
I didn't mean to call mechanics peasants as a derogatory thing. I just meant that in general I feel the higher-ups/owners tend to take advantage of the people at the bottom of the totem pole. That's what I've observed in every business. Of course, the best managers and owners refrain from doing that.
How is warranty/re-work treated in the business?
I know one reason I hate to pay for diagnosis is because if you get it wrong then we just wasted time and energy (and money) on whatever part you said to replace, that didn't really need replacing to fix the problem. I recall a situation where a shop said "100% it is the speed sensor." Funny, it wasn't the speed sensor, and yet they had no problem billing for that work. I'm sure after that experience he learned to never say 100% again.
'18 Porsche Macan Turbo, '16 Audi TTS, Wife's '19 VW Tiguan SEL 4-Motion
I just know I could buy a lot of expensive German car parts for the amount I wasted on unscheduled repair maintenance on that old '95 Neon, and none of the problems that car had could be attributed to servicing neglect.
My experiences don't reflect yours, and using a 95 Neon as a reference point is just one of the biggest reasons why.
No, I was just trying to say that I don't let the Big 3 reliability woes off the hook due to Americans' habits of neglecting to do maintenance at proper intervals. Those cars that earned a lot of black dots in CR did so from top to bottom, from concept to final product there were deep flaws.
I quit paying attention to Consumer Reports when they wrote that the Toyota Corolla in 1987 was the best thing on the street, and the Chevrolet Nova was the absolute worst.
They were the exact same car that GM was buying off of Toyota and rebadging.
I didn't mean to call mechanics peasants as a derogatory thing. I just meant that in general I feel the higher-ups/owners tend to take advantage of the people at the bottom of the totem pole. That's what I've observed in every business. Of course, the best managers and owners refrain from doing that.
There is one of the biggest problems that the trade faces. Becoming a master technician should be the goal and a step away from the bays should be seen as a step down, not up. It makes no sense career wise to even try to be a top technician if one has to quit being a tech to be seen as successful.
The classic approach is the tech does not get paid for work that has to be done over again, for any reason. There are some shop owners who have realized what they were doing to the talent and have been trying to change that.
I know one reason I hate to pay for diagnosis is because if you get it wrong then we just wasted time and energy (and money) on whatever part you said to replace, that didn't really need replacing to fix the problem. I recall a situation where a shop said "100% it is the speed sensor." Funny, it wasn't the speed sensor, and yet they had no problem billing for that work. I'm sure after that experience he learned to never say 100% again.
The reality is that none of this is simple whether we are talking about diagnostics, repairs or even communicating what needs to be done and why.
CR burned me in '74 when they recommended an aluminum canoe over a new-fangled ABS plastic hull. Always rely on enthusiasts - the true believers know the scoop, although you'll be buried with so much good info buying paralysis may set in.
CR burned me in '74 when they recommended an aluminum canoe over a new-fangled ABS plastic hull. Always rely on enthusiasts - the true believers know the scoop, although you'll be buried with so much good info buying paralysis may set in.
Goes for cars, of course, too. CR gave our '08 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS a review so bad that you kinda look around and go, are they talkin' about the same car? They are biased to certain brands, like Toyota and Honda, I've noticed. That was a good car, except for that one belt that broke prematurely. The car handled great, looked great, accelerated great and was not expensive to maintain. Yet do you think a person could get an unbiased review of the car from the American media?
Sure, give me a junket to Sweden to test drive a new Volvo, put a nice swag bag on the bed of the four star hotel you are putting me up in and business class plane tickets to get there, and I'll be happy to take an unbiased look at the pre-written article you hand out.
Then I'll cut and paste your notes and publish a nice story or two in the media, and sit back and wait for the BMW and Buick invites to come in.
That's CR's claim to fame - unbiased reviews. That's still not the same as relying on the folks like @fintail or @roadburner who live with a brand for years, and know all the wrinkles and warts and good points.
Sure, give me a junket to Sweden to test drive a new Volvo, put a nice swag bag on the bed of the four star hotel you are putting me up in and business class plane tickets to get there, and I'll be happy to take an unbiased look at the pre-written article you hand out.
Then I'll cut and paste your notes and publish a nice story or two in the media, and sit back and wait for the BMW and Buick invites to come in.
That's CR's claim to fame - unbiased reviews. That's still not the same as relying on the folks like @fintail or @roadburner who live with a brand for years, and know all the wrinkles and warts and good points.
And then you have to search out the member who likes the same brand you do. But places like Edmunds are invaluable for getting people's personal reviews on their favorites, indeed. Even then, I still make my own analysis of a brand. The car business carries a chaste system of affection, don't you know? One has to know what they like and research everything they can get their hands on. Then enjoy the test drive!
Kind of getting myself enthralled writing this up!
I do notice that members on here have a chaste system of rating cars, though. I like their own car reviews, but with me, I remain a "free agent" for car research. Never do I blindly follow anyone else's car advice.
When researching our '08 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS, I spent hundreds of hours reading online about it. Surprise, the car rags never honestly reviewed the Japanese compact.
False, but a very small percentage of problems cannot be fixed. The problem is a complex part that is unavailable. For example was it here that someone posted about a Ford part, perhaps for the ABS, that no longer existed within 10 years, and they convinced Ford to manufacture more? That type of issue cannot be resolved except with a new part, but otherwise, any mechanical part can be replaced or jury-rigged, and any piece of corroded metal can be patched. But if an integrated circuit is required, and the Chinese don't supply it, the problem cannot be fixed. The associated system can never work again.
Note that I do not consider putting tape over the warning light as a "fix."
CR burned me in '74 when they recommended an aluminum canoe over a new-fangled ABS plastic hull. Always rely on enthusiasts - the true believers know the scoop, although you'll be buried with so much good info buying paralysis may set in.
Goes for cars, of course, too. CR gave our '08 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS a review so bad that you kinda look around and go, are they talkin' about the same car? They are biased to certain brands, like Toyota and Honda, I've noticed. That was a good car, except for that one belt that broke prematurely. The car handled great, looked great, accelerated great and was not expensive to maintain. Yet do you think a person could get an unbiased review of the car from the American media?
to be fair, CR prioritizes quite strongly and bigly, the following attributes:
1) Reliability - true real-world widespread results; not anecdotal; huge sample sizes equalize everything. 2) Fuel Economy - Save the Planet 3) Safety - Save life and reduce Accidents 4) Comfort/Ergonomics
Frankly, the things you like about the Lancer GTS probably don't fit in the list above. CR has been hard on Honda/Acura lately. If you didn't know history you'd think Honda was a mediocre company at best (Reliability falling fast lately).
Also, they do publish the real-world measured results for fuel economy and acceleration, so you get specific numbers, rather than "accelerates great." What one person finds to be "great" another finds to be "poor," but 4.9 seconds from 0 to 60 will always be 4.9 seconds.
'18 Porsche Macan Turbo, '16 Audi TTS, Wife's '19 VW Tiguan SEL 4-Motion
CR burned me in '74 when they recommended an aluminum canoe over a new-fangled ABS plastic hull. Always rely on enthusiasts - the true believers know the scoop, although you'll be buried with so much good info buying paralysis may set in.
Steve, do you want to share more with the group about your 42 year-old grudge with CR?
You're like my grandpa at age 98. He was still complaining about "those damn immigration people" that gave him a hard time in 1912.
Sure, give me a junket to Sweden to test drive a new Volvo, put a nice swag bag on the bed of the four star hotel you are putting me up in and business class plane tickets to get there, and I'll be happy to take an unbiased look at the pre-written article you hand out.
Then I'll cut and paste your notes and publish a nice story or two in the media, and sit back and wait for the BMW and Buick invites to come in.
That's CR's claim to fame - unbiased reviews. That's still not the same as relying on the folks like @fintail or @roadburner who live with a brand for years, and know all the wrinkles and warts and good points.
I like first hand accounts and experiences too. However, as some have pointed out, anecdotal evidence can fail to take into account that Chrysler workers might always get high and drunk on Fridays for example, and so and so might have bought a Monday-Thursday model, while another might get the Friday special. Now with some models, the specified parts and build quality is so low, that the assembly might not be to blame for much of what goes wrong.
Also, another thing to point out is CR doesn't let the manufacturer's plant them with a free "RINGER" to test and sample. Any manufacturer that doesn't given their media test cars extra quality control compared to the normal models is committing negligence in my mind. If the quality control is already superb a bit extra will make little difference, but if the quality control is lacking, a little extra will pay huge dividends. Law of diminishing returns.
I'm not sure anything is more important than randomly buying a car model the way the public would when giving an honest review of a vehicle.
'18 Porsche Macan Turbo, '16 Audi TTS, Wife's '19 VW Tiguan SEL 4-Motion
I just know I could buy a lot of expensive German car parts for the amount I wasted on unscheduled repair maintenance on that old '95 Neon, and none of the problems that car had could be attributed to servicing neglect.
My experiences don't reflect yours, and using a 95 Neon as a reference point is just one of the biggest reasons why.
No, I was just trying to say that I don't let the Big 3 reliability woes off the hook due to Americans' habits of neglecting to do maintenance at proper intervals. Those cars that earned a lot of black dots in CR did so from top to bottom, from concept to final product there were deep flaws.
I quit paying attention to Consumer Reports when they wrote that the Toyota Corolla in 1987 was the best thing on the street, and the Chevrolet Nova was the absolute worst.
I still see these '87 Corollas from time to time on the road, but don't think I've ever seen a Nova on the road that I can remember.
CR is a jack of all trades outfit - they review and test cars and toasters, flea collars, adult diapers, even "As Seen On TV" stuff.
You want good recommendations for a canoe, you join a canoe club and talk to boaters. Ditto bikes, and you hit your LBS for pertinent advice. (lbs = local bike shop)
Car salespeople aren't so good usually (how many @roadburners do you know at your dealer?) so that's where the enthusiast forums come in. CR is just doing gross overviews - you can measure suspension travel but you'd have to ask an owner who tracks to learn whether the factory setup is decent for your needs or not. It's another tool, but I wouldn't rely on CRs recommendations without some other feedback. Learned that the hard way in '74 (fortunately resale a year later was okay since others relied on their gospel too).
Well, I researched toaster ovens pretty hard and waited about 3 months to find my Panasonic on sale. Best advice on it came from Fat Wallet of all places.
Comments
I remember Mr. Goodwrench ads back in the day. Maybe they backfired and made people think that their GM car would be in the shop all the time.
After all, the actual "agenda" of media is pretty simple. They dish out topics to a certain demographic that they want to attract and then, once they've attracted them, they "sell" those people to other corporations.
The media is "for" or "against" much of anything. As long as the demographic they want to attract keeps on coming, then they're going to keep on doing what they're doing.
If, suddenly, nobody's tuning into garage rip-off stories, then they'll switch to bad cosmetic surgery stories, or whatever.
Short answer: Don't take it personally. The media is not out to get out you. It all revolves around craven profit.
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
That's not to say I don't sympathize with some of the ways shops are treated. I think, for instance, that Yelp can be unduly harsh and needs some revisions.
Then there's the problem of some shops, car lots posting phony reviews. Those are usually easy to spot though.
My opinion is that most repair shops are pretty lame at handling social media.
RE: Owner negligence--this has pretty much been a tradition with American car owners since WW II, long before Mr. Goodwrench was even born.
I think that's starting to change a bit now. What with service reminders and dealer "specials" and all the rest, I think owners are doing a better job.
The 70s Bugs did need valve adjustments every 3,000 miles.
But, for whatever it's worth, there are ways for shop owner to use Yelp effectively:
1. Do NOT argue with the customer online or defend yourself in an aggressive manner.
2. Mention your shop's long record of customer satisfaction and invite the customer to contact you privately to resolve the issue. If the issue gets resolved, ask your customer to amend their original review.
3. If the customer is, in fact, a lunatic you don't want to deal with, then merely express your regret that they were not satisfied with your service and mention your 4 or 5 star rating
4. If, in fact, you have multiple bad reviews on Yelp, then your credibility is in question and you may indeed have a problem going on with customer relations or competency in your shop. Since old reviews generally drop off the page, you can fix the problem on Yelp.
I've often double checked Yelp reviews against what I know from years of experience are top notch repair shops, and guess what? They all score 5 stars and rave reviews.
Excellence IS rewarded. If your shop does excellent work and you are getting slammed on Yelp, then your public relations sucks.
I can tell you one of the stories from 1986 when a guy had an 84' Chevrolet Citation 2.5l that was randomly quitting on the highway. My testing routine was pretty straight forward, I had to first prove if it was losing spark, fuel, or both and I did that with a propane fuel rig that I invented.
When the car cut out, I turned the propane on and was able to adjust it and keep the engine running, so it was fuel and not spark.
The next thing I needed to know was why wasn't the engine getting any fuel. I had the fuel pressure gage connected and confirmed that I had not lost fuel pressure, so then I needed to confirm injector pulse.
I had pre-planned the testing to allow me to see if I was losing power or ground to the injector and it was the ground command from the PCM that was missing.
The last thing that I needed to know was if this was an ECM or input issue. The spark was commanded by the magnetic pick-up in the distributor but was only used for fuel during cranking. Once started the ECM used a second hall effect inside the distributor in order to fire the injector. I had spark which confirmed the one signal but not the other. Using my multimeter and measuring the signal voltage, I had 10v at the ECM, it should have been around 5v. (approx. half of the 10v square wave) I switched the meter to duty cycle and the hall effect signal input was 0%. By doing that I proved that the hall effect had dropped out this time and it was not a bad ECM which BTW was also quite common to find.
I did all of this knowing that we didn't get paid anything for diagnostics, it wasn't right but that's the way it was. The real fun started when the service manager called the guy with the estimate and he instead of authorizing the repair, started complaining first to the service manager, then to the owner and then to the Chevrolet zone office. He showed up at the shop about an hour later and with the owner and service manager standing there demanded to know how I knew that the sensor was the problem. So I explained my routine just like I have here and he still pressed on and wanted to know how I knew the hall effect sensor had failed. So I explained to him exactly how the circuit operated including how a hall effect transistor reacts to a magnetic field. In the presence of a magnetic field the sensor turns on and pulls the reference voltage from the PCM down creating the signal. In the absence of a magnetic field the sensor turns off and the voltage rises back up to the reference. To make the sensor switch there are vanes in the distributor that pass in between the magnet and the sensor as the distributor turns allowing and blocking that magnetic field to pass which results in the transistor turning on and off.
At this point he simply said fine, go ahead and replace but if that doesn't fix it I'm not paying for it.
Replacing the sensor required removing the top engine mount to roll the engine forward and that gave plenty of room to access the distributor and replace the part. It paid .6 hours to do the repair and remember we got nothing for the diagnostics. After the service manager and owner left he came back over to me and admitted that before I explained everything he was certain that he was being BS'ed. He told me that he fixed TV's and had no idea that his car had something like in it let alone that "some mechanic" would have any idea how it worked. It blew him away that I had such a grasp of the system being that I was "just a mechanic", but he was impressed by the fact that I knew as much as I did.
The real surprise came later that day when I saw my time ticket. To make him happy Chevrolet zone authorized the part to be replaced under a good will adjustment which meant he had to pay the labor and they paid for the part. Instead of .6 I got .3 and once logged that customers complaint remained with my service record.
If this was an aberration or at least a rare occurrence it could be shrugged off, but I can tell hundreds of stories just like this one. In many cases the complaints were only about trying to scam the system to get a cheaper price and the consumers who adopted that practice quite often accomplished just that and they did so usually at the technicians expense.
Fortunately, the shop went out of business soon thereafter as they were circling the drain for quite some time. I wonder how many people, customers, and creditors got cheated out of money by these scumbags.
I do find that the food reviews are much too generous with the star ratings. I generally deduct a star to get an idea.
I'm sure that Americans are cheap and skimp on maintenance, but I'm also sure that happens to foreign cars as well. I don't buy that there is any difference there. The difference in reliability lies in the greater threshold for abuse some foreign cars seem to have, I think mostly Japanese cars are good at handling abuse, you almost can't seem to kill some of them. Also, German cars are designed to handle the "abuse" of driving 150 MPH down the Autobahn for an hour or two straight, while American cars have definitely have lower design thresholds like drive 55 stay alive, and they tend to "hit the limp mode" way sooner at the track. I think some of that has been improved by USA brands in recent years outside of only the Corvette, but that has been my observation.
I do, however, credit a lot of my stellar reliability with Audi's and VW's to doing the proper maintenance.
I think it's easy for owners to "take it out" on the peasants though. I remember a tech doing his job on my car in a very frustrated kind of way, and thinking back, it may have been because the owner owed me some freebies for a part he damaged previously, and probably told his guy to just take care of it, even though it had nothing to do with him.
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
Anyway, I was talking about AMERICANS being flaky on maintenance, not American cars.
I didn't mean to call mechanics peasants as a derogatory thing. I just meant that in general I feel the higher-ups/owners tend to take advantage of the people at the bottom of the totem pole. That's what I've observed in every business. Of course, the best managers and owners refrain from doing that.
How is warranty/re-work treated in the business?
I know one reason I hate to pay for diagnosis is because if you get it wrong then we just wasted time and energy (and money) on whatever part you said to replace, that didn't really need replacing to fix the problem. I recall a situation where a shop said "100% it is the speed sensor." Funny, it wasn't the speed sensor, and yet they had no problem billing for that work. I'm sure after that experience he learned to never say 100% again.
They were the exact same car that GM was buying off of Toyota and rebadging. There is one of the biggest problems that the trade faces. Becoming a master technician should be the goal and a step away from the bays should be seen as a step down, not up. It makes no sense career wise to even try to be a top technician if one has to quit being a tech to be seen as successful. The classic approach is the tech does not get paid for work that has to be done over again, for any reason. There are some shop owners who have realized what they were doing to the talent and have been trying to change that. The reality is that none of this is simple whether we are talking about diagnostics, repairs or even communicating what needs to be done and why.
Goes for cars, of course, too. CR gave our '08 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS a review so bad that you kinda look around and go, are they talkin' about the same car? They are biased to certain brands, like Toyota and Honda, I've noticed. That was a good car, except for that one belt that broke prematurely. The car handled great, looked great, accelerated great and was not expensive to maintain. Yet do you think a person could get an unbiased review of the car from the American media?
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
Then I'll cut and paste your notes and publish a nice story or two in the media, and sit back and wait for the BMW and Buick invites to come in.
That's CR's claim to fame - unbiased reviews. That's still not the same as relying on the folks like @fintail or @roadburner who live with a brand for years, and know all the wrinkles and warts and good points.
Then I'll cut and paste your notes and publish a nice story or two in the media, and sit back and wait for the BMW and Buick invites to come in.
That's CR's claim to fame - unbiased reviews. That's still not the same as relying on the folks like @fintail or @roadburner who live with a brand for years, and know all the wrinkles and warts and good points.
And then you have to search out the member who likes the same brand you do. But places like Edmunds are invaluable for getting people's personal reviews on their favorites, indeed. Even then, I still make my own analysis of a brand. The car business carries a chaste system of affection, don't you know? One has to know what they like and research everything they can get their hands on. Then enjoy the test drive!
Kind of getting myself enthralled writing this up!
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
When researching our '08 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS, I spent hundreds of hours reading online about it. Surprise, the car rags never honestly reviewed the Japanese compact.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
"Any car problem can be fixed"
False, but a very small percentage of problems cannot be fixed. The problem is a complex part that is unavailable. For example was it here that someone posted about a Ford part, perhaps for the ABS, that no longer existed within 10 years, and they convinced Ford to manufacture more? That type of issue cannot be resolved except with a new part, but otherwise, any mechanical part can be replaced or jury-rigged, and any piece of corroded metal can be patched. But if an integrated circuit is required, and the Chinese don't supply it, the problem cannot be fixed. The associated system can never work again.
Note that I do not consider putting tape over the warning light as a "fix."
Edmunds Price Checker
Edmunds Lease Calculator
Did you get a good deal? Be sure to come back and share!
Edmunds Moderator
1) Reliability - true real-world widespread results; not anecdotal; huge sample sizes equalize everything.
2) Fuel Economy - Save the Planet
3) Safety - Save life and reduce Accidents
4) Comfort/Ergonomics
Frankly, the things you like about the Lancer GTS probably don't fit in the list above. CR has been hard on Honda/Acura lately. If you didn't know history you'd think Honda was a mediocre company at best (Reliability falling fast lately).
Also, they do publish the real-world measured results for fuel economy and acceleration, so you get specific numbers, rather than "accelerates great." What one person finds to be "great" another finds to be "poor," but 4.9 seconds from 0 to 60 will always be 4.9 seconds.
You're like my grandpa at age 98. He was still complaining about "those damn immigration people" that gave him a hard time in 1912.
Also, another thing to point out is CR doesn't let the manufacturer's plant them with a free "RINGER" to test and sample. Any manufacturer that doesn't given their media test cars extra quality control compared to the normal models is committing negligence in my mind. If the quality control is already superb a bit extra will make little difference, but if the quality control is lacking, a little extra will pay huge dividends. Law of diminishing returns.
I'm not sure anything is more important than randomly buying a car model the way the public would when giving an honest review of a vehicle.
You want good recommendations for a canoe, you join a canoe club and talk to boaters. Ditto bikes, and you hit your LBS for pertinent advice. (lbs = local bike shop)
Car salespeople aren't so good usually (how many @roadburners do you know at your dealer?) so that's where the enthusiast forums come in. CR is just doing gross overviews - you can measure suspension travel but you'd have to ask an owner who tracks to learn whether the factory setup is decent for your needs or not. It's another tool, but I wouldn't rely on CRs recommendations without some other feedback. Learned that the hard way in '74 (fortunately resale a year later was okay since others relied on their gospel too).