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Stuff like this is probably never going to go away.
Historically, this stereotype has a historical basis. How did auto mechanics get such a bad reputation? Why not carpenters or electricians or appliance repair people? THEY are called "tradesmen" or "handymen" or "craftsmen". They are rarely called thieves.
I think this problem goes back to just after WW II. With a scarcity of new cars available, both the used car business and the car repair business were absolutely BOOMING. And, as a consequence, anybody, and I mean anybody, looking for a way to make a quick buck jumped into this trade. You had ex-cons, street gangsters or grossly incompetent men who didn't want to do menial labor. So they hung out the "auto repair" shingle. There was no licensing, no test to take, no apprenticeship. The customers were like flocks of sheep, waiting to be sheared.
And it's been an uphill battle ever since.
I think it's getting better but ethics standards still need to go higher, and training certifications need to be ramped up considerably.
I think media like YouTube has helped actually, even though it sometimes conveys bad information. At least you get to meet interesting and generous auto technicians who are trying to help you, not cheat you.
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport; 2020 C43; 2021 Sahara 4xe 1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica Wife's: 2015 X1 xDrive28i Son's: 2009 328i; 2018 330i xDrive
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport; 2020 C43; 2021 Sahara 4xe 1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica Wife's: 2015 X1 xDrive28i Son's: 2009 328i; 2018 330i xDrive
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport; 2020 C43; 2021 Sahara 4xe 1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica Wife's: 2015 X1 xDrive28i Son's: 2009 328i; 2018 330i xDrive
These code readers make great revenue machines for auto parts stores, especially since more often than not the wrong parts are replaced.
https://www.bar.ca.gov/pdf/MARDA_Approved_Final_Regulatory_Text.pdf
The BAR did a sting operation and found the parts stores pushing parts off of the free code pulls without doing any testing to see why exactly the system generated a code. The other issue that occurred at the same time was guys who hung out in the parking lots that would replaced parts for the parts store customers who were effectively running businesses without the appropriate licensing.
The Indie shops do a better job in that regard.
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport; 2020 C43; 2021 Sahara 4xe 1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica Wife's: 2015 X1 xDrive28i Son's: 2009 328i; 2018 330i xDrive
He mentioned an interesting aspect of how Ducati trains their mechanics. I'm not sure exactly WHY Ducati does this thing that I'm about to describe, but they do.
One day, while on a 3-day training class at company HQ, the instructor presented the students with a black box, into which they inserted their hands. They could not see inside the box. The instructor covered the box with a blanket and then inserted parts into the box, and the technician had to identify them without looking.
Interesting? I thought so.
Anyway, this guy said that it is virtually impossible for the dealer to find qualified people anymore. Ducatis are, as you know, pretty precise and temperamental machines, so you do have to know what you're doing.
The hiring businesses have to drive this. Technicians are not going to appear out of thin air. My motorsports dealer experience matches closely with car dealers in that they just want to move inventory, including motorcycles and weed whackers of all things.
I love the Ducati box test. The old adage "I could do this with my eyes closed" has a great deal of meaning for troubleshooters.
Regarding Ducati bike complexity, I will not dispute that aspect, however many Ducati bike repairs consist of disassembling significant assemblies because the maker never considers that someone may actually repair the vehicle someday. "Excessive labor" is different from "complexity". Just sayin'...Ducati also creates the necessity for a lot of wholesale replacements, and very expensive ones at that. Replace computer $2000. Replace X, $700, etc. No need to build electrical components that can actually withstand the weather and vibration, just charge for a new object. You may never replace an ECU or such on a Universal Japanese Motorcycle, but the Italian model does not believe in robust standards that many others have agreed upon. More weird and unnecessary problems does not necessarily equal "complexity."
I thought about buying a few for those cases when I'm dealing with a marred bolt head that doesn't want to play nice with a wrench or socket, but they just came across as gimmicky to me.
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport; 2020 C43; 2021 Sahara 4xe 1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica Wife's: 2015 X1 xDrive28i Son's: 2009 328i; 2018 330i xDrive
My current level of tech is excellent side view mirrors, bright reversing lights, great sun glasses, heated seats, and a cell phone plugged into an AUX outlet.
I'm good.
Shortage of qualified mechanics doesn't help.
My local shop used to have four mechanics, and the boss did mostly administrative work and trouble shooting.
Now, he is down to two mechanics, plus he wrenches full time.
He says he can't find help. But, he has only raised his labor prices by $5/hr in the last six years. (only at $75/hr, now). I think if he would charge closer to market rates, he could pay more, and probably find someone.
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Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport; 2020 C43; 2021 Sahara 4xe 1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica Wife's: 2015 X1 xDrive28i Son's: 2009 328i; 2018 330i xDrive
From Automotive News.
https://www.autonews.com/article/20181217/RETAIL05/181219910/survey-suggests-deep-job-dissatisfaction-discontent-with-flat-rate-pay
Job dissatisfaction is extremely high among service technicians at new-vehicle dealerships, a survey indicates, with one-fourth of techs saying they expect to leave their jobs in the next few years. Amid a growing industrywide technician shortage, the discontent measured in the survey by consulting firm Carlisle & Co. suggests
further difficulties for franchised dealers in their efforts to hire and retain talented techs.
Averaging out
The average service technician at a franchised new-vehicle dealership in the U.S. or Canada
Is 40 years old
Has been a tech for about 20 years
Earns nearly $61,000 a year
Works 49 hours a week in the U.S. (43 in Canada)
Source: 2018 Technician Survey, Carlisle & Co.
Carlisle, of Concord, Mass., worked with 28 auto brands to survey techs at their U.S. and Canadian dealerships in July. About 35,000 techs responded, nearly twice as many as the roughly 20,000 techs who took part in Carlisle's last survey two years ago. The National Automobile Dealers Association estimates there are 267,000 service technicians at U.S. dealerships.
Among techs' biggest complaints in the survey were flat-rate pay plans and poor communication with service advisers at their dealerships. Key findings of Carlisle's fifth poll of dealership techs include:
The percentage of service technicians who say they wouldn't recommend their job to a friend exceeds the share who say they would by a staggering 52 percentage points, two points worse than the previous survey.
"I have never seen any score that low," says Harry Hollenberg, a Carlisle partner who oversaw the survey. "Nobody else is in the ballpark."
Hollenberg notes that even companies that are unpopular among consumers, such as Wells Fargo, Sears and Spectrum, have so-called net promoter scores that are far higher than the overall score reflecting dealership techs' attitudes toward their jobs. That degree of dissatisfaction suggests that today's technicians are unlikely to help dealerships recruit the next generation of techs, he says.
Lower satisfaction
Fewer than half of dealership techs expressed high satisfaction with any of these aspects of their job:
Technical training 42%
Field technical support 38%
Online/phone technical support 34%
Access to service information 32%
Special tools and equipment 30%
Workshop technology 27%
Diagnostic equipment 25%
Pay plan 21%
Source: 2018 Technician Survey, Carlisle & Co
Just one in four technicians expresses high overall satisfaction with the job — far below the satisfaction levels of service managers (57 percent), parts managers (44 percent) and service advisers (42 percent). The tech satisfaction rate has dropped 3 points since the last survey, and fewer than half of techs say their job has improved over the past year.
About one-fourth of techs say they don't expect to stay with the brands sold by their dealerships beyond the next two to three years. These techs generally don't plan to work for a dealership of a competing make, the survey suggests; instead, they expect to retire, change industries or work for an independent repair shop.
Flattened
Nearly three-fourths of U.S. techs say they are covered by flat-rate pay plans, even though such plans are widely unpopular among techs.
Type of pay plan % of U.S. techs
Flat rate 73
Guaranteed hours plus flat rate 7
Hourly 7
Hourly plus production bonus 7
Salaried 4
Team-based 1
Other 3
Total does not add up to 100% because of rounding.
Source: 2018 Technician Survey, Carlisle & Co.
The main reason techs in the survey say they plan to leave their job is money. The key reason they plan to stay is their working environment: having a clear career path, feeling supported and recognized by their bosses and liking their co-workers.
Nearly three-fourths of U.S. technicians say they work under some form of flat-rate pay plan, although such plans represent a major source of job dissatisfaction and reason for quitting among techs in the survey.
Technicians who draw salaries tend to be the oldest and to focus on high-skill diagnostic work and express the highest job satisfaction. Techs paid by the hour are youngest and heavily concentrated in lower-skill express service and quick lube work.
Flat-rate techs are between these two groups in age and the skill level of their work and have the lowest job satisfaction. According to the survey, flat-rate technicians are more satisfied and make more money the higher their ratio of hours earned to hours actually worked.
Techs' relationship with service advisers has a "dramatic" effect on their plans to stay on the job, their job satisfaction and their willingness to recommend their job to a friend, Hollenberg says.
The most experienced techs express the greatest dissatisfaction with advisers on such matters as writing inaccurate or incomplete repair orders or giving service customers unrealistic promise times.
Four-day workweeks for techs are growing in popularity as a retention tool, the survey finds, especially among Asian brands. Hollenberg says he's unaware of any corporate strategy among Asian automakers to promote four-day workweeks at their dealerships.
Other key areas of dissatisfaction expressed by techs include the way jobs are dispatched (although most techs feel that automated dispatch systems are fairer, techs whose jobs are assigned by a foreman or team leader have a higher ratio of hours paid to hours worked); poor tool storage at their dealership, which delays their work; lack of technical support from automakers (some automakers take calls only from foremen or have long wait times and onerous paperwork requirements); lack of easily accessible service information online (the same part can have different names for different brands) and a lack of reliable special tools or diagnostic equipment at their dealership
Carlisle is working with some automakers that sponsored the survey to identify and disseminate best practices among their dealerships to improve tech recruitment and retention.
Hollenberg says these practices include better recruiting software and management training; he notes that a dealership service manager is often a former tech who was promoted but not adequately trained to supervise other employees.
Hollenberg says other areas that need greater focus are communicating the benefits of a tech career to middle and high school students, recruiting tech candidates from underserved populations, improving digital information and support for people considering careers as technicians, expanding tech mentorship and apprentice
programs and developing clearer career paths for techs.
Although the survey breaks down technicians' attitudes and other data by the brands they work for, Carlisle's agreement with its automaker partners requires it to keep that information confidential, Hollenberg says
There are two more articles this month about the shortage of qualified technicians. One of them is a follow-up of the Chicago Union Technicians strike from last year. By the looks of things, they will be walking off the job again.
However, the study certainly lays out the issues and doesn't mince words in doing so. If the industry cannot fix some of its ails as a result of this, then it is certainly broken in an unrecoverable way.
Flat rate is a lie, because the rates aren't flat.
Back when flat rate first became the norm auto manufacturers performed time studies to measure how long it really took a qualified technician to perform a given task. They quit doing that almost twenty years ago. The warranty flat rate labor times are calculations based on how long it takes to put things together on the assembly line and have no real world correlation to what it really takes to do the work. Assign a tech to do a customer pay job that pays an hour and turn him or her loose to get it done and they get that flat wage of one hour. If they get the job done in six tenths of an hour they make a bonus. If they take 1.4 hours to do that job then they lose. Now make it warranty and it pays .6 hours and now that win/lose scale resets to having to do the job in .4 hours to make a bonus and .8 hours is a loser.
What the higher ups fail to comprehend is the higher the techs labor wage goes, the greater the insult when a repair pays less. Some might counter with "yeah but they would make more with the customer pay work that they do" except that the majority of that work is being done by low wage hourly employees, while the seasoned technicians see primarily warranty work.
And let's say you read this report, found it credible and alarming. What would you do about it?
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '08 Charger R/T Daytona; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '08 Maser QP; '11 Mini Cooper S
However----At $135/hour shop time where I live, I can afford a couple of guesses....but they should be educated guesses.
Go ahead and start guessing.
The fix?
Sell it.
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport; 2020 C43; 2021 Sahara 4xe 1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica Wife's: 2015 X1 xDrive28i Son's: 2009 328i; 2018 330i xDrive
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '08 Charger R/T Daytona; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '08 Maser QP; '11 Mini Cooper S
I was asked what it would take to fix the technician shortage and had already mentioned that money alone isn't going to be enough. FWIW the pre-crash avoidance system is also affected by the probem with this car. It would work but way too late to have helped the driver. So just not using the cruise still leaves that issue and the owner wouldn't be aware of that until it would be too late. Can you picture the lawyers lining up to try to take advantage of the situation?
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '08 Charger R/T Daytona; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '08 Maser QP; '11 Mini Cooper S
I guess what I"m saying is that Doc is only cherry-picking one portion of the "Chain of Disaster" that can occur with modern cars: The factory doesn't do it's R&D, the technicians have to try and solve it in the field, and if they can't, the owner files for a Lemon Law case, or eats the whole enchilada and sells the vehicle.
I suppose if I were stuck with a Trailblazer and had this problem out of warranty, I'd either bite the bullet and let the dealer or a repair shop have a go at it, just not use the cruise control, sell the vehicle (in the case of the TB, I'd have other reasons to sell it besides the cruise control), or I might take a stab at it by reading through the 60+ TSBs on the car, getting a schematic of how this particular system works, and then applying Occam's razor.