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Diagnosis & Repair
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Price ShoppingWe try to make our prices fair and competitive, but price isn't everything. In fact it's only half of what makes for true value.Everyone has to make a living, and we charge about the same as other shops. Whether it's a small independent or a large chain or dealership, we all juggle parts mark up, labor rates, specials and package pricing in some way in order to stay in business. Parts Prices. Repair shops have to make a profit on the parts to stay in business, that is normal in this industry. CarScope used to mark up parts about the same as everyone else but now we only charge you our cost for the parts and make that profit on the labor side. Labor Rates. The labor rate should not be a major consideration when choosing a shop because you can't really tell by looking at the labor rate who is going to be the least expensive overall or who will take the best care of you. Even if a labor rate is lower, the shop might charge more hours than the one with the higher rate or might charge more for the parts or do some work that isn't needed at all, etc., etc.. Price Comparisons. Price shopping works for buying a TV set - comparing the same brand set at different stores, you know which is the better buy. But when it comes to service work, what may appear to be a simple comparison can be more complicated than it looks. We wrote a brochure about it years ago, we called it "Lowballs" . It gives the details, but the main points are below:
The "blah blah blah" on Labor RatesIn case you haven't gotten bored yet, here's some more info about our pricing structure and why we think it is better for both you and us. We no longer use a conventional labor rate. We figure our parts profit into the labor so we can give you the parts at our cost. This works very well with our membership plan that can really help your budget. Because of this method you can't really compare our labor rate with someone else's, you have to compare the total cost of the job. But, like we said above, comparing labor rates or even "total job" prices isn't really a good way to find the best value anyway, there are so many other factors that are more important. Why use an unconventional pricing structure?Parts profit is a significant and needed part of every repair shop’s income, so parts mark up has to be very high. Most of the national chains, if not all of them, do not do major work or difficult diagnoses because in many different ways these types of jobs are not as profitable. One significant way doing smaller jobs lets you make more profit is that you are installing more parts per hour that your techs are working so the shop gets to enjoy the high parts profit on the higher volume of parts you sell. We want to be able to serve you and help you no matter what problem your vehicles have, so we continue to do major work and in depth diagnoses and have worked out this pricing method that puts the needed parts profit on the labor side so we only charge you our cost for the parts. This does a few things: it saves you on sales tax (there is no tax on labor) and it allows us to make the needed profit on larger jobs (that are normally less profitable) and at the same time saves you money on the more common smaller and medium sized repairs. We've created this system so that it costs you about the same overall, and when worked in conjunction with our Repair Membership can be a real help to your budget! Still less expensiveWe thought this new method would make us a lot more than other shops on the larger jobs that have few parts and a lot of labor. But when a new customer calls us doing some price shopping, we often ask them what the other shop prices are, and they tell us we are still less even on these types of jobs!. Honestly, I am shocked. We should be more on these jobs, and A LOT less on smaller jobs with expensive parts. We don't play the loss leader game as much as other shops so sometimes our maintenance prices are higher, so maybe they mark up the larger jobs to make up for what they lose on maintenance and other typical loss leaders, I don't know. For whatever reason, I feel real good about our prices as well as the other important ways we care for you and your car. MaintenanceSpeaking of which, this is an area where you need to trust the shop even more than repairs because with preventative maintenance you often cannot tell if the work was done or not, and from what I've read and heard from other techs that have worked in a lot of places- sometimes the work is NOT done. We don't try to be the cheapest on maintenance costs, even though a lot of price wars are fought in this service area. The work needs to be done carefully and correctly since critical fluids are often involved. So we don't skimp or rush and we charge a fair price for what the time it takes warrants. ConclusionWe see (and sometimes clean up after) a good many sad repair situations arising from poor communication and/or incompetence from other shops and a fair number of them arise from people leaning too heavily on price. You usually only get what you pay for and sometimes you don't even get that, so I can't emphasize enough: even though our prices are competitive, the price is not the most important "value factor" in choosing a repair shop. Dyrell Hicks- General Manager |
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Located
off of Cedar Road in Great Bridge.