Originally Posted by
Theiceman
Ive never heard such a spewing of ridiculous Bullshit in my entire life.. okay thats a bit strong .. i disagree...
I have been a service manager for over 20 years now and i can tell you it comes down to the individual more than anything else. I can tell you statistically speaking you will have a higher level of service than anywhere else and has NOTHING to do with the " authority" or whatever that means.
Bigger companies have requirements for training , certification , mentoring, and standard work ( Look that up ) . These are all auditable and checked routinely. They also often have specific measures and metrics around customer satisfaction and customer recalls. Often the company dealership and employees are IC'ed together on these metrics and work together towards a common goal .
Are you proud of where you work and what you do every day ? vast majority are in the work force, so why do you assume car techs would be any different and want to do the minimum possible. That is a prejudicial approach with confirmation Bias ... " i checked and found a screw missing so all techs are underpaid and cut corners"
A lot of what i am talking about here comes down to employee engagement and yes there are underperformers in any organization and disengaged employees, it happens, and you may have had some bad experiences.
So even if you factor that in .. i think most would take that with the knowledge of that tech seeing this problem many times before and has the experience of how to do it and how to do it right , vs some nube poking around with a screwdriver taking all kinds of stuff apart that the book says he is supposed to and breaking it and costing himself money to fix. Thats what experience is all about.
I have watched napster a few times and i think he is very good .. and his experience shines through " i dont put it into service position at all if i dont have to . i dont want to be any where around the paint and pulling the front end off where damage can happen to the body and paint so easily .. " i think thats the voice of experience. not cutting corners.
I think if you reread what I wrote objectively, we are pretty much saying the same thing. It is absolutely about the individual. The corporatism that creeps in to hurt the individual tech that cares is warranty work that tends to incentivize the tech to work fast, over well. Look at what I said in context of what I was responding to. I have no doubt there are excellent service departments, but there are also bad ones. As far as standard work or audits, you can't inspect quality into something. Standard work is good for your basic training, but it removes creativity and ingenuity out. How many techs get penalized for having a superior process than the standard one during audit? That kind of stuff happens in manufacturing a lot. Bureaucracy is for biped robots, but it is antithetical to progress. The maverick is great for progress, but lacks consistency. There is a balance.
I won't even go into all of the bad experiences I have had in the automotive and motorcycle world, but just this one car with Audi, all of the screws were stripped on the PCV valve when they "repaired" my oil consumption issue. Not kind of stripped, but all of the screws were completely stripped... it spewed oil everywhere. I took it back and they only helicoiled the outside border screws and cleaned up none of the mess. That kind of thing isn't indicative of a mistake. The engine rebuild there are so many things that were missing, hoses ziptied and routed incorrectly, all the fittings on coils broken and two pulled out of harness, just basic things like the dzus fasteners for splash pan were missing, and all the ones that tied into the fender on both sides. People that care don't do stuff like that. And as the owner you don't find out about it until later.
Now someone like naptown tuner is a known. He is transparent. Same could be said for anyone you are buying a car from that knows its history, you can tell if they have integrity if you know a bit yourself. I wasn't even allowed to talk to the tech at Audi dealership at any point in the several times I was there for various issues despite requesting to. Instead I had to deal with the non-technical service adviser several times. The whole setup is made for consumer cows that don't know anything about the thing with wheels they use to get around. If someone has access to a good service department, great. How did they learn it was great? How did they evaluate it? Most people say its great or terrible based on how they felt or how much something cost relative to what they think it should cost, with zero correspondence to functional competencies or the actual value received for cost. They don't even know what they paid for, how could they evaluate it?
I would much rather fix something that will take me a few hrs myself, than deal with hassle of scheduling appt, driving to dealer, waiting or taking loaner and then come back, even if they do it right. But add in the unknown, and well its clear for me. If I mess it up, I know who to blame. And I learn from it. When the dealer messes it up, the only thing one can blame is the dealer. And there is little to no confidence that there will be any lesson to prevent it from reoccurring to others, because they just deny. You got to have skin the game. And the larger the organization, the less skin in the game individuals have.
At any rate, I wasn't trying to rag on dealers, I was trying to say there is an illusion of confidence aspect. Dealer repaired vs billy bob's all makes repaired? Dealer hands down. Faceless Dealer vs known competent Indy? I will take the known Indy, which was the intent of my post.
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