Originally posted by LePaul
Will the software do the same as the dealer? Insist you have >insert leaking part/seal/etc< and *must* have it done? Turning a $29 service turn into a $1,200 one?
Friend went thru that with his Chevy truck. Went in for some sort of recall service, the tech comes out with 3 pages of things that "should be" fixed. He declines but asks for that list of "issues". Takes truck to his usual mechanic who informs him the tech was commission hunting. Do these guys have quotas or something?
Kinda sorta. 95% of dealership employees that you see are on commission. Even the oil change & lube techs are commission. The only people that are not are office clerical, warehouse, & maintenance staff. There are exceptions to the rule, but they're rare.
I'll go out on a limb here, and say you're more likely to get screwed during repairs than when you buy a new car. When you buy the car, you've got the salesman, their manager, the finance rep, and the GM who want to screw you. When you get a repair, you've got the service writer, service manager, mechanic, parts counterperson, and parts manager hoping your car is as broken as possible since they all get a piece of the pie to varying degrees. Also, they get paid more off of "customer pay" repair jobs than warranty repair jobs, at least with Toyota (others may not, but I doubt it).
Warranty work depends on the service manager & service writer. Some will warranty next to nothing (and make more $$), some will warranty damn near anything. It depends on their mood, how much they're gonna make that month, customer attitude, etc, etc.
edit: Rip, I see the car calling in a parts order as very beneficial to my business. People already don't show up for maintenance, even after they've come in and had the part ordered themselves. If the car calls in something beyond normal, heavily stocked maintenance part, it will serve as another method to build up a parts department's obsolesence. It's one of my family business niche markets, and I may just score a few points off of it
There's 2 problems with it though... there is no standard software for dealerships, there's 3 major brands (2 still based on old solaris systems & the same front ends for the last 5 years), and now dozens of small startups that just popped up in the last few years. Second, out of the 20k dealerships in the nation, there are still hundreds without any computers at all.
