Quote:
Originally Posted by Banshee
It is very difficult to get people in the door at a service station, oil change place or gas station with a garage mechanic.
What really pisses me off is when people tell me stories of getting raped by means of overpricing. To wit, my grandmother went in for brakes with her 1995 Chevy Lumina. She was charged $610 for brakes...NO parts other than brake pads, rotors and drums were replaced. She had 41k on the odometer at the time.
That is INSANE and totally wrong to take advantage of an 80 year old woman!
I priced out the best rotors, pads, shoes and drums without my jobber discount and came up with $240 in parts.
Another example was when I went in for an alignment for my 2002 Trans Am. Tire place said alignment couldn't be done because the tie rods were bad. So I humored myself with an estimate and to change 2 inner and 2 outer tie rods was $423. I went down the street to NAPA and priced out Moog and came up with $120 for the parts and took me 1.5 hours to change them out with a jack in my driveway. The $423 did not include an alignment.
What these places do is charge you the inflated price of the parts. You ever buy a part and on the reciept see your price and the "other price"? Example...I bought two gallons of ordinary blue windshield washer fluid, 2 for $3. Their "other price" was $7.98. Most, if not all repair franchises buy these parts at jobber cost which is 30% less than what you or I can get them for, then charge you that "other price" As another example, my inner tie rod I paid $36, other price was $68 and Belle Tire was charging me $77 for that SAME Moog part which likely cost them $25 in the first place.
Complete BS!
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I am a mechanic and yes we do mark up the very same parts you could go down and buy yourself. But we have bills to pay and if we only charged the customer exact cost for the parts our labor rate would be astronomical and people would complain about that. We try to be honest we will even bring customers into the shop and show them exactly what is wrong, why its wrong, and what we are going to do about it. But marking up parts is all part of business. How much do you think NAPA paid MOOG for those tie-rod ends you paid $36 for?