Cutting back on training is like treating a headache by shooting yourself in the foot.
There isn’t a dealership in the United States today that doesn’t have serious problems finding and keeping competent technicians. Yet training budgets rarely seem adequate to address that need. Cutting training budgets is just another shortsighted approach that, in the end, causes more problems than it solves.
These actions do not exist in a vacuum. When you cut any one of them, it affects all of the others. And every one of them hurts the consumer.
Cutting People
Regrettably, this is one of the easiest ways for management to improve the bottom line: cut people, eliminating their salaries. Unfortunately, having fewer competent salespeople and technicians just aggravates the problems that led to the dealer’s financial trouble in the first place. It addresses only the immediate symptom-lack of money-instead of solving the underlying reasons why there is no money. Continue reading Chapter 6: Manufacturer-Dealership Relationship (page-16)
The clueless technician, honest or not, may flag two full days for the diagnosis, plus the cost of any additional parts that he swapped. There is very little incentive for the shop owner to intervene unless the customer complains. And there is very little likelihood of that, because the customer has no idea that the two-day job should have taken only half an hour.
Intermittent Problems
Many electrical and drivability problems on today’s automobiles are intermittent. Not all technicians can troubleshoot problems accurately. Of those, only a portion can troubleshoot intermittent and more difficult problems. The technicians may guess and swap parts until the problems are solved or the consumer runs out of money. Continue reading Chapter 6: Manufacturer-Dealership Relationship (page-15)
It is a rare exception to find a dealership giving a raise to the technician with the highest customer satisfaction.
After-Warranty Repair Times
The problems with the flat-rate pay system do not end when the warranty expires and the manufacturer no longer dictates the amount of time for each repair. Dealers create and use their own aftermarket flat-rate manuals for after-warranty repairs. These manuals usually multiply the manufacturer’s warranty time standards by 1.5. For instance, a technician changing a part might flag 1.1 hours under warranty, but flags 1.7 hours after the warranty has expired. Continue reading Chapter 6: Manufacturer-Dealership Relationship (page-14)
An unpleasant consequence of part-swapping occurs when the problem shows up a second time. Many manufacturers will refuse to reimburse a dealership for repeated warranty repairs for the same complaint, citing inefficiency on the first attempt. For example, suppose a vehicle’s engine runs rough. The technician replaces the spark plugs, but the car comes back with the same complaint. If the dealership wrote it up on the repair order as the same complaint, then the manufacturer would assume correctly that the dealer hadn’t done a proper repair the first time. The manufacturer would reject the warranty claim, and the dealership would not be paid for the repair.
To avoid this, it is in the best interest of both the dealership and the technician to find something different to blame so that they can make it look like a different repair and get the manufacturer to pay for it. They certainly aren’t going to admit that they made a mistake the first time. Instead, this time the repair order may say that the engine hesitates and surges. Continue reading Chapter 6: Manufacturer-Dealership Relationship (page-13)
If you work as a technician for an auto dealer, the time you spend making repairs bears little or no relationship to the time for which you are paid. Sometimes you can spend forty hours at the shop, but if you didn’t flag enough time, you are paid for only twenty. Other times you can spend forty hours but get paid for as much as a hundred.
There’s nothing wrong with incentives unless the reward is achieved by shoddy work.
The dealership effectively makes a portion of what the technician flags, so it, too, is interested in having the technician flag as many hours per day as possible. There is little motivation to be honest, and quite a bit of motivation to rip off the consumers. Continue reading Chapter 6: Manufacturer-Dealership Relationship (page-12)
If you work as a technician for an auto dealer, the time you spend making repairs bears little or no relationship to the time for which you are paid. Sometimes you can spend forty hours at the shop, but if you didn’t flag enough time, you are paid for only twenty. Other times you can spend forty hours but get paid for as much as a hundred.
Under any flat-rate pay system, the technician’s entire focus is on getting the repair completed faster than the assigned time.
The manufacturer’s assignment of these times is a serious bone of contention for dealerships and technicians alike.
The manufacturer wants the flat rates to be as low as possible. This is particularly true where there is a potential recall. Ford, for example, has lowered flat rates when it needed to improve its bottom line.3
Recent Comments