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01:07:56 - 12/20/2024
Dealer, TSB's and Recalls
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Dodge Dakota
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11/20/2004
01:39:31
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 Subject: did you know this?
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I don't know if many people actually know how the techs at the dealerships actually get paid but I think this is the place to explain. Maybe some of you have heard of "flat rate". This is how most techs are paid. A job such as a head gasket replacement is looked up in a labor time guide and quoted as 5.0hrs. The tech completes the job in 4.5hrs, he gets paid 5.0hrs of his hourly wage. Sounds pretty good huh? Not always. Warranty repairs are looked up in a labor time guide that is developed by the manufacturer, that head gasket job that paid 5.0 now pays 3.1hrs. And people wonder why the dealers say that there is nothing wrong with the car. The techs do not like working a 40hr week only to be paid 30hrs especially when they are required to supply their own tools which can reach into the tens of thousands of dollars. Why spend time trying to locate a troublesome electrical proble when you can find a profitable brake job that pays 1.0hr and takes .3hr. The bigger problem is safety, how safe do you feel now after you know that a rushed tech just rotated your tires? Did all the lug nuts get tightened? Will my front tire fall off on the freeway and cause me to lose control? Worse yet, consider the recalls that everyone reads or hears about, the manufacturer sets the times for these also. One recent one comes to mind for me. Some vans may start on fire due to a faulty power steering return line and it needs to be replaced. Well I took a look at how much time this job allowed in the warranty labor times book .3hr, barely sufficient. The safety recall pays .2hr to do the same job! So every tech that performs this recall has now lost six minutes of his life to make your car safer. HAHA! Do you really think they take more time, pay attention to the detailed instructions and perform this recall properly? Sorry-NO! When techs are confronted with unfair labor times, they usually figure out a way to shortcut them and most of the time these shortcuts end up making the vehicle less safe than it was before the recall. Car accidents are in the top five of the leading causes of death in all age brackets but yet this flat-rate rushed-repair practice keeps on going. More people are killed in cars on the way to the airport than in plane crashes. Are the techs that work on the planes on the flat-rate pay system? NO!! It is too bad that good techs have to take a pay cut to make sure that your car is safe rather than just rushing through it like is seems the manufacturer or dealer wants you to. Sorry for the rant, I just thought some of you may be interested.
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Tony
Dodge Dakota
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11/20/2004
02:58:54
|  RE: did you know this?
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Having worked in Firestone for a year - I can vouch for this.
All Firestone "techs" got payed by FLAG hours. (flat rate)
My bo$$ was a stickler for torquing the lugs on wheels, but
if anything, I'd worry about overtightened lugs! Those impact
guns can tighten them up to 240 ft./lbs.!
As a footnote to your story: If a car came back with a problem,
& it turns out to be the techs fault, you ate it! You didn't
get paid for the "re-work". If another tech fixes the problem,
your pay got docked the FLAG hours to do it. At $10/hr. - that
can hurt. The only reason I stayed so long is the "fringe"
benefits. =) Must've saved thousands of $$$ from all the work
I did on my car - and my wifes car - and my other family car's.
35% off on tires - even if they're on sale too!
With that, let me throw some figures at you off the top of my
head:
2-wheel align: 0.8 hr. (pickups, etc.)
4-wheel align: 1.6 hr. (rice burners & the like)
LOFR (Lube,Oil,Filter,Rotation): 0.8 hr.
Front Disk Brakes: 0.8 hr. (add 0.1 per rotor cut)
4 tires (incl. balance, valve stems, etc.) 0.6 hr.
oil change (with filter): 0.3 hr.
Also, I'd like to know where you got your info that techs
work 40 hrs.??? I wish !!! LOL. Lucky to see my wife & have a
day off. Most of my paycheck went to paying off my truck
accounts with SNAP-ON, MATCO, & CORNWELL. The average tech had
$6-8,000 worth of tools. NOT INCLUDING THE TOOL BOX OF COURSE !
Another few grand for that. No kidding. They take a beating,
though.
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JasonB
Dodge Dakota
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11/20/2004
15:15:41
| RE: did you know this?
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I read this post this morning at work, then had our top technicain read it as well. He and I talked about it and generally agreed that while the information provided is based on fact, it is not 100% true.
No one holds a gun to a technicians head and says "come in everyday and fix cars". No one (that I know of) hires a technician and tells him/her they get paid for every minute they are at work. Every technician in our shop has opportunities at independant repair shops and national chains. Yet, they choose to stay. Is it for the pay? Partially. Ask a technician why they prefer to work at a dealership. You will hear things like "better working conditions", "I don't have to work on 20 yr old vehicles", "insurance and retirement benefits" and "overall better average pay", among other responses. They have their choices, and if they are being screwed out of labor time, it appears it is their choice to do so.
BUT, they are not getting screwed. After honing skills and getting some experience with one automakers' vehicles, wouldn't it be logical to assume increased efficiency with that make of auto? Exactly, YES. Warranty labor times are not arbitrarily pulled out of a hat. These times are studied by timing a skilled technician performing these repairs. Time allowance is made for average diagnostic and repair time. These times are published in a warranty labor time guide and are reviewed and adjusted regularly. The only time a technician gets beat on time (on average) is when he/she is given a repair to complete, but does not have the training, skills, experience and/or tools/equipment to complete the repair. That's when a 2.0 hour warranty time job will take 3.0 actual hours. In our shop, technicians regularly complete repairs faster than warranty time. And they do it with high quality work, knowing that if it returns due to an improper repair, they get to work on it for free. Who wants to work on anything without appropriate pay? Right, nobody. Any intelligent technician knows that a proper repair the first time will make them money. Comebacks cost them money.
Recall times...hmmm. Ok, recall times often pay less than warranty jobs. There is a reason for this. Lets use the power steering hose recall described above. First, the recall procedure tells the technician exactly what to do. If it says to replace a power steering hose, they replace it. There is NO diagnostic or inspection time used. It pays a technician 12 minutes to replace the hose. Why do they not get paid less for this recall? Because DC chooses not to pay a tech less than 0.2 hour to do any job. It takes about 5 to 8 minutes when done properly. Most recalls do pay less than regular warranty time would have paid them, but they don't have to diagnose anything. They simply inspect and/or repair the vehicle as described in the recall procedure.
Flate rate customer payed tickets make everybody at the shop MORE money. This is correct. Technicians prefer to do them. That's no secret. On average, labor guides generally pay a technician 40% more time than warranty would have paid them. These times are figured based on the average technicians time that works in a shop that is not limited to one automakers vehicles. It would not be fair to use a different guide, if the guy down the street is charging the customer more time for the same repair. Labor guides (excluding warranty) are not designed with the dealership technician in mind, they are designed for the average technician, period. Dealerships use these guides for customer paying jobs in order to retain highly trained and qualified technicians. Why should a customer pay labor guide times instead of actual time. BECAUSE, not all technicians choose to work efficiently, not all technicians are experienced enough to complete a job quickly. These times protect the consumer from higher charges due to longer actual times involved. These time guides make it possible to make an estimate for a repair based on industry standards that are similar to the competition, instead of arbitrary numbers pulled out of a hat or actual time numbers which will vary for every technician.
Is a technician making too little? Nope. In this town, dealership technicians get paid, on average, five more dollars per hour than non-dealership technicians. Our technicians are averaging 40 to 50 shop hours per week...and business is down these days. When the shop is busy, many of them turn 60+ hours in a 45-50 hour work week.
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Trest
Dodge Dakota
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11/21/2004
17:41:23
| RE: did you know this?
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Warranty Administrator here, I pay the technicians =)
Techs dont turn down warranty work, sorry they dont. 90% of dealership work is warranty work. Sure Customer pay is always better by usually a 30% time margin. But warranty work is what pays the bills. So no no one turns down warranty work if we cant find it we cant fix it per Manf. Policy. Techs get bad reps because of silly theories like this.
And most Manfs pay better than the time it takes anyways. With the exception of kia =) I know for a fact that cadillac has prolly the highest warranty times and best turn over.
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