PouncingPanzer1
Go Kart Champion
- Location
- Cleveland/Amish Country
Absolutely! I am amazed at how little people know about how a technician makes money. If more did understand they would probably have a bit more respect and better understanding behind how a dealer shop operates.
I will use my dealer for an example as I know their labor rates. Or at least what they were 3 years ago. 1 hour of labor customer pay was $119.95. Regardless of job or the technician performing it. So, I made 17.50 an hour flat rate, so I saw roughly 14% of that hour in each paycheck. The rest of that $119.95 was divided into the service adviser commission for the sale, the service directors paycheck, and shop supplies and materials. So lets say VW didn't cover that imbecile's repairs. I most likely quoted as follows.
1 hour diag to cover moving(it didn't run) the car around, scanning it, filling out the multipoint sheet, and paperwork.
1 hour to remove wiper cowl, cut the cage, and replace the ECM itself.
1 hour to adapt the ECM(about 20 minutes actual) and cover the final test drive(another 20 minutes probably).
Did each of these task take the full hour, probably not. But that's where my paycheck and profit comes in. If I quoted 3 hours total, and completed it in 2. GREAT! That is the only situation flat rate is good. Just like you being hourly and making overtime, I would stay late or go in on my day off to complete a customer pay job that had a lot of hours sold on it. Only way I could get a paycheck I was happy with unfortunately. I never made less than 40, but I never cracked 70 either. Some weeks, you spent 45 hours total at the dealer and took home 60 hours because of good sales, or sometimes you took home 40 hours when you spent 60 hours there, situation where flat rate blows. There is a lot of potential profit in flat rate, but you are are the mercy of the customers willingness to spend money, or if they have a warranty or not. I loved MkVIs and MkVs, I knew they had no warranty on them. TBH the best customers EVER were Rabbit owners, the worst were Touareg owners.
So, situation where there is a warranty. My hourly rate of 17.50 remains the same, but I must quote the job using VW labor times that are based on time studies. These are found in Elsaweb, the dealership electronic source for manuals and just about any info on any VW ever sold here. (I miss being able to pull up anyone's ENTIRE manual on any PC anywhere) The moment it went warranty I had to re quote the job using VW labor times. So, my hour diag was gone, as VW pays diag based on the time you were connected with that scantool and test drives. VW would pay .10 hours(6 minutes) per test drive. If you didn't send the diagnostic log to their servers before discconecting the scantool, AND you cleared the faults. Congratulations, you aren't getting anything now and the dealer eats the parts. Without that diag log sent, VW will not pay 1 cent. ECM labor replacement was like .70-.80 for most cars so I lost .30 there. Plus the .20 for wiper arm Removal/install. The initial diag time I quoted for the shear inconvenience of the car not running, and having to do a run around with VW was 100% gone. Most of the time I made on the repair was from the scantool run time labor. I was hooked to the car for almost an hour and you get paid for scantool diagnosis. So as long as you save/send the log haha.
So, long description short, the technician IS NOT the one bending you over. He has a family to support, and has to fight for every single freaking labor op he can when it comes to warranty pay. Under warranty I considered breaking even a success story. So you see, customer pay is better because I dictate the labor. Giving me a better chance of being able to afford food for the week and parts for my car. Oh, and the best part about being a technician was the $24,000 on tools I spent during my time there, yea that part is usually what makes people go WhAAAAA??? haha. Hope this helped. SOrry I am not the best typer and being at work on break I didn't proof read. Anymore questions regarding this please feel free to ask me, I think it is important everyone here knows what happens in that bay with their technician, and the things he has to work with.
