10 Tips For Dealing With Mechanics
Have you ever wondered what you can do to make your mechanic’s day better? Or how you can be the best customer they’ve had all month? The truth is, a lot of people have some bad habits when it comes to their mechanics, and while these habits certainly won’t affect the quality of the work performed, they will take a toll on the person doing it. If you want to be a favourite client, here are ten helpful tips to remember the next time you roll into a garage.
- Don’t hassle them constantly. That means, no calling every ten minutes to see if unit is done! Trust us, we are working as fast as we can, and we will call you when the job is done. We run a business, and we’re trying to move things along and bring in the next job, too, since that’s how we make our living.
- Don’t touch the tools. Those tools are ours, and you probably wouldn’t believe us if we told you how much they cost – especially the big ones that let us do the work we need to in order to fix your vehicles. We need them in good working order, and to be in the place where we expect to find them, if we’re going to be efficient and thorough with the job you want us to do.
- Don’t argue over the price. For continuity and ease of quoting, most of the work we do is at a flat rate – but sometimes it’s impossible to foresee every unknown and account for every factor, especially on large jobs. We do the best we can with our estimates, but they’re “estimates” for a reason. If you want it done right, you need to pay for the skills!
- Don’t follow the mechanics around while they work. Not only can this be dangerous for you, but it can be incredibly distracting for the person who’s trying to work. They can get uneasy, lose their train of thought, forget important numbers or codes, work less efficiently…and all of this can lead to missed diagnostics or subpar work. We know it is tempting when you’ve called us for roadside assistance, but let us do it right the first time and we’ll all be wrapping everything up sooner rather than later.
- Don’t do your own work – especially electrical! In big, complex machines, it may seem tempting to perform a DIY fix on a system – but in our experience, that always ends badly. There’s a reason our technicians are trained and skilled for just this kind of work: we know how to avoid causing even more problems when they’re fixing the original one, and we don’t inadvertently cause further damage. (Plus we can stay within the warranty!)
- Don’t supply your own parts: There are two reasons for this one. First, you get no warranty for third-party, questionably-sourced parts, so if the DIY fix your cousin performed doesn’t hold, you’ll be on the hook for more parts, more labour, and most likely an even bigger problem. Secondly, if you bring the part to us to install – and it’s the wrong size, shape, make, or fit – then it’s wasted your time and ours by tying up a repair bay. Leave the part sourcing to the experts.
- Don’t get mad over repair time. There’s a good chart to refer to when thinking about this: you can choose between low price, high quality, and short time, but you can’t choose all three. If we’re taking time to do a repair, it’s because we’re doing it right – not rushing it through. And we want to make sure that every vehicle driven off our property is going to work exactly as well as it should. So understand that quality work takes time to do well.
- Don’t tell mechanics how to do their job. These technicians have gotten their education in this work. They’ve invested thousands of hours of work and just as many dollars into it as a livelihood, and they are fully qualified to perform any diagnostics and repairs that they feel necessary. Of course, they’re only human, and everybody makes mistakes – but that’s how we all learn and become better. So let them do their job and they’ll leave yours up to you.
- Don’t tell a mechanic how great your last mechanic was in comparison. Why would you be here if the last guy was so great?
- Don’t leave out parts of the story. If you leave out important information, or only tell us half of the information we need to diagnose the problem properly, it is likely going to take longer to figure out and fix – as well as costing more in diagnostic fees and potentially labour.
We hope these help you the next time you’re anxious about how long your repairs will take or how much they’ll cost. Remember, we’re all trying to do the best we can, so with a bit of patience and understanding, we’ll have your vehicle back to you as soon as possible – in even better shape than you expected!