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      02-28-2021, 08:27 PM   #13
FenixMike
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Drives: 2014 BMW M5 Competition
Join Date: Nov 2014
Location: Tulsa, OK

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Quote:
Originally Posted by 13M5F10 View Post
Most shops I've interacted with use book time to provide labor times / estimates. If they are able to complete it sooner than quoted, they charged the customer actual time which is an honest way of doing business and will create loyalty and customer satisfaction.

If you have a tech that's exceeding the estimated book time, it's on the shop to figure it whether the additional time spent on job is justified to pass through to the customer. If the tech is just slow, I don't see that as a qualified pass through and I hope the shop finds a way to train the tech or find someone else to do the job.

I feel in the end, it needs to be a balanced approach. With BMW, their quote times are almost always 50% higher than their actual time which I do not feel is well balanced nor close to actual.
As a previous shop owner, mechanic, etc, I dont know a single shop that would do that. The whole purpose of book time is to create a fair common rate for labor across the board. If a tech does it faster, you dont charge less, you pat the tech on the back for being more experienced. The majority of techs get paid by flag hour, meaning each hour of labor they flag pays them an hour of labor. Most decent techs will flag 10-12+ hours in an 8 hour day, which is beneficial in getting work done in a timely manor (while not paying for having to redo things, which prevents hacking jobs to get them done) and achieving a living wage. Its not about honesty, its the way shops work. If someone had come into my shop and told me "it only takes 3 hours to do that job, not the 6 youre trying to charge", id just say fine, go do it yourself then. If a tech is taking longer for a legitimate reason, generally the shop will compensate them, but they dont pass it on to the customer unless the reason is the vehicle or another issue causing the delay (rusted parts, broken bolts, aftermarket parts etc).

If you dont like what a shop charges, learn the task yourself and buy your own tools, but its insulting to tell a technician to do it for less when you aren't capable or interested in doing it yourself. By the way, BMW doesn't write the labor books, 3rd parties do, and they do so for all dealerships based on fair marketing practices. Its the length of time a common technician would take to do the work, not just a certified and trained BMW tech that does the same job multiple times per week. Again, paying the techs less takes away from the techs pocketbook.
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