[wannahonda]

Unfortunately the service department is the bread and butter money maker for the dealership and the techs are on "piece work". They get paid for doing more services and more repairs. The technicians get paid a set "book time" for each service performed. They try to do this work in half the time the book time allows so they can earn twice as many paid hours. The techs get mad when they "only" make 35 or 40 hours per week instead of 70 or 80+ hours per week. The service manager , the parts department and the general manager also make a bonus for more work charged to the customer and of course the owners encourage this as they get rich from it.

Where I used to work the owner would get really mad when customers would only go in for warranty work on their new cars and take maintenance and non warranty repairs to a less expsensive shop, as they only get half the rate from the car manufacturers for warranty pay work vs what a customer would pay out of pocket for a non warranty service or repair.

There are places that even fake warranty repairs and make uneeded repairs to customers cars just to charge it back to the manufacturer. Although they do get caught doing this as they have to keep all the old supposed defective warrantied parts for inspection and when the manufacturer sees they are having an unusual number of warrantly claims that other dealerships are not claiming it raises a flag. Of course they totally inconvenience their customers by keeping their cars in the shop for repairs that are not needed just to make money for themselves. It can be very crooked out there.

 

[wannahonda]

I also wanted to add that when I was doing some work associated to a toyota dealership, I came to know that Toyota headquarters took complaints about dealership practices very seriously. You may try Honda headquarters if you do not get any satisfaction at the dealer level. Not sure how Honda handles dealership complaints

 

[wannahonda]

I am now curious as why you had the car in the dealership service department to begin with? Were you there for an oil change special they were having which included a free multi point inspection?

 

[wannahonda]

Just bought the car for my daughter as a first car. It had some front end noises along w/ an airbag light on. I took it in for an standard oil change and paid for diagnostic fees for the SRS light ($99) and suspension noises ($49). They ended up doing a multi-point inspection along w/ my requests. I have a thread on here where they gave me an estimate of over $8,000 for repairs.

$8000 in repairs, is alot of repairs for a car that was driven into the shop and not towed in....

I have had engines replaced for less than that

 

[wannahonda]

Indeed. Here's my thread w/ the breakdown. New owner of 2005 Element - Got dealer quote for over...

So far, loving this community in comparison to some other manufacturer related forums that I'm on. Great input from some intelligent minds.

Yes this is by far the best car forum I have ever been on in decades. Actually its the only one that I thought was really good.

 

[wannahonda]

Wait a minute, so this filter wasn't changed by the dealership? They just quoted that they wanted $50 for parts and labour to change it? If you declined the service, you were smart to do so, a filter can be bought pretty cheap and of course its an easy to do service at home. Its not 60 seconds but its not 20 minutes either. I did break one of my bolts the first time I changed the filter because it was rusty. The other bolts I took the time to clean the threads and oil them before putting it all back together with a new filter installed

 

[wannahonda]

The car industry is brutal. If you think working in the service department is bad, then you definitely do not want to work in the bodyshop side of the business. Here, where I am the hourly rate is half of the service department rate. The people in service scratch their heads and can't believe how low the bodyshop rate is. The work is even harder and much dirtier and can be more complex as the cars are mangled and all kinds of bits and pieces are often missing after the car is towed in. The insurance companies are practically dictating the repair shops on everything to their own economic advantage

It's a mess for anyone new coming into either service or bodywork. Often as an apprentice no one will help you even though you are there and getting paid an hourly to learn as an apprentice. You are a threat as you are young and have the energy and enthusiasm and are working for a lower pay too. And since you do not have the knowledge or experience yet to do the hard jobs as a young mechanic you will be given the easier jobs that all the techs want and they are going to resent that.

And for an experienced tech why should you take your time and slow down your own productivity to teach someone new in the business and help them to take your job, what is in it for you that is beneficial? You will get stuck doing all the harder jobs and make less money.

The system is totally screwed up. It is for making the owners big money and they have their headaches too. I literally had one owner tell me sometimes he wishes he could go back to just washing cars! It was so much stress and headache. Long gone are the days when you would set up a dealership and almost never renovate it before retiring. In the last couple of decades, regardless of what brand / marque it was, there was orders coming from headquarters to either renovate top to bottom or build these completely new fancy dealerships at the owners expense. It costs millions! I saw one luxury brand dealership that got renovated three times in just a few years as the brand image changed as ordered by headquarters. But in the end the customer has to pay for all these costs one way or another.

The service advisors dont always have it so easy either, I have heard many techs tell me they are so glad they dont have to be out there in front of the customers and deal with all the complaining when the customer is being overcharged or the car has been there for a long time and still cannot be fixed. And the service advisors up here in Canada have to sit in those drive throughs in the winter time and I have seen many of them get sick repeatedly in the winter as it is freezing in that drive through in the winter when car after car is lined up coming in and that service bay door almost never closes.

The middle managers arent sitting back with their feet up on their desks either. I have never met one who wasnt severely chronically stressed every single day. One guy worked so hard he had a heart attack. The service department was never the same after he died. No one who came in afterwards could fill his shoes and the place went down financially.