Going rate to replace drive belts?

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Originally Posted By: Vikas
Now we need to hear from bdcardinal who thought $225 was too low of a price for this job.


He asked what the going rate would be, and I gave the price at my work. Remember, I live in a regular neighborhood full of million dollar houses.
 
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I do not believe that OP paid $45 for 2.5 hour job. That implies that if the books says 2.5 hours, that is extremely extremely generous for this particular job.

There are legitimate reasons why the AUTO repair industry as a whole has bad rap. This particular example is quite illustrative of why that is the case.

Is somebody going to come back and claim that OP managed to find somebody who charges him $18 per hour as labor? Isn't it more likely the job ACTUALLY took less than 15 minute to complete?
 
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Originally Posted By: Vikas
I do not believe that OP paid $45 for 2.5 hour job. That implies that if the books says 2 hours, that is extremely extremely generous for this particular job.

There is a legitimate reasons why the repair industry as a whole has a bad rap. This particular example is quite illustrative of why that is the case.

Is somebody going to come back and claim that OP managed to find somebody who charges him $18 per hour as labor? Isn't it more likely the job ACTUALLY took less than 15 minute to complete?


My guide is showing 0.5 for each belt, so 1 hr. Probably a bit generous, but not completely unreasonable either.

Just because a tech is able to complete the job in less time due to his experience, does not mean he should be obligated to charge you less than the book time.
 
Originally Posted By: The Critic
Just because a tech is able to complete the job in less time due to his experience, does not mean he should be obligated to charge you less than the book time.


I understand both sides of the argument. At a place like Sears where the company supplies a lot of tools, it would make sense to charge less and the tech gets paid less. But at a real shop where techs have to buy everything except huge capital, the techs deserve to be paid properly.

Also it is a poor decision for a business to install customer supplied parts, they miss the opportunity for profit from a parts sale, and they open themselves up to liability of the supplied parts fail. In California a consumer cannot sign their rights away, especially when the form is from a "expert in their field" like a mechanic, electrician, or plumber. There are huge insurance implications for a shop to install customer supplied parts.

I used to work in a Mustang performance shop where we did install customer supplied parts, but we took the plates off of every car and told customers to have the cars towed home or leave after hours. Mostly everything we did majorly broke every EPA and CARB regulation as far as emissions. Cars were fun though
 
Originally Posted By: Vikas
I do not believe that OP paid $45 for 2.5 hour job. That implies that if the books says 2.5 hours, that is extremely extremely generous for this particular job.

There are legitimate reasons why the AUTO repair industry as a whole has bad rap. This particular example is quite illustrative of why that is the case.

Is somebody going to come back and claim that OP managed to find somebody who charges him $18 per hour as labor? Isn't it more likely the job ACTUALLY took less than 15 minute to complete?

Or he got the homey hook up. It does happen. Not everyone gets it, not everyone deserves it.
 
Originally Posted By: ls1mike
Or he got the homey hook up. It does happen. Not everyone gets it, not everyone deserves it.


Homey hookup is real, and can also be revoked. My friends know that I take care of them whenever they need something. Then I had one friend who would come in with part numbers and prices from Amazon and demand I beat them.
 
I have never opened the hood of the car that OP is driving, so I am in no position to know how long *should* it take. But the reality is that 15 minutes vs 2.5 hours are not within "reasonable" range of each other. If both the belts had auto-tensionesr, then it really would have been trivial to replace the belts. Needing to remove motor mount puts it in completely different category though.

For all we know, the shop might have charged OP lot less than the actual time it took for the mechanic as OP was a friend with the shop.

Whether shop should allow customer to bring their own parts or not is a whole different discussion. I see both sides of the argument.
 
Originally Posted By: Vikas
I have never opened the hood of the car that OP is driving, so I am in no position to know how long *should* it take. But the reality is that 15 minutes vs 2.5 hours are not within "reasonable" range of each other. If both the belts had auto-tensionesr, then it really would have been trivial to replace the belts. Needing to remove motor mount puts it in completely different category though.

For all we know, the shop might have charged OP lot less than the actual time it took for the mechanic as OP was a friend with the shop.

Whether shop should allow customer to bring their own parts or not is a whole different discussion. I see both sides of the argument.


You can have a job that is *supposed* to take 2 hours take 45 min on one day, and 3 hr on another. Those numbers are not even close to being in the same range either. And I know this is possible because I've done this particular job 4-5 times, and I've had it happen to me.

Point is, any particular job has its challenges. Depending on the individual vehicle, your luck, and who's doing it, it may take drastically longer (or shorter) than it is supposed to. I think that an individual vehicle owner should be charged a reasonable "average time" for the job, and usually the book time is the right number.
 
The thing is I am not buying your argument when the things *do* go wrong. When that happens, the customer gets the dreaded phone call for extra authorization.

There is NOT a single shop in the world, who will eat the extra time needed for a job which was previously quoted as X dollars aka Y hours. If the shop really needs 2Y hours, you *will* get that call.
 
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