Jeep Gladiator Driver Voids Warranty For Driving In The Mud

[TheRobSJ]

But fundamentally, not being in the business, but outside as a layman, I've always liked the idea of SRT.

Simply because if you're paid the SRT rate, then a novice technician, in theory, would take more time on the job, and thus get paid less. An experienced technician would take less time and thus get paid more. Ideally, the experienced tech gets paid more because they can do more work in the day than a novice tech, and, again ideally, it all works out in the end.


So, anyway, on paper it sounds like a good idea to fairly pay technicians, to try to limit fraud against the consumer, etc. but I don't know how well it all works out in the end in the real world.

I’m sure I’ve gone over all this in years past when the subject of flat rate comes up. But this seems like a great thread to put it out there again.

As an outsider, or hell even an insider, it seems like a great way to pay the techs.
I say insider too because at my last shop I constantly was trying to get them to change the pay plan to flat rate, as we were straight hourly with a flat rate-ish bonus. And the bonus had several brackets on a sliding scale and all kinds of other stupid overcomplications. In a nutshell, the owner kept trying to have me increase my technicians’ productivity, but wouldn’t give me the best tool in the world to do it. Want to sell more hours? They pay the techs on those hours, not on the clock. Then you’ll magically see them all start billing more hours. This was strictly to appease the owner and line my own pockets, as my bonus as the foreman was based on how many hours the shop billled. Otherwise, I think flat rate is terrible.

But wait. I just said it’s a great way to pay the techs, and then I say it’s terrible?

So when you said, ”then a novice technician, in theory, would take more time on the job, and thus get paid less” absolutely holds true in flat rate. But. What would make that a little more fair is that if every technician was paid the same rate, $35/hr or whatever. And a lot of shops, particularly ones with a union contract in place, do have a “scale” they pay a journeyman flat rate technician. However, other shops...they pay different rates to different techs. Inexperienced ones get way less. So not only are they making less because they bill out less hours, but the rate those hours are multiplied by are less too. There are some shops where I shit you not, some techs make 4x what some other techs make. If you’re one of those junior techs, this is very demoralizing and they burn out of the business fast or they start doing things like mentioned earlier where they start taking awful shortcuts (like only doing half the spark plugs or just throwing away that hard to replace air filter) to try and catch up to the higher paid techs.

And we’ve already covered in this thread that techs will avoid warranty repairs like the plague since it pays so little compared to customer pay work. And when they do get stuck with warranty work, they will take whatever not by the book shortcut they can think of short of leaving a mark/crack/broken part that you can see to get the job done faster. It encourages sloppy work. It encourages quick shotgun diagnosis, which is sometimesusually wrong, which results in you having to come back to have it fixed again. It encourages cutthroat behavior among the technicians.

In a nutshell. The shop and maybe 1/3 of their technicians will make more money on the flat rate system. But customer satisfaction takes a hit which affects customer retention, which of course can hurt the long term profitability of the shop.

 

[TheRobSJ]

Go for a ride with the service advisor when the tech NPF's it. You paid for the warranty when you bought the thing. Get your money's worth out of it.

I know. I could certainly do it. Hell, I could even demonstrate it by just banging on the dash when the vehicle is parked. I could even say, *point* it’s right under there, take this part of and insulate it.

The OCD perfectionist in me just doesn’t trust them to not just try to bend something up and slip some foam under there and ship it. I want it done right.

My other car came with two free oil changes. For a car that’s a complete pain in the ass to get on the rack and uses like $100 in oil, that sounds pretty good. But again, I don’t trust them to not fuck something up.

Also the reason I will probably never buy a preowned car. I just want to know it was serviced and maintained properly. And nobody can do it better than me.

If some catastrophic engine failure or something happens, then sure I’ll warranty it. But any little piddly things like my rattle that come up? I’m just gonna forget the warranty and do it myself.

 

[NorCalAthlete]

I know. I could certainly do it. Hell, I could even demonstrate it by just banging on the dash when the vehicle is parked. I could even say, *point* it’s right under there, take this part of and insulate it.

The OCD perfectionist in me just doesn’t trust them to not just try to bend something up and slip some foam under there and ship it. I want it done right.

I've seen paper towels rolled and duct taped around stuff to stop rattles. :nchantr I try to only bug them on warranty issues if it's major like transmission slipping or something. Had one side mirror replaced twice under warranty because it had the "auto-tilt down when shifting into reverse" function, but while it would tilt down it wouldn't tilt back when you shifted into drive. So if you didn't manually re-correct it, the mirror would just continue tilting down and after 2-3 times backing up into a parking spot I'd be staring at the ground next to my passenger door. I don't recall the core issue they found but the 3rd one worked properly and I haven't had any issues with the side mirror since then. Definitely not something I felt like troubleshooting myself though.

 

[mercurial]

tbh, if there is a wad of paper towels under my dash right now that got rid of that squeak, I am totally fine with that :laughing

 

[berth]

So when you said, ”then a novice technician, in theory, would take more time on the job, and thus get paid less” absolutely holds true in flat rate. But. What would make that a little more fair is that if every technician was paid the same rate, $35/hr or whatever. And a lot of shops, particularly ones with a union contract in place, do have a “scale” they pay a journeyman flat rate technician.

Yea, that goes against the spirit of it (at least this spirit of it IMHO). The theory (my theory) is that it's self adjusting. Most productive workers get paid more by doing more PRODUCTIVE work (vs just raw volume).

And when they do get stuck with warranty work, they will take whatever not by the book shortcut they can think of short of leaving a mark/crack/broken part that you can see to get the job done faster. It encourages sloppy work. It encourages quick shotgun diagnosis, which is sometimesusually wrong, which results in you having to come back to have it fixed again. It encourages cutthroat behavior among the technicians.

This is the dark side of any flat rate time based scheme. The clock dominates the job result (at least for the laboer), not necessarily the job quality. And with much of the work being buried (especially today in modern vehicle), it makes validation and inspection, especially after the fact, that much more difficult.

 

[Kornholio]

I’m sure I’ve gone over all this in years past when the subject of flat rate comes up. But this seems like a great thread to put it out there again.

As an outsider, or hell even an insider, it seems like a great way to pay the techs.
I say insider too because at my last shop I constantly was trying to get them to change the pay plan to flat rate, as we were straight hourly with a flat rate-ish bonus. And the bonus had several brackets on a sliding scale and all kinds of other stupid overcomplications. In a nutshell, the owner kept trying to have me increase my technicians’ productivity, but wouldn’t give me the best tool in the world to do it. Want to sell more hours? They pay the techs on those hours, not on the clock. Then you’ll magically see them all start billing more hours. This was strictly to appease the owner and line my own pockets, as my bonus as the foreman was based on how many hours the shop billled. Otherwise, I think flat rate is terrible.

But wait. I just said it’s a great way to pay the techs, and then I say it’s terrible?

So when you said, ”then a novice technician, in theory, would take more time on the job, and thus get paid less” absolutely holds true in flat rate. But. What would make that a little more fair is that if every technician was paid the same rate, $35/hr or whatever. And a lot of shops, particularly ones with a union contract in place, do have a “scale” they pay a journeyman flat rate technician. However, other shops...they pay different rates to different techs. Inexperienced ones get way less. So not only are they making less because they bill out less hours, but the rate those hours are multiplied by are less too. There are some shops where I shit you not, some techs make 4x what some other techs make. If you’re one of those junior techs, this is very demoralizing and they burn out of the business fast or they start doing things like mentioned earlier where they start taking awful shortcuts (like only doing half the spark plugs or just throwing away that hard to replace air filter) to try and catch up to the higher paid techs.

And we’ve already covered in this thread that techs will avoid warranty repairs like the plague since it pays so little compared to customer pay work. And when they do get stuck with warranty work, they will take whatever not by the book shortcut they can think of short of leaving a mark/crack/broken part that you can see to get the job done faster. It encourages sloppy work. It encourages quick shotgun diagnosis, which is sometimesusually wrong, which results in you having to come back to have it fixed again. It encourages cutthroat behavior among the technicians.

In a nutshell. The shop and maybe 1/3 of their technicians will make more money on the flat rate system. But customer satisfaction takes a hit which affects customer retention, which of course can hurt the long term profitability of the shop.

Warranty in my world is very different than what a car/truck dealer tech deals with. That said, in regards to your other points, the main reason I'm opposed to the union that my shop has in place is that, like most unions, it protects the low performers from having to actually make an effort to improve and instead just pays them the same as everyone else based on the CBA. That means that if I hire a journeyman with no direct experience in our industry, I have to pay them exactly the same wage as my guys that have been with the company for 20+ years. It's totally unfair for the older guys to see a "kid" get paid the same wage he does yet they can't do the same job that he can and certainly worked his ass off for years to learn and master. This is why it amazes me every single time they sign on to another CBA instead of voting the union out like I did back when I was a tech. We all decided that the people that weren't pulling their weight were the only ones that really wanted the union around in the first place. The company wasn't abusing us at all and it's not always like the way that all the negotiators would have you believe.

On top of that, all my techs are guaranteed 40 hours of pay per week regardless if we have 40 hours of work for them to complete or not. Again, this is all part of the CBA. So there's really zero incentive for the low-performers to step up since they're guaranteed to get a full paycheck no matter how crappy they work...and there's absolutely nothing management can do about it. It fucking sucks from a team-building standpoint because there's literally nothing you can do to improve the shitty morale that comes from senior guys watching this stuff happen.

But I digress...

 

[TheRobSJ]

On top of that, all my techs are guaranteed 40 hours of pay per week regardless if we have 40 hours of work for them to complete or not. Again, this is all part of the CBA.

40 hours guaranteed at the journeyman scale? If so, that union got sweet contract.

When I was in a union, my guarantee was only 20 hours a week. And like you said, everyone got the same rate. So the shop was packed full of these lifers that didn’t know how to do shit. And to be honest, they were the smart ones. Since they didn’t know how to do anything hard, they only got dispatched the gravy. 90k services, PDIs, and all the other stuff that paid huge hours. Meanwhile my stupid ass is riding the strugglebus getting all the warranty electrical or rattle work. In a year at that shop I did all of one single PDI. Meanwhile the old fuck next to me sometimes would get three in a single day and got to bill out 9.0 hours from realistically maybe 4 hours of work while I choked on a warranty wire harness all day that I barely billed 2 hours on. Because of the union contract, these guys were bunkered in there like ticks. Seniority. And that also why when a layoff happened, I got sacked and incapable clowns like that got to stay.

Made it a mission to never work for a union shop again after that gig.

 

[Kornholio]

I often wonder what the non-union shops in my company are like. Someday, I'm sure I'll figure it out.