How To Find a Good Mechanic

[EricTheCarGuy]

My friend Charles, aka HumbleMechanic and I often talk about these things when we get together. Lately we’ve decided to make videos of these conversations. This one is about how to find and keep a good mechanic. I hope you find it helpful.

Topic

[James P Grosso]

Good topic. Waiting to hear others replies.
It seems most shops and dealers isolate the customer from the tech doing the work. usually your talking to a service writer or sales counter person.
I usually ask around to see who others have used, but sometimes a shop will hire a bad tech, or ownership changes hands and a once “good” shop my not be so good anymore. I don’t know any techs that have business cards? Might be an interesting idea so a customer can build a relationship with the good techs even if they change shops?

[Jason White]

[quote=”451Mopar” post=179059]Good topic. Waiting to hear others replies.
It seems most shops and dealers isolate the customer from the tech doing the work. usually your talking to a service writer or sales counter person.
I usually ask around to see who others have used, but sometimes a shop will hire a bad tech, or ownership changes hands and a once “good” shop my not be so good anymore. I don’t know any techs that have business cards? Might be an interesting idea so a customer can build a relationship with the good techs even if they change shops?[/quote]

Actually the last thing most shops want is a direct relationship between the technician and the customer. The fact is that everyone between the technician and customer is a middle-man and they do not want to be cut out. Yes, they help and make us more productive but they are still, middlemen. They fear that at first the customer has their preferred mechanic, next thing they know the mechanic is doing work for them on the side, and worse yet, the mechanic leaves for another shop and takes the customer with him/her. Also, talking to a customer is a bit of a skill, and most general mechanics it could even be dangerous for them to talk to the customer.

Also, some of the worse mechanics will have some of the biggest followings because they are good at talking. I’ve watched them explain to a customer why it took 4 different repairs to fix one issue and they actually sold that crap. They can actually explain why they have to replace several components to do one repair. So much so that when someone actually diagnoses the car properly they think that tech is just guessing because they are only suggesting one part.

[Author]

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