was 5w-20 now What people charge.

[Michael Jez]

> If you want more money; just up your hourly rate.  You don't have to be
> dishonest about it.  Honesty does come at a price; but sure does take a
load
> off.  Besides; if you charged 1/9 what your competition charges, you'd
have
> customers in line around the block.
<snip>

I do not own the shop I work at so I can't just go ahead and raise the price
of my labor to cover up my time on the job, it doesn't work like that. We
are probably one of the highest labor rate per hour dealers around or even
in the country- 120 bux a hour. Now U don't understand there are like 15
secretaries up stairs and all the service advisors - 4 of them. That $120x8
hours comes out to like 960 bux. I only get my XX.XX amount of dollars an
hour X 8 hours. I cant give myself a raise- its up to my boss to do that for
me. Trust me if U where in this shit for a such long time as I have been U
would love flat rate- but yet provided U can beat the given amount of time
for the job by atleast half. And no I dunno what my customers do for a
living, I can care less as long as I get my hours they can be drug dealers
for all I care- and those guys are awesome customers cause they pay for
everything they might need. I'm probably going to say I'm one of the more
honest mechanics and will not rip off a customer like some muffer shop or
independent would- my cousin took his 98 Max GXE to Firestone or Meineke and
they told him he needs 4 wheel brakes- so he only does the fronts not
knowing how they even look like- but to him squealing brakes mean they are
bad. Calls me to do the rears on his car, I told him I will do it for 100
bux OEM Nissan pads and labor. I take the wheels off and the rear brakes
have about 80% of the pad left on them- and this Firestone or Meineke told
him he needs rears big time. Now if this was me and my car ? I would be in
the ofice holding the manager at gun point for trying to rip me off. I
usually go with friends to have their cars checked out and such... I love
how they always say that if U put a bigger exhaust on their car it will trip
the check engine light... they never have a good answer as to WHY it will ?
And I keep on asking what code ? why ? how ? and after brain washing the
dumb fucks for 20 min I whipp out my ASE certification infront of their dumb
faces call them some bad names, take our cars and leave. Most of the guys at
those "shops" are highschool 80s camaro driving drop outs- and they think
they even got the knowledge to change the oil..... Prime example- friend of
mine works for Firestone and they had a 00 G20 come in for an oil change-
some redneck does a oil change on it  and the car leaves. About a week after
it gets towed in for an engine, he didnt tighten the filter good enough and
locked the motor up. After ALOT of cursing- 2 days worth of his time to
remove ONLY the engine out of it, he ends up putting it all back togheter.
But now he forgot to swap flywheels and left the manual flywheel on the new
JDM engine- car is a Auto. Put the engine and tranny in the car and after
alot of head scratching and all thinking why the car makes weird noises at
idle and horrendous noises in gear... he looks over at the pile of extra
shit off the engine on the floor and notices that he forgot to swap the
flywheel over for a automatic trans flex plate. Now U tell me how much trust
do U have for a guy like that ? It took him a week to put an engine in this
car- he was kicking in, and calling it a Jap crap. My friend told him hes
seen me remove a same engine out of a SE-R in 35 min and the guy thought he
was smoking some wheeeedies.
Mike Jez