What to do about Mechanics who overcharge?

Armin_Tamzarian

My question is to mechanics.

You're probably sick of hearing people accusing you all of being rip-off merchants,
that's not what I'm doing.

I was wondering...
In a situation where a customer feels that they are being excessively over-charged for labour,
what course of action would you suggest they take?

Like alot of people I'd probably be at a loss as to what to do,
other than going round and shouting the odds.

I think some constructive advice from people in the industry on
how to handle these situations would be very helpful.

-Cheers

EPM

ask for a price before going ahead with the job surely? Then ring around and see what other prices you get

Armin_Tamzarian

EPM wrote: »

ask for a price before going ahead with the job maybe surely? Then ring around and see what other prices you get

Good advice for sure but I was thinking more of situations where a
price can't be fixed in advance.
E.g. crash damage or situations where a mechanic claims that they
'had complications'.

Personally I've been told myself in the past "we won't know till we get stuck in", after asking for a fixed price.

Getting a fixed price in advance definitely is the best course of action
but what would you suggest for cases where customers are hit with
a bill and feel that the mechanic has been dishonest or is milking it?

I guess the situation could be said to be the same for work carried out by
every trade.
I'd just like to hear mechanic's point of view and see what they
suggest from their perspective.

Mr.Diagnostic

I sincerely hope this is a genuine question and not just yet another attempt to have a go at garages. For now I will bite, or at least nibble the hook. The line and sinker I will leave for later

Your question is very general but since you mention labour specifically then that is what I will comment on.
For you, or anyone, to be in a position to complain about being overcharged you would need to know that you had actually been overcharged. How would you know? That is probably not the type of answer you either wanted or expected, but to be fair you would need to establish you had been overcharged before you could try and rectify the situation.
I wonder if you mean the labour charged was too high a rate of too many hours. How can you judge either? I am aware the above is very general but so is the question.

Armin_Tamzarian

Thanks for your reply and I can assure you that I am sincere.

It's irrelevant as to how a customer feels they've been ripped off.
What matters is that they feel that they've been overcharged.
So what would you suggest someone do in such a circumstance to
put their minds at ease or to rectify a wrong.

To give a hypothetical...
Let's say someone was having a clutch changed or a new engine put it;
after the work is complete they're hit with a larger than expected bill.
The mechanic says "it was pretty awkward, took a good bit more work that we expected".
Now, the mechanic may have given them a rough estimate of say, €500,
and then charge them €800.
The mechanic has provided an reason for the higher charge.
The customer feels like they're being ripped off.
Aside from calling the (possibly honest) mechanic a liar to their face
what course of action do you suggest?

Seth Brundle

All you can really do in that situation is to get the mechanic to call you when a change in the project occurs

Mr.Diagnostic

Armin_Tamzarian wrote: »

To give a hypothetical...
Let's say someone was having a clutch changed or a new engine put it;
after the work is complete they're hit with a larger than expected bill.
The mechanic says "it was pretty awkward, took a good bit more work that we expected".
Now, the mechanic may have given them a rough estimate of say, €500,
and then charge them €800.
The mechanic has provided an reason for the higher charge.
The customer feels like they're being ripped off.
Aside from calling the (possibly honest) mechanic a liar to their face
what course of action do you suggest?

Ok, in the case you have posted, the first thing is to keep it cordial, at least to start off. You mentioned earlier about “shouting the odds”. That will in every case be counter productive. The usual boards advice of “solicitor” will also be counter productive. Garages are run by people, there are many types of people so it is difficult put a specific on it as regards how to deal with this case.

The cause of the problem is the surprise of the difference between the estimate and the bill. That (surprise) is the fault of the garage. If a job starts going above the estimate the garage should inform the customer beforehand. If the price was a quote then there would never be a valid reason for it to get bigger without consultation with the customer.
That however is not your question. Working on the assumption that you are looking for fair play, on both sides, you would need to figure out if you had been overcharged or not. Unfortunately, when someone suspects they have been overcharged it can be very difficult to convince them otherwise, mainly because in most cases they do not understand the technicalities of the job so cant judge the details. It’s a real catch 22.

As others have said it would be better to instruct the garage that they will need your consent before going above the estimate but in your case that did not happen. In this situation the first thing you need to do is have a conversation with the garage and ask them to explain the extra. You either accept the explanation or not. If not, depending on what the reason was, it may be possible to check it out.
From this point on its all a bit too general to say what the next step should be as it would depend on an individual case.
If they estimated 5 hours to do a clutch and charged 8 and the only explanation was that’s how long it took then its easily checked to see how long it should take. If its 8 hours, pay them. If its 5 hours then you have a case to argue.

Sorry for this being so generic but without details its impossible to be more specific. There are various ways to establish if the extra was justified or not. Inspection by someone else is one (not your mate down the pub who knows everything about cars).

One final point, this type of scenario is less likely to arise if you have an established relationship with a good reliable garage.

El Guapo!

I agree with the above advice. Best thing to do is ask for a price beforehand and ask the garage to ring you if any problems arise which will affect the price. This would be the professional and courteous thing to be done by the garage anyway.

Darragh29

Armin_Tamzarian wrote: »

Thanks for your reply and I can assure you that I am sincere.

It's irrelevant as to how a customer feels they've been ripped off.
What matters is that they feel that they've been overcharged.
So what would you suggest someone do in such a circumstance to
put their minds at ease or to rectify a wrong.

The nature of the job is that costs can go up after a price has been given and unfortunately many folks can't get their heads around this fact. This happens more with maintenance/rectification type work than with run of the mill service work, but if you have been given a price for a task, and it subsequently goes up, say looking at the following example:

(1) Your timing belt breaks, you get it to a garage and the job to replace the timing belt is given at 472.67 Euro including parts, labour & VAT. But you are told that if the valves are bent, the bill could jump up by 567.87 Euro to replace anything up to 16 valves and to strip down the cylinder head and refit new valves. If the cylinder head valve guides are after being damaged by the valves bending, you're probably into a new cylinder head, costing say 984.12 Euro.

Now this is an extreme but not an unrealistic case of costs rapidly departing from what was initially agreed, but as you can see, very quickly you've gone from a situation involving an expected invoice of 472.67 Euro, to a job that is going to ultimately come in at around 2 grand.

What is important to note here is that you are not being overcharged or ripped off, the invoice accurately reflects the damage done as it is discovered. The only thing you can do as a garage is try to prepare the customer as best as you can for a 2K transaction from the outset, and offer to show them the damaged parts as you remove them and bring whatever transparency that you can to the discussion.

But my experience is that no matter what way you do it, you are ultimately dealing with cynicism, mistrust and conspiracy theories.

If your garage in the above example, lets you think that you are only exposed to around 500 Euro, then of course when you end up getting a bill for around 2K, you're going to see a conspiracy. But if the garage tell you in advance that you need to treat the transaction as possibly a 2K job from the outset, lets be honest, you're also going to see a conspiracy.

If it ultimately turns out that the job can be done successfully for 500 Euro and you expected a bill of 2K, you're delighted, but if it goes the other way, the garage gets the blame for the "excessive costs", all because you didn't change your timing belt when you should have...

All you can do is try to keep your customer with you and fully informed and be as transparent as you can, and you'll still be dealing with mistrust and cynicism a lot of the time no matter what you do.