<VV> Rant against Dealers was Confusion

[henry kaczmarek]

Guys
Both of the dealers I worked for owned their own store.

At Ford and Chevy, Recalls are exactly that. called in by GM, not your 
dealer.

There is absolutely NO charge to the customer for recall work.
The Mechanic can get slightly creative with his pencil, but any line tech 
will tell you you won't get rich doing recall/warranty.
And if the Warranty/Recall administrator in the dealership lets the techs 
get too creative with the pencil, it can bankrupt the dealership when the 
Company (ford, etc) comes in and audits the warranty /recall paperwork.

When I first went to the ford dealer, I saw mechanics turning 60 hours a 
week on warranty (powerstroke diesel engines and transmissions). 
Impossible?  You bet, but they were snowing the administrator.  I let the 
dealer know of my suspicions.  He had a Ford auditor do a Courtesy Audit 
(the dealer used to be a Zone marketing exec for Ford, and had a few friends 
at that level).

Had ford come in for real, the dealer would have owed ford 400,000 in back 
charges, which would have closed the store, and Ford would have come for the 
cars and trucks.  The gravy train stopped running in the shop that week.

"customer Pay" is completely different.  They can charge you whatever they 
want, mark up the parts as much as they dare, etc. etc.

OTOH, any service writer worth his salt should try to check the car over 
when in for warranty/recall and make some recommendations, but that's all 
they are. And they should NEVER take your car apart expecting you're going 
to pay to do it that day.

I found that working for a guy who owns 1 or 2 dealerships is a lot 
different than working for Penske or Sonic Automotive or another of these 
big chains.

A local owner understands his area and the people in it. He'll carry parts 
in stock that the local garages/shops are in need of. He'll watch his 
pricing to make him competitive with his competition.

I was "caught" offering different than List prices on Parts at the Ford 
Dealer. The dealer asked me what I was doing.

I explained: On this part (EGR Valve), in the retail market there's a 50% 
markup on the part from cost.  In this case of this valve, 80.00 list price. 
Ford List price was 277.00, but cost was only 55.00.  So I marked it up from 
cost 50%+, charged the customer 80.00, and he went away singing our praises.

I then asked the dealer: You want to make 50 percent, or do you want to make 
ZERO when the guy carries his ass down the street and buys at NAPA? 
Reminding him he also got paid on "Inventory turn" which is calculated at 
cost, he decided I was on to something.  Not too long afterward, the word 
was out that if you needed a Ford "Dealer Only" part, START the search at 
Town Square, you'll get a fair break.   And sales went up. And my 
commissions went up, and the dealer and customers were happy.

A Sonic (owned by Bruton Smith and Co) or a Penske owned dealership would 
fire  a parts man for that kind of logic.  As Chuck Said, they're interested 
in the bottom line only.

Hank