I hate to hear this short sighted view. Seems to me to be penny wise and pound foolish.

When I was working at a shop in the 80's, I remember 2 lessons the owner taught me that are germane here. 1. We were doing some work on a kid's jalopy and it had sloppy universal spark plug wires. I finished the prescribed work on the car and the owner said that's car's not done, those wires look like hell, fix them up. He proceeded to show me how to cut them and put new ends on them. Took him about 8 minutes and it looked very professional. I said, why did you do that, he didn't pay for that. He said we don't turn out sloppy work here. When his friends ask who worked on his car I don't want them to see that sloppy wire job and think that's how we work. Taught me to take time to be a craftsman and be proud of my work.

2. In our shop, if someone came in like you, we'd do something like that for free. A common thing was extracting a broken header bolt or something. He'd have me or another junior guy help the customer, with the caveat if the bolts stripped or took a long time, we'd have to charge. But, 99% of the time we'd just pull the bolts out and send the guy on his way in a few minutes.

And, 90% of the time, he'd be back with paying work later, or he'd refer a friend. Or both. It didn't cost us much and it was very well spent marketing dollars if you look at it that way.

The 10 minute marketing cost they should have incurred to do this for you for free would probably have turned you into a customer, and importantly, now that you told us how their shop works, I'm not keen to go to them. With social media good customer relations are that much more important, but they were always critical.

BTW my old shop is still in business, started in the 40's, I worked for the son, now the grandson is in charge. Those good business practices lead to longevity.

 

Joe, that has pretty much been my experience with 2 other indie shops I have used in WPB over the past several years. Had I gone to either of those shops, the price would likely have been somewhere between free and $20, and had it been free, I'd have tossed them a $20 bill anyway.

Those other shops are further away and at 3:30 in the afternoon when the problem arose, going to one of them would have had me fighting rush hour traffic. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to give the "newish" indie in my local area a tryout with what was a pretty simple task.

Steel Knuckle did a fine job and I have no complaints with the work done and I suppose it's my own fault for not asking for a price first. But honestly, I felt like I was raped like no Harley dealer ever has. At least they could have posted their minimum shop charge somewhere in the office or told me in advance when I called ahead or walked into the shop with what was an obvious 5 minute job.

I won't badmouth Steel Knuckle or their work, but you can be sure, I'll never recommend them to anyone or go back with future work.

You're certainly right about the marketing cost, I've lost count of the number of unsolicited mailings I've received from Steel since they opened soliciting new business, and all that effort on their part went up in smoke real quick.

 

I am dead on with you on this. I usually flip the guy doing the work a Jackson. Last time I needed some drag tires mounted I went to my local tire store and asked how much, the manager yelled out to the shop for Jose to take care of it, he told me, just take care of Jose.

I gave Jose $20 for 15 minutes work.

And I spent thousands on tires and repairs so far at that shop. That's the way things are supposed to work.

I really wish the owner of Steel would read this and think about it. This is business 101. The customer relationship is worth so much more than $50.... omg you spend so much to get a customer, when one walks in, treat him like a king and he'll be yours for a long time. Not always, but with purchases like these, near and dear to our hearts, most of the time you treat the customer right they stay.

 

They have a class coming again this month. UKLauren does this interest you at all?

http://www.pbeducator.org/pbeducator...ts_per_page=10

 

Starts next week for those that are interested...

http://www.pbeducator.org/pbeducator...ts_per_page=10

 

It's great that these classes are offered. There is real satisfaction when you can fix things yourself. Growing up my buddies and I used to wrench on vehicles/motorcycles for our entertainment (and to get to school/work). Lessons learned stay with you the rest of your life.

It's becoming a lost art, I'm trying to teach my sons to be capable of fixing things like I can.