crooked small engine shops

[Gravdigr]

Ugh, nothing annoys me more than a small engine shop that takes advantage of a customer.

There's a lady that lives right down the road from the cemetery and I talk to her almost every day while she is walking her dog. Her family gave her an older craftsman 13hp mower for her yard. It's in pretty good shape but I found out when she got it she took it over to a small engine shop to get 'reconditioned'. It appears the 'reconditioning' amounted to sharpening the blades, changing the oil and replacing the spark plug and fuel filter. For this she paid $300. Prolly less than an hours work.

Then she asks if she can bring it up to me as the first time she went to use it she found the deck belt was stretched and they didn't have a truck to take it back to the small engine shop. So this small engine shop did all this work and never even tested the mower before returning it to the customer. In addition, and this really steamed me, the mower is a manual where the clutch pedal also engages the brake....they did not check that either. The brake barely engages when you push the pedal in, and her yard is a hill leading down to a rather busy road. This is an accident waiting to happen and I was appalled.

Plus the belt the shop gave her was the wrong one, too long by at least 6".

Places like this make me sick. I put on her deck belt and adjusted up her brakes, took about 15 mins...cost her $10

 

[drivadesl]

Its for this reason I try to do my own repairs. I don't hire anyone to do anything, cept for painting in my house, and maybe anything that I just don't have time to do and its an emergency. Hard to find a shop you can trust. The charges she paid seem high for that little amount of work. I hate it when people are taken advantage of, and the places that do it, don't understand its just bad business. Anyway, my hats off to you for doing the belt and brake repair at no charge.

 

[Tig]

Good for you Gravdigr. There is good karma around you. I can't stand to see someone get taken advantage of either. I'd rather do it for free.

 

[ray66v]

I am not saying they did not over charge her for what they did, I do not know. But, you also can't stay in business charging $10 either.

Remember, Lawn mower shops have a few months a year, they do not make much, if anything. In the rest of the year, they have to make enough to pay all their expenses for the year. Like; rent or mortgage, finance charges on inventory, state taxes on inventory, property taxes, liability insurance, property insurance, property maintenance expenses, payroll, social security taxes, workers comp, health coverage, electric bill, Gas bill, phone bill, delivery vehicle payments, delivery vehicle insurance, fuel and maintenance for delivery vehicle, shop equipment, tools, uniforms, advertising, computers, accounting expenses, corporate expenses, income tax filing expenses, to name a few.

I am sure there are more things I did not think of. There are always things you don't even know about.

My point is that it cost a LOT of money to be in business today, and even more, if you want to stay in business.

I often heard the same kind of thing when I had my body shop. My answer is, if you feel that they are over charging, this is the USA, you can open your own shop, and find out.

 

[Gravdigr]

Incidentally, I have my own business which includes caretaking 2 cemeteries, it is all seasonal work so I might know something about it. I also do the repairs on all my machines as well as a few neighbors.

Even at a labor charge of $50/hour (perfectly reasonable for 1 worker), it should not cost more than $75 including parts to do the work listed. Plus since this complete 'reconditioning' did not even include a test run to make sure the machine worked properly? Not to mention the safety issue of releasing a machine to a customer with the brakes not working?

I got no problem with a shop charging for the work. My problem is a shop overcharging for work and taking advantage of a customer that wouldn't know the difference.

Incidentally I did charge her for the work, $10 for the 15 mins it took to change the belt and adjust the brakes...that works out to $40/hour.

My business is seasonal and somehow I manage to make it through the winter without gouging unsuspecting customers.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

It is nice her family gave her such a nice mower to begin with

 

[Fordlords]

The shop's overhead should be factored in to their labor rate. Let's say a spark plug costs $5.00, a fuel filter $8.00, an oil filter $10.00, and 2 quarts of oil $6.00. I know I can replace all those items on my tractor and sharpen the blades in an hour or less, and I'm not even a so called, "professional" who should be a lot faster than me. Are we then saying this shop had a labor rate of around $270.00 an hour? Even if it took 2 hours, still about $135.00 an hour? I know about running a business as I did so for 10 years, and know that it is unethical to charge a customer far above and beyond what are considered reasonable and customary rates. And if you are a shop that has to resort to that because you don't have enough customer volume, it's time to go out of business. There are a lot of shops out there who just look at the person who comes through the door and they decide how much they think they can get out of them- especially true with elderly customers.

-Fordlords-

 

[deereguy]

Let's not forget the delivery and return for that mower as well to her residence. Yeah- they probably let some grunt hose it off and change a few things and he SAID everything checked out OK.