Re: This can't be good... (Cicada)
I have freinds who are techs/mgr's at many different dealers and brands.
Disclaimer:
Now someone may want to get on here and say "I got it all wrong."
"I got my head up my arse," etc.. I ain't talking about "What they've seen at this one dealer, blah blah blah.. I'm talking about a tendancy that's industry wide from what I've seen from the inside both working at and later working with dealers while running an independant tuning business.
What you have is a dealer is given a tier level that allows them to either pretty much make warranty repairs without question from mfr, ..Or at the opposite end; virtually can't so much as change a light bulb without getting a factory service rep to approve it. What happens most often is dealers have perhaps a service manager that's friendly towards turning work into warranty repairs. (Most often as it should be.) Occasionaly, questionable work also.. but hey, it pays the bills, keeps techs in the money versus sitting around making zilch. (It happens) Although not as lucrative to a dealer personnel as a customer retail job. They get both, a longer rate of pay for job such as 3 hrs versus 1.5.. the advantage is say tech finishes job in 1.25 hrs, he goes on to next job.. hence making more money and a much more profitable hourly scale. i.e. mfr pays out $40 hr versus customer retail of $80 per hour. As you can see this benefits not only tech but mgr's commisison and dealer gross as well, ..and the mfr is not paying out for warranty repair.
They ALL win, ...Joe Q customer, is the only one who is much lighter in the wallet.
So anyway, back to friendly service mgr, either owner is greedy and has meeting with mgr and says either increase revenue (ala turn more work into retail and less warranty) or suddenly dealer owner get's a call from mfr saying they are going to change their status, this will of course
SLOW DOWN all work orders and hence cause customer disgruntlement and thus bad PR, likely loss of some customers.
This will of course draw prompt action from owner/general mgr. Either service mgr will change his persepective, or perhaps change his employment status.
(It's a cruel business!!
) But that's often how it goes.
I sat in a meeting where the owner said, .."sales are down, we expect they will remain down for the next month, service, you need to make $1 million more next month than you have been making to make up for sales."
Now how the hell does one virtually double the tickets in one month?
(Well, I've explained how that trick get's done.
)
So endsum, from time to time you find good dealers who walk the line between good customer care and dealing with mfr's, occasionally it's very good personnel who make the difference.. who for that reason don't stick around long enough. But I'd bet if you had said, "just replace the mount, I'll pay for it." It would have been done on the spot.
Unless, ..they really were swamped or had much more lucrative work to be done. They would in that case though, probably just take your car in and keep it longer. Doing big $$ work first, not changing a mount.
That's the nature of the beast