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Flat Rate Envelope 12 1/2 x 9 $26.35 $22.75 $3.60 Legal Flat Rate Envelope 15 x 9 1/2 $26.50 $22.95 $3.55 Padded Flat Rate Envelope 12 1/2 x 9 $26.95 $23.25 $3.70 2020 USPS® Postage Rate Guide Effective January 26, 2020 1 First-Class Mail® Use First-Class Mail for lightweight letters up to 3.5 oz. And flats up to 13 oz. That need to be. May 14, 2007 where can i find a mechanics flat rate guide? I hav looked all over the internet and cannot find this information for free. Surely someone knows. Have had some repairs done recently and think i was over charged but cannot prove it without the hour guide. Would really apreciate any.
Providing the #1 Flat Rate Pricing Software for HVAC,
Plumbing, and Electrical Contractors, done for you in a menu.
Make $246 more on your average service tickets!
Grow your Company with the Pricing App that Increases Service Sales!
Make $246 more on your average service tickets!
Discover how Electrical, HVAC, and Plumbing contractors like you double and triple their sales using Menu Pricing!
- App based software
- $246 average increase on every service call. (documented for six years running)
- Currently being used over 20,000 times weekly.
- Generating over $200 million dollars of additional profit per year for our industry.
- True menu pricing removes the selling pressure from the service technician while empowering the customer to buy your goods and services.
- Menus are so simple and so powerful that waiters and waitresses use them to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in products and services every single day with no sales training at all.
- Menu pricing creates profit where it previously did not exist.
- Win/Win contracting is when customers get high value and you get high profit.
Attention: Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Flat Rate Companies!
As a Plumbing, Electrical, or HVAC contractor, what struggles and pains do you suffer as a company? Is your pricing inconsistent? Do your technicians complain about selling or upselling? Are your closing rates low? Or maybe you know you are leaving a ton of money on the table. As a result, how can you address these problems and create a more stress-free life for yourself, family, customers, and technicians? The New Flat Rate is your complete business solution. By utilizing complete menus, technicians no longer have to upsell without jeopardizing the job they are doing in the home. Their focus should be on the task at hand, not increasing your bottom line. Rather than building options in the field, The New Flat Rate does all the work for you! No more awkward cost conversations. Above all, Complete customer satisfaction!
A Sales Tool for The Future!
Flat rate pricing is evolving. As a result, The New Flat Rate has developed a powerful sales tool that lowers customer sales resistance. It also provides more options and opportunity for upselling in the home. With a clear and organized menu of prices for just about any repair situation, the service tech can present the customer with a set price for services. This takes the guesswork out of pricing jobs and speeds up the entire process. The technician is no longer a salesman and can focus on solving the customer’s pains. With The New Flat Rate’s pricing system, customers are given 5 options for services and pricing. Then they can decide what works best for their budget. The more options they are given, the more likely they are to make a purchase.
Repair technicians are skilled in their field but are not always the best salesmen. Companies spend a lot of money trying to train technicians to sell, adding stress to their already busy jobs. Take the guesswork out of pricing and sales and arm your techs with the proper tools to successfully secure business from the customer. Thus Your customers will appreciate not feeling pressured in to buying or being told how much they must spend. No more haggling, negotiating, or pushing sales. The customer now has the buying power in their control.
The Difference Between Traditional Flat Rate Pricing & Menu Pricing:
We work with several different industries including HVAC, Electrical, and Plumbing. The New Flat Rate creates customized menu pricing for services, repairs, and new equipment installs. A traditional flat rate book focuses on a specific part and price. It’s basically a price catalog. The technician spends times finding the correct part and adding it to the estimate. Often the technician must call the office to verify how to price the job. This takes way too long and can create confusion. The New Flat Rate simplifies the process by using pre-built flexible menus. Selecting specific materials and parts like a traditional flat rate pricing book that covers system maintenance, parts, replacement, and ductwork prices is no longer necessary.
If you’re in the plumbing industry, you’ll have prices for services from faucet fixes to water heater replacements. The HVAC flat rate menu includes services such as capacitor replacement, new motors, and fan blades. It’s all in print or digital format used on iPads or Androids.
While upselling is an important part of any business in any service industry, menu selling lets you do this without placing pressure on your customers. These menus are specifically written with the understanding and needs of your customers in mind, so they will be able to understand which services they truly need. This feature makes it more likely for your customers to come to you with requests for specific services.
Why Do I Need a Demonstration of How Menu Pricing Works?
If you want to know what The New Flat Rate’s menu pricing system can do for your sales, you can call, email, or fill out the handy “Request Live Demo” form on our Home page. We will schedule a time to show you how powerful our menu pricing system is at your convenience. We look forward to working with you and taking your company to the next level!
When your plumbing, electrical or HVAC business chooses to go with our flat rate pricing system, it can be difficult to get used to the change. Menu selling is certainly a different way of doing things, but it is one that gives your business a much greater potential for boosting profits and improving customer satisfaction. Our training department will walk you through the implementation process. We want to ensure that your technicians are prepared to follow our simple presentation script and select the correct menu to show the customer.
Why Menu’s?
Menus give your customers options that are clearly explained in language that they can understand. Whether you are a single contractor or the owner of a small business, getting used to selling through a menu is a process that every technician can learn in a short period of time. You can implement this pricing structure quickly to avoid any discrepancies. Therefore, all you have to do is present your customers with a menu of the prices of your services. The transparent pricing system lets your customers know that you are not trying to get them to agree to a price point that is different than the price that you are offering to others. As a result, there’s consistency on every job!
You have more then likely heard of the flat rate labor guide, all automotive repair shops use them and to the average person the flat rate labor guide can be a mystery.
The flat rate guide is an industry standard which is used to quote the labor for a repair that is to be performed on any given vehicle.
At DHM Mobile Service we cross reference two labor guides to quote our work (Motor and Chilton).
Labor guides come in both book and software form and are easy to use. Just simply look up the vehicle’s year, make and model go to the appropriate section and you will find the time it takes to perform a particular repair.
The times that are listed in the labor guide are measured in 10ths of hours.
Here’s an example.Stamp an image with any image info (such as file name, date, EXIF fields, etc.), another image or any text. Image Stamp. Multiple undo/redo capability. Quick convert menu for converting multiple files (Image Convert to). Quick (and non-lossy for JPEG files) turns (90, 180, 270) and mirrors. Thumbsplus 10 keygen music video.
MOTOR Labor
Equinox, Torrent
STARTER, R&R………Skill Level B (Factory Time) (.6) MOTOR Time .7This is the amount of time it should take for a technician to replace a starter in a 2006 Chevy Equinox or Torrent with a 3.4 liter engine.
Notice the factory time of .6? This is the amount of time factory believes it should take to perform this task.
Notice the Motor time of .7? This is a more realistic time frame for this particular operation and this is the time we will use.At DHM Mobile Service we charge (at the time of this post) an hourly labor rate of 65.00 dollars,($35.00 below the local repair shops) using this figure we simply multiply that by .7
65 X .7= 45.50
So $45.50 would be the labor cost to replace this starter.
If the tech gets the job done in .4 the customer will still pay $45.50. If the tech gets the job done in 1.5 hours the customer will still pay $45.50.
Like any hiring of skilled labor there is an initial agreed upon price for a task to be done.How do technicians get paid?
The above example is what the shop makes and the tech gets paid a percentage of that rate, this is called “flag time” and here is how it works.
(Note: Most technicians get paid flag time, some shops may pay hourly or give a base pay plus commission and some even pay salary)In North County San Diego the average hourly rate for a shop is $100.00. The shop hires a tech to do the work on the customer’s vehicle, most technicians make between $13.00-$30.00 a flat rate hour, this depends on their skills, experience and the shop they work for.
Now suppose we have a tech making $22.00 a flat rate hour and is given the above starter job, his pay works out like this.
The shop charges the customer $70.00 (100 X .7) to replace the starter, the tech flags .7 of an hour on his flag sheet making $15.40 from the job (22 X .7) so out of the $70.00 the shop makes the shop pays the tech $15.40. If the tech gets the job done in 15 minutes he still gets paid $15.40 likewise if he took 1 hour to do the job he would still get paid $15.40.The flat rate labor guide is an industry standard and gives a set value of how much time would be spent on a particular task, there are of course some labor operations that are not listed in a labor guide, searching for a short or open-circuit in a wiring harness comes to mind.
You can & download or print using the browser document reader options. Note taking guide episode 901. Note Taking Guide Episode 901Showing top 8 worksheets in the category - Note Taking Guide Episode 901.Some of the worksheets displayed are Note taking guide episode 1101 answer key, Gpb physics note taking guide answer key, Gpb note taking guide episode 1001 answers, Note taking guide episode 1101, Notes taking guide episode 1101 answers, Note taking guide episode 1201 answers, Note taking guide episode 1201 answers, Note taking guide episode 803 answers.Once you find your worksheet, click on pop-out icon or print icon to worksheet to print or download. Worksheet will open in a new window.
Ask.com has an interesting article on shop labor (flat) rates.
Here’s the link http://autorepair.about.com/od/yourmechanic/a/def_flat_rate.htm
They seem to hit the nail on the head in some areas, however I would like to make a few points that I feel that they may have over looked.
From the articleBilled vs. Actual Labor Time
So what’s the big deal? It seems pretty cut and dry. The confusion comes when the work is actually being performed. Let’s say the mechanic knows what he’s doing and is able to install your water pump in just two and a half hours. Under the flat rate system you still pay for 3 hours labor. Ouch. It just doesn’t seem right, does it? Before you pass judgment, you need to hear both sides of the story.Fair enough, I could understand how a customer could get upset, if the job only took the tech two and a half hours to complete, billing the customer for 3 hours labor wouldn’t make sense…Right?
Lets flip the coin over.
Suppose you were to bring your car into the shop for a simple repair, you were given a quote of 1.5 hours to perform that repair. So the technician begins to work on your car at an average pace and completes the job in 2 hours time, should he charge you for an extra half hour labor? Of course not! The agreed quote to repair the vehicle was 1.5 hours, even if the tech took 2 hours to complete the job you will only pay for an hour and a half that was agreed on (see above example). So you see this could work both ways, in my 20 years experience I find myself finishing up a job around the flat rate time.Here’s another excerpt from the article
The Down Side of the System
Unfortunately, there’s a dark side to flat rate billing, and it comes from the top. Many mechanics will be paid based only on how many billable hours — what the flat rate book says — he accumulates. On top of this, management puts lots of pressure on the technicians to bill as much as humanly possible. If they fall below a certain number of hours per day, the techs have problems. And it doesn’t matter why the day went slower. Left in a position where one slowed repair can put him behind, lose him money, and get the bosses breathing down his neck, some mechanics will rush the job and take short cuts. That’s when the flat rate system can fail.I have to disagree with most of this statement. Yes, techs do get payed by their “billable (flag time) hours”, so if a tech flags 12 hours in one 8 hour day that tech gets paid 12 hours for that day. Flip the coin, if the tech flags 5 hours in an 8 hour day then the tech will only get paid for 5 hours of work on that given 8 hour day. Most skilled techs are capable of accumulating 12 hours worth of work in one 8 hour day but this isn’t always the case, low volume in the shop or dealing with a driveability problem will knock anyone’s flag time down.
In my years of working in various shops here in southern California I’ve found that most employers will pack the shop with technicians to speed up production rather than ‘crack a whip’ as the article implies, rushing a tech through a job will only guarantee sloppy work and unhappy customers.We need to keep in mind that a shop’s top priority is to take care of customers and at the same time make a profit, it is more practical to hire techs and pay them according to the flat rate flag time. Paying flag time insures that techs do not get paid for standing around but get paid for by amount of work they produce, this makes it easy for employers to put techs on the floor and not worry much about payroll.
I’ve found myself working in shops where I had completed 7-8 hours of flag time per day but ended up standing around by three in the afternoon hoping more cars would roll in. I have also found myself in shops that were so packed with techs that all of us were standing around by noon and not making a dime however, because there were so many techs available to work the customers were happy that their cars were done in a timely fashion.
Some of these shops that were so saturated with techs didn’t have the volume of business to support them, guys would find themselves complaining to management, fighting over work and eventually going someplace else for a job.
I’ve never worked in a shop where the techs were pressured to work faster or cut corners to keep up with volume.I look at flat rate times by what you are getting for your money, not how much you are getting. When you bring your vehicle into a shop you are paying for a skill. The time frames give an idea how long a highly skilled tech will take to fix your vehicle and from this we have a standard by which to bill and pay.
At DHM Mobile Service we charge $65.00 a flat rate hour (at the time of this article posting), the industry standard for a check engine light diagnoses in our area is $100.00 (1.0hr) flat rate, so if you go to any given shop in this area you would expect to pay $100.00 for the diagnoses.
The $100.00 is the standard for this service, so if it takes 10 minutes or an hour to diagnose a check engine light remember you are not paying for the time you’re paying for the skill.Need more time?
There are some circumstances when a repair facility will have to call back the customer to add more time on to the original estimate. I’ve seen and dealt with what industry insiders call “nightmare cars” these are problems with vehicles that are not easily solved, an occasional sputter or a quirky electrical problem may take days or even weeks to hunt down and repair. For the most part the repair shop will call and explain to the customer the situation and come to a reasonable agreement.Here is a short list of items that are not listed in the labor guides.
- Open or short circuits in wiring harnesses
- Drive-ability concerns like intermittent stalling or sputtering
- Quirky electrical problems, rewiring and wiring harness repairs
The labor guide gives the basic times for component removal, inspection, rebuild and installation. The time guide also offers labor times for diagnoses on some sub-systems like charging and starting system.
I hope that you have a better understanding of how this works.
-Dave
...'>Audi Flat Rate Guide(03.05.2020)Flat Rate Envelope 12 1/2 x 9 $26.35 $22.75 $3.60 Legal Flat Rate Envelope 15 x 9 1/2 $26.50 $22.95 $3.55 Padded Flat Rate Envelope 12 1/2 x 9 $26.95 $23.25 $3.70 2020 USPS® Postage Rate Guide Effective January 26, 2020 1 First-Class Mail® Use First-Class Mail for lightweight letters up to 3.5 oz. And flats up to 13 oz. That need to be. May 14, 2007 where can i find a mechanics flat rate guide? I hav looked all over the internet and cannot find this information for free. Surely someone knows. Have had some repairs done recently and think i was over charged but cannot prove it without the hour guide. Would really apreciate any.
Providing the #1 Flat Rate Pricing Software for HVAC,
Plumbing, and Electrical Contractors, done for you in a menu.
Make $246 more on your average service tickets!
Grow your Company with the Pricing App that Increases Service Sales!
Make $246 more on your average service tickets!
Discover how Electrical, HVAC, and Plumbing contractors like you double and triple their sales using Menu Pricing!
- App based software
- $246 average increase on every service call. (documented for six years running)
- Currently being used over 20,000 times weekly.
- Generating over $200 million dollars of additional profit per year for our industry.
- True menu pricing removes the selling pressure from the service technician while empowering the customer to buy your goods and services.
- Menus are so simple and so powerful that waiters and waitresses use them to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in products and services every single day with no sales training at all.
- Menu pricing creates profit where it previously did not exist.
- Win/Win contracting is when customers get high value and you get high profit.
Attention: Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Flat Rate Companies!
As a Plumbing, Electrical, or HVAC contractor, what struggles and pains do you suffer as a company? Is your pricing inconsistent? Do your technicians complain about selling or upselling? Are your closing rates low? Or maybe you know you are leaving a ton of money on the table. As a result, how can you address these problems and create a more stress-free life for yourself, family, customers, and technicians? The New Flat Rate is your complete business solution. By utilizing complete menus, technicians no longer have to upsell without jeopardizing the job they are doing in the home. Their focus should be on the task at hand, not increasing your bottom line. Rather than building options in the field, The New Flat Rate does all the work for you! No more awkward cost conversations. Above all, Complete customer satisfaction!
A Sales Tool for The Future!
Flat rate pricing is evolving. As a result, The New Flat Rate has developed a powerful sales tool that lowers customer sales resistance. It also provides more options and opportunity for upselling in the home. With a clear and organized menu of prices for just about any repair situation, the service tech can present the customer with a set price for services. This takes the guesswork out of pricing jobs and speeds up the entire process. The technician is no longer a salesman and can focus on solving the customer’s pains. With The New Flat Rate’s pricing system, customers are given 5 options for services and pricing. Then they can decide what works best for their budget. The more options they are given, the more likely they are to make a purchase.
Repair technicians are skilled in their field but are not always the best salesmen. Companies spend a lot of money trying to train technicians to sell, adding stress to their already busy jobs. Take the guesswork out of pricing and sales and arm your techs with the proper tools to successfully secure business from the customer. Thus Your customers will appreciate not feeling pressured in to buying or being told how much they must spend. No more haggling, negotiating, or pushing sales. The customer now has the buying power in their control.
The Difference Between Traditional Flat Rate Pricing & Menu Pricing:
We work with several different industries including HVAC, Electrical, and Plumbing. The New Flat Rate creates customized menu pricing for services, repairs, and new equipment installs. A traditional flat rate book focuses on a specific part and price. It’s basically a price catalog. The technician spends times finding the correct part and adding it to the estimate. Often the technician must call the office to verify how to price the job. This takes way too long and can create confusion. The New Flat Rate simplifies the process by using pre-built flexible menus. Selecting specific materials and parts like a traditional flat rate pricing book that covers system maintenance, parts, replacement, and ductwork prices is no longer necessary.
If you’re in the plumbing industry, you’ll have prices for services from faucet fixes to water heater replacements. The HVAC flat rate menu includes services such as capacitor replacement, new motors, and fan blades. It’s all in print or digital format used on iPads or Androids.
While upselling is an important part of any business in any service industry, menu selling lets you do this without placing pressure on your customers. These menus are specifically written with the understanding and needs of your customers in mind, so they will be able to understand which services they truly need. This feature makes it more likely for your customers to come to you with requests for specific services.
Why Do I Need a Demonstration of How Menu Pricing Works?
If you want to know what The New Flat Rate’s menu pricing system can do for your sales, you can call, email, or fill out the handy “Request Live Demo” form on our Home page. We will schedule a time to show you how powerful our menu pricing system is at your convenience. We look forward to working with you and taking your company to the next level!
When your plumbing, electrical or HVAC business chooses to go with our flat rate pricing system, it can be difficult to get used to the change. Menu selling is certainly a different way of doing things, but it is one that gives your business a much greater potential for boosting profits and improving customer satisfaction. Our training department will walk you through the implementation process. We want to ensure that your technicians are prepared to follow our simple presentation script and select the correct menu to show the customer.
Why Menu’s?
Menus give your customers options that are clearly explained in language that they can understand. Whether you are a single contractor or the owner of a small business, getting used to selling through a menu is a process that every technician can learn in a short period of time. You can implement this pricing structure quickly to avoid any discrepancies. Therefore, all you have to do is present your customers with a menu of the prices of your services. The transparent pricing system lets your customers know that you are not trying to get them to agree to a price point that is different than the price that you are offering to others. As a result, there’s consistency on every job!
You have more then likely heard of the flat rate labor guide, all automotive repair shops use them and to the average person the flat rate labor guide can be a mystery.
The flat rate guide is an industry standard which is used to quote the labor for a repair that is to be performed on any given vehicle.
At DHM Mobile Service we cross reference two labor guides to quote our work (Motor and Chilton).
Labor guides come in both book and software form and are easy to use. Just simply look up the vehicle’s year, make and model go to the appropriate section and you will find the time it takes to perform a particular repair.
The times that are listed in the labor guide are measured in 10ths of hours.
Here’s an example.Stamp an image with any image info (such as file name, date, EXIF fields, etc.), another image or any text. Image Stamp. Multiple undo/redo capability. Quick convert menu for converting multiple files (Image Convert to). Quick (and non-lossy for JPEG files) turns (90, 180, 270) and mirrors. Thumbsplus 10 keygen music video.
MOTOR Labor
Equinox, Torrent
STARTER, R&R………Skill Level B (Factory Time) (.6) MOTOR Time .7This is the amount of time it should take for a technician to replace a starter in a 2006 Chevy Equinox or Torrent with a 3.4 liter engine.
Notice the factory time of .6? This is the amount of time factory believes it should take to perform this task.
Notice the Motor time of .7? This is a more realistic time frame for this particular operation and this is the time we will use.At DHM Mobile Service we charge (at the time of this post) an hourly labor rate of 65.00 dollars,($35.00 below the local repair shops) using this figure we simply multiply that by .7
65 X .7= 45.50
So $45.50 would be the labor cost to replace this starter.
If the tech gets the job done in .4 the customer will still pay $45.50. If the tech gets the job done in 1.5 hours the customer will still pay $45.50.
Like any hiring of skilled labor there is an initial agreed upon price for a task to be done.How do technicians get paid?
The above example is what the shop makes and the tech gets paid a percentage of that rate, this is called “flag time” and here is how it works.
(Note: Most technicians get paid flag time, some shops may pay hourly or give a base pay plus commission and some even pay salary)In North County San Diego the average hourly rate for a shop is $100.00. The shop hires a tech to do the work on the customer’s vehicle, most technicians make between $13.00-$30.00 a flat rate hour, this depends on their skills, experience and the shop they work for.
Now suppose we have a tech making $22.00 a flat rate hour and is given the above starter job, his pay works out like this.
The shop charges the customer $70.00 (100 X .7) to replace the starter, the tech flags .7 of an hour on his flag sheet making $15.40 from the job (22 X .7) so out of the $70.00 the shop makes the shop pays the tech $15.40. If the tech gets the job done in 15 minutes he still gets paid $15.40 likewise if he took 1 hour to do the job he would still get paid $15.40.The flat rate labor guide is an industry standard and gives a set value of how much time would be spent on a particular task, there are of course some labor operations that are not listed in a labor guide, searching for a short or open-circuit in a wiring harness comes to mind.
You can & download or print using the browser document reader options. Note taking guide episode 901. Note Taking Guide Episode 901Showing top 8 worksheets in the category - Note Taking Guide Episode 901.Some of the worksheets displayed are Note taking guide episode 1101 answer key, Gpb physics note taking guide answer key, Gpb note taking guide episode 1001 answers, Note taking guide episode 1101, Notes taking guide episode 1101 answers, Note taking guide episode 1201 answers, Note taking guide episode 1201 answers, Note taking guide episode 803 answers.Once you find your worksheet, click on pop-out icon or print icon to worksheet to print or download. Worksheet will open in a new window.
Ask.com has an interesting article on shop labor (flat) rates.
Here’s the link http://autorepair.about.com/od/yourmechanic/a/def_flat_rate.htm
They seem to hit the nail on the head in some areas, however I would like to make a few points that I feel that they may have over looked.
From the articleBilled vs. Actual Labor Time
So what’s the big deal? It seems pretty cut and dry. The confusion comes when the work is actually being performed. Let’s say the mechanic knows what he’s doing and is able to install your water pump in just two and a half hours. Under the flat rate system you still pay for 3 hours labor. Ouch. It just doesn’t seem right, does it? Before you pass judgment, you need to hear both sides of the story.Fair enough, I could understand how a customer could get upset, if the job only took the tech two and a half hours to complete, billing the customer for 3 hours labor wouldn’t make sense…Right?
Lets flip the coin over.
Suppose you were to bring your car into the shop for a simple repair, you were given a quote of 1.5 hours to perform that repair. So the technician begins to work on your car at an average pace and completes the job in 2 hours time, should he charge you for an extra half hour labor? Of course not! The agreed quote to repair the vehicle was 1.5 hours, even if the tech took 2 hours to complete the job you will only pay for an hour and a half that was agreed on (see above example). So you see this could work both ways, in my 20 years experience I find myself finishing up a job around the flat rate time.Here’s another excerpt from the article
The Down Side of the System
Unfortunately, there’s a dark side to flat rate billing, and it comes from the top. Many mechanics will be paid based only on how many billable hours — what the flat rate book says — he accumulates. On top of this, management puts lots of pressure on the technicians to bill as much as humanly possible. If they fall below a certain number of hours per day, the techs have problems. And it doesn’t matter why the day went slower. Left in a position where one slowed repair can put him behind, lose him money, and get the bosses breathing down his neck, some mechanics will rush the job and take short cuts. That’s when the flat rate system can fail.I have to disagree with most of this statement. Yes, techs do get payed by their “billable (flag time) hours”, so if a tech flags 12 hours in one 8 hour day that tech gets paid 12 hours for that day. Flip the coin, if the tech flags 5 hours in an 8 hour day then the tech will only get paid for 5 hours of work on that given 8 hour day. Most skilled techs are capable of accumulating 12 hours worth of work in one 8 hour day but this isn’t always the case, low volume in the shop or dealing with a driveability problem will knock anyone’s flag time down.
In my years of working in various shops here in southern California I’ve found that most employers will pack the shop with technicians to speed up production rather than ‘crack a whip’ as the article implies, rushing a tech through a job will only guarantee sloppy work and unhappy customers.We need to keep in mind that a shop’s top priority is to take care of customers and at the same time make a profit, it is more practical to hire techs and pay them according to the flat rate flag time. Paying flag time insures that techs do not get paid for standing around but get paid for by amount of work they produce, this makes it easy for employers to put techs on the floor and not worry much about payroll.
I’ve found myself working in shops where I had completed 7-8 hours of flag time per day but ended up standing around by three in the afternoon hoping more cars would roll in. I have also found myself in shops that were so packed with techs that all of us were standing around by noon and not making a dime however, because there were so many techs available to work the customers were happy that their cars were done in a timely fashion.
Some of these shops that were so saturated with techs didn’t have the volume of business to support them, guys would find themselves complaining to management, fighting over work and eventually going someplace else for a job.
I’ve never worked in a shop where the techs were pressured to work faster or cut corners to keep up with volume.I look at flat rate times by what you are getting for your money, not how much you are getting. When you bring your vehicle into a shop you are paying for a skill. The time frames give an idea how long a highly skilled tech will take to fix your vehicle and from this we have a standard by which to bill and pay.
At DHM Mobile Service we charge $65.00 a flat rate hour (at the time of this article posting), the industry standard for a check engine light diagnoses in our area is $100.00 (1.0hr) flat rate, so if you go to any given shop in this area you would expect to pay $100.00 for the diagnoses.
The $100.00 is the standard for this service, so if it takes 10 minutes or an hour to diagnose a check engine light remember you are not paying for the time you’re paying for the skill.Need more time?
There are some circumstances when a repair facility will have to call back the customer to add more time on to the original estimate. I’ve seen and dealt with what industry insiders call “nightmare cars” these are problems with vehicles that are not easily solved, an occasional sputter or a quirky electrical problem may take days or even weeks to hunt down and repair. For the most part the repair shop will call and explain to the customer the situation and come to a reasonable agreement.Here is a short list of items that are not listed in the labor guides.
- Open or short circuits in wiring harnesses
- Drive-ability concerns like intermittent stalling or sputtering
- Quirky electrical problems, rewiring and wiring harness repairs
The labor guide gives the basic times for component removal, inspection, rebuild and installation. The time guide also offers labor times for diagnoses on some sub-systems like charging and starting system.
I hope that you have a better understanding of how this works.
-Dave
...'>Audi Flat Rate Guide(03.05.2020)