when i used to hang/work at my friends' shop i used to witness this a lot when they would go out for parts. one of my friends, the shop owner, would send his teenage sons out for parts or maybe food and they would ... well ... be teenage boys driving fast cars! that was one of the reasons i decided not to let others work on my car. it's really all a matter of which card you draw. i think there are probably just as many professional mechanics out there as there are *********! it's just a matter of who you happen across.

i do believe cars may need to be tested in context of repairs and owner use. i find nothing wrong with driving a customer's car hard if it's related to the repair/work. there are ways to do that without beating on or abusing the car though.

i remember a few years ago my brother had his car in the shop to get it painted. it was just after completing the streetport 13B install - with a brand new clutch. when the ****** called him to pick up the car (after weeks of other pulling rubbish), the clutch was dead! HOW? is that some new technique of getting the paint to dry?

 

Well it's nice to hear that dealerships use a Customer Satisfaction Index to track jobs that come back. I don't think that it's used where I go though. How else could you explain the number of times that I returned to have a job 'completed'. Funny thing I noticed though, was that the mechanics doing the jobs were all different. So I think that they were taking advantage of a flaw in the system.

As for not diagnosing a problem properly, this should show up in the test drive, and be taken care of before the customer shows up to pick up his car.

I remember picking up my car after a paint job, only to discover the door was not bolted on tight, a trim screw completely missed the trim, the license plate was installed before the paint dried, and the quarter panel was not buffed out! Don't these people who do this for a LIVING see these things ???

 

Driving your car this way in front of you I would say is better than someone you know seeing the mechanic driving your car this way and then exagerating when telling you about it. Did the mechanic explain to you why he was driving your car in that fashion or did you question him about it?

 

Bull.
****.

Once the car is out the tech gets paid... but if the car needs to come back, the tech does not get paid for the second time around. Besides pride in workmanship, there's also a monetary value to be had in diong good work. Also, those customer serivce survey cards aren't there because they feel like handing out free crap...