lol, I don’t pay $4,000 to have water heaters installed. $1,500 is more like it.

Who’s charging 900% markup on AC capacitors? My guy charged me $35 plus labor for a quality US made capacitor with a warranty on both parts and labor.  He doesn’t actually get a warranty on the capacitor because he gets wholesale pricing, but he gives me one.  I would get one if I bought it retail sans his markup. They run slightly less at retail, they’re not cheap anymore.


ASE rates for mechanics however are retarded.

If it's something that I can't do myself, I just call Juan.

Used to call them the “ever since you” customers. Ever since you changed my oil my brakes pulsate.

Depends on the specialty and specifics. Seeing a pulmonologist last year had me wondering how he could bill with a straight face what he did for the two office visits. I wanted to get my asthma treated. First visit, less than 5 minutes in the room, gets my basic description, refuses to answer specific, or any questions, until I get an asthma test. The test itself I understand the price of taking, very sophisticated machine, in depth procedure. Second visit, two minutes, prescribes basic inhaler he had in mind already as he had the yes or no answer on if I actually had asthma. None of the interactions with the doctor seemed like he was using years of advanced medical training to make. Now my insurance paid for the visits but tops, TOPS, had 30 minutes of back end administration combined. Something like 300 dollars each visit. Had the guy not been in complete autopilot mode and answered questions thoroughly I wouldn’t have been so wide eyed about the price. I’m glad my pcp is always willing to try the standard medications for easy stuff before thinking of sending me to a specialist. Has probably saved me tens of thousands of dollars in bills over my life.

I understand, but I have done three or four for the price of the heater.  Improve your skills, get tougher.

Back in the day when I opened my first shop I got some great advice from a friend’s father.

It may take you 1/2 of the book time to do a job, you can do that because of your years of experience. You’re not getting paid for your time necessarily, you’re getting paid for your experience.

Why do you reference people ripping off others to justify your argument?

odd

Usually if I can’t do it it’s either because I don’t have the specific tools necessary or you have to pull everything to get to it.  If it’s the latter it pays off just knowing the warranty covers the replacement if it dies prematurely and I don’t have to wrench it out over a weekend.

No matter what the problem, everyone in the building gets paid.

(deleted)

Try being a refrigeration air conditioner mech, everyone thinks you do it for the love

What a California thing to say.

I sweated my own copper pipes and wired my own shit up.

Try selling fuel - gasoline / diesel fuel.


Then get back to me.

A brake job on a GM vehicle payed 2 hours labor, front or rear. That was the labor rate even on rear wheel drive cars when the front wheel bearings were *suppose to* get repacked. I can tell you mechanics love brake jobs, especially on front wheel drive GM vehicles. They could probably turn 20 flat rate hours a day doing brake jobs and never break a sweat.

That seems like a weird response. I did mention my truck, so where (and why does it matter?) did you come up with a '70 camaro and '14 Camry? Your $14K hoist is part of the overhead I mentioned in my post, and it's an economy of scale: it's paid for quickly and properly depreciated. I've changed rear pads and never needed to buy anything special. I raced/campaigned two twin turbo Zs in the 90s, changed brakes all around many times and never had a problem. I can swap out the entire rear subframe in less time than most mechanics would bill to change rear pads. I know, I've timed it. The point is, you asked a question (which was hyperbole; No rational person expects someone to work for free), and I gave you examples of why people are suspicious. And, BTW, you ignored my questions on your $500 brake job. I've been wrenching on cars for over 40 years, your whining is lost on me, and so this will be my last on the matter. Good luck in your wrenching endeavors.

Well, its like this.  all of these mechanical wizards and youtubeU graduates that have chimed in that they do their own work all have decided their labor is free, or worth less than yours.  

A long time ago, in an actual book or magazine, I read something like "theory of comparative labor cost" W:STTE that basically said people tend to look at all labor rates in direct comparison to their own value of work.  Someone who makes $5 an hour will look at a $500 brake job that takes 2 hours and think its insanely expensive, but a lawyer or surgeon that is billing $500 an hour will look at that job very differently (made up numbers for simplicity).

Real world example, I purchased some special tools, and learned how to mount/dismount motorcycle tires back when I was minimum wage and paycheck to paycheck.  This was because the shops I had near me all wanted what seemed like a lot of cash for that job, and affording the tires themselves was a challenge, but a necessity.  It was a kinda miserable job, but crashing sucks, so it's worth it.  Fast forward to last fall when I paid a shop to mount two tires for me.  I still know how, and I have better tire spoons than I had before, but the shop charged me much less than my current hourly wage for the time it would have taken me, and I had better things to do.  So it was worth it to me to pay someone else to do for me.

This even works for things like reloading.  How long does it take you to make 1k rounds?  What would you earn if you were at your job working instead?  Subtract the cost of components from similar loaded ammo to find out what the labor rate for factory loads are and then compare.  (made up number alet) Lets say a box of factory ammo is $50.  The components required to duplicate that ammo is say $25.   So its $25 labor to make, and would take you about an hour, start to finish to make that box.  If you make $10 per hour at your job, Reloading is a good bargain for you.  If you make $100 per hour at your job, reloading makes less sense and is not much of a deal for you.  If you make that $100 per hour, you have to find "other" justifications, like "its its own hobby" or "It's more accurate" .

FPNI

I dunno, they don't charge much for skilled work.  Less than what I've seen elsewhere, plus throwing in free diagnostics and other things sometimes.  Don't know how they stay in business.

Shop prices/hourly shop rate went full stupid 10 years ago, it's just 1.5X full stupid.

I'm not paying someone to change my brakes, $1000 to.change power steering lines, $1500 for a water pump and coolant flush.

Other people might want to, but not on a vehicle with high depreciating value.

Book time and labor rates are absurd, same goes for other trades. Inflation, salaries, wages, labor rates, parts prices are grossly out of whack.

I know right?

In the gun store I work people complain everyday about the cost of ammo and guns.

Always say something smart like "I remember when I could get 9mm for $10 per hundred"

Yeah, Pops, I remember when a Cheese Burger was .99 cents and a full lunch meal was under $6.

There's a lot of mechanics in my area that you can find on Facebook. They used to work for shops and decided to do their own work from their home garage. You have to watch, some of them are good at what they do, but others not so much. Luckily I found a good one that does stuff for me less than half of what a shop would charge me most of the time.

$500? Did it come with a hand job?

I didn't know Ebenezer Scrooge did brakes.

Here's my .02.  I don't think most people begrudge people what they feel is a fair price, gouging is another story. My sons car had a belt pulley go bad.  Obviously, that's what it was, no diagnostics involved, just replace the pulley and belt.  It was a bracket/pulley + belt + labor.  Took it to a shop and before we even went in there I told my son if it's around $250 we'll just let them do it.  Parts + an hour of labor at $250 seems fair.  Quote came back over $500. I checked online and pulley cost was like $40 and belt like another $30 + labor.  Parts were marked up 5x cost + several hundred in labor.  I told him that was extreme and we'd do it ourselves.  Dude running the counter actually agreed with me.  That's why people despise a lot of mechanics.  

jd1  

People are keeping their cars longer. I laughed at a car salesman the other day and told him I was pricing new engines and transmission,  not a new title and I wasn't buying ANYTHING anytime soon, for the next few years *elections*

Youtube is becoming my goto for repairs

And HVAC technicians are lying fucking thieves. They've pissed me off so bad with their bald-faced lies I went and got MY OWN 608 Universal certificate (I can buy any flavor of refrigerant I want) nyah!
yep, dang gubmint...that freon costs $400 a pound now

No shit? I'll have a tank waiting for you when you get here. Need some, because I can get it all day every day for a fraction of what you say they're charging YOU, fucking liars

Wat

Guys who know what they are doing only need to pay one trade: Drywall finishers.

F all that sanding. Call a guy good with a blade.

Ohh. No doubt. Those poor people work for free at their MAIN job.

The new mud only uses a damp sponge

Yeah, I learned to drywall from Mexicanos

It's 2024. I pay salaries for a hundred nurses, 30 APNs, and 24 doctors. None of them work cheap.
Hell, the AIDES are actually getting paid now.

What? Are you a chick waiting to get pregnant?

I thought all graphic designers were wimmenz waiting for their MRS degree. Then they quit and drive Volvos to soccer practice full time

I had 3 shops (2 dealer and a local mom and pop) quote $850 an axle for just pad change on a 4Runner and a gx460. I paid $690 for both vehicle pad and rotor upgrade and learned to do it myself. $180 an hour to do that is a fucking joke and I don’t give a shit how much your subscription fees are

Why do auto mechanics want to charge $70 to open a cabin air filter box and replace the one they’ve already removed?

$4,000 for a waterheater! $87,000 for a bathroom! Where the fuck does OP live!

You paid a plumber to run air lines and an electrician thousands to do the electric for the air compressor? Then $14k on a lift? All to save 3 minutes on a brake job?

Because some people will pay it. That’s the great thing about capitalist america. You don’t have to engage in commerce with them if you don’t want to, but they can find others who will, and the mechanics make a living off of that. Seems ideal to me

Ha, a local school employee came in to my friend’s shop with a self diagnosed problem of what was causing her car to run poorly.  IIRC it was spark plugs and wires which didn’t fix the issue.  Of course it wasn’t that and they called her that there was an issue with her valves and had gone so far to pop the valve cover off and identified the problem and called her before proceeding.

She went on a tirade of them trying to screw her over and refused any further work.  Wouldn’t listen.  Wouldn’t pay for the work on the plugs and wires either......she brought her own parts along with her self diagnosis.  Since the problem wasn’t gone, she refused to pay.  My friend that owns the shop is in his eighties, He told her to drag her fat ass out of his shop.  He doesn’t care.  Same guy that fixes cars of widows and doesn’t charge them for the work except a token amount to keep their pride payment for a “minor adjustment” and eats the parts and work or simply says not to worry this time.

Firing customers is sometimes a good thing.

Oh yeah I did cabin and engine air filters in about 3 min a vehicle for less than the mechanic cost of a cabin filter

I love the customers "self diagnostics". About 99% of the time they're wrong and have no clue what they're talking about or how to fix it. I also like the ones that can "do it themselves" then their junk gets flat bedded to us.

My wife is a pharmacist, and boy, do we get people asking what she thinks of this or that lifestyle med.  Or evaluate their meds and tell me if I can get off any of these (called Medical Therapy management, which she is not actually trained on, but her company requires her to do, complete with quota).  She doesn't have time to do said meds evaluation at work for customers who ask because the workload is completely insane, let alone do it for people on her days off and not get credit for it.  Or relatives who won't call us just to talk, and who don't return calls, but when they have a question...

My mother is one of the worst offenders; she tends to research things to death, and focuses on the worst case scenario a lot.  So it makes for a tense situation when she calls my wife to ask her questions, particularly when my wife can't stand her (for good reasons, not relevant here).  Then she mainly ignores the advice anyways, going with whatever she found on the Internet instead.

Not free...just not a 300% mark up on a part

No field is immune from this.  I run a dental practice with a large staff and a ton of overhead.  It is very expensive to run an office and some of the insurance companies reimburse at ridiculously low rates.  I don't have to deal with the money part that much but my front staff hears a lot of bitching from the patients about the cost.  Guess what?  Dental work is expensive because I have to pay rent, pay for dental materials, lab bills, utilities, various insurance policies, a business loan and then pay my staff.  Private practices like mine are slowly going away and are being bought out by large corporate groups.  

Sometimes I will spend time presenting a treatment plan and a patient will say "I can go out of the country and have it done for less!"  I tell them that is their prerogative but I won't work on them again if they have the work done overseas.  I had one lady that went to Turkey and had implants and hybrids placed who wanted me to adjust the bite.  I refused and told her to go back to Turkey and let them fix it.  That was a year ago and haven't seen her since, no big loss as she wasn't a good patient anyway.  I referred another patient to the oral surgeon for implants and she told him the same thing.  He said good luck finding someone to restore those implants as Dr. Kingstrider and most others in town won't touch them.

Well said. Agreed

Which dealership so I can avoid it?

Fact.  As price creep goes up in every field, whether repair, parts, or inputs.... I check grain market and its sitting still or dropped a smidge.  But ag experts on GD tell me farming is so easy and farmers have everything new and get government money by the bushel basket daily, lmao.

And OP seems upset he values his time/skills more than the customers. Moreover, he’s envious of what others can charge.

My point is, don’t be surprised when you charge $1,200/hour (assuming a 3 minute job at $60 for labor) for a job that requires zero skill and your customers think you try to rip them off for EVERY other job.

Paramedics and EMTs still work for peanuts. Between $20 and $25 is normal in my area for medics. EMTs, even less.

This.  I'm a LGS armorer in my off time...  I don't do any crazy stuff - but I've fixed a lot that goes way above and beyond our advertised services...  I feel like I'm donating my time some days.  Some people suck.

I do enjoy the "I tried to fix it, and then my buddy tried to fix it" - but they just fucked it up worse - kinds of guys.  Then they get mad when I fix it in like 2 minutes and act shocked when I charge them $10-$20.