Kimbal
With respect I have read your lengthy post and from your narrative I would state you are an Independent's shop's worst type of customer.
In short a nightmare scenario in the making ! Sorry .
It is that ostensibly why dealers won't play your game.
**I don't know what you mean by this comment about "dealers playing my game." As in, don't get what the game is. Lost me on that.**
So by your own admission you are short of funds to fix it so you want champagne 5 star white glove service on a beer budget to be blunt.
**I actually, truthfully, from the bottom of my heart do not. For instance, knowing that, in this transaction, I am clearly not a high dollar customer, I am actually OK with the fact that it took almost an entire month for the van to be worked on. The issue here is that I was told in each step that it would take a day or two, and instead it took weeks. Independent of the rest of the story, this in and of itself wouldn't actually be worth mentioning, and is borderline not worth mentioning even now. It's only within the larger situation that it seems relevant. One of the thousand cuts, so to speak.**
So to make a few comments.
You did some DIY diagnosis and fault codes were either active or stored prior to you presenting the van to the shop.
Was this to hopefully reduce the diagnostic & inspection fees . That is a no dice! Sorry .
Firstly we professionals mark down ALL relevant codes & tech info whether pertinent to the job or not--It a professional posture. They appeared to do that which you negated that as seemingly padding out the job.
Which from the face of it for you was WRONG!
So irrespective of what you have said or done as a customer we always check your work against our work , conduct pre and post repair test runs etc.
**My work and mentioning the diagnostic codes was not done to reduce any diagnostic fees whatsoever. I was just working on the van and cranked it over with a bunch of stuff unplugged. It caused the codes.
I think that we can absolutely agree that the shop has to do their own diagnostic work no matter what the customer says. I have absolutely no issues paying the shop their diagnostic fees. This issue with the codes was that I was working on the van and I knew that I'd caused some codes to arise and didn't want to waste their time with things that I knew were a non-issue. I told them about it so they wouldn't chase ghosts.
The customer service problem is that I told them exactly what I did that caused these codes to arise, they came back and told me that I needed hundreds of dollars in new parts, some of which are brand new that they were even the ones to teach in, due to these codes. When I told them these things I was told "well we cleared all of codes and they came right back so you definitely need these parts," I declined, got the van back, and none of those codes were present. *That's* where I felt the padding was coming from. And not necessarily even padding, but an unwillingness to listen, or a blanket disbelief in what I'd told them, or some other unknown cause that I can only guess at.
As a shop owner yourself, if you tell someone they have codes, and they tell you exactly how and when and why they caused those codes themselves, I'd wager to say that your response would be a lot more reasonable. Something akin to, "I will check it out in the post diagnostic and see if they are still present," maybe. Something other than the equivalent of "nuh-uh, you definitely need a thousand dollars more work." And once again I have to stress that I CANNOT ascribe motive or intent here. I am 100% NOT saying that they were actively or maliciously trying to hose me or pad the job. There are a whole range of possibilities and I don't have a crystal ball, I just know that there was a customer service breakdown and that is all I can say.**
Now that HPOP pump and the cost!
A genuine ex MB HPOP pump is $1775 with an MB warranty.
It has a $350 core value otherwise the charge is $2125.
So a job quotation is $1775 plus 2 hours of labor and a new MB fuel filter for the warranty compliance. So the quotation was about right.
**I actually didn't/don't disagree with the quote, although in the reading I can see how one could think that. But I wasn't being snarky when I wrote "Sure. Makes sense." Their initial quote is not at issue.**
Now profit.
Just like any shop we work for profit on parts sales and labor time.
The profit for my business is based upon parts sales uplift & discount.
I/We enjoy with MB substantial discounts doing more than $750,000 of business annually.
So I suspect the shop you used, normally buys it for around $1350 with a mark up for profit.
I am quite happy to disclose to you, I buy that pump ex MB for $1150 but I sell it for $1775 reflecting my discount volume business with MB.
So now you want to shop parts, bring your own parts, drive down the price, and take food off of the shop's table by suggesting a re-man pump from an aftermarket supplier. YOU ARE CRAZY!
You then by your own narrative get into a dutch auction.
It was at that stage the job went totally sideways YOU are about 75% responsible for the outcome.
**Generally and genuinely, aside from the being crazy part and the percentage of liability, I'd agree with your perspective here. I am, unfortunately, in the unenviable but hopefully temporary position of having to be a cheap bastard. Suffice it to say that, at least right now, whatever food I'm putting on a shop's table, I am taking directly off of my own. There's no extra food in the house. I almost just paid the diagnostic fee and did the job myself, but didn't because I felt like the shop deserved more work for having done the diagnostic services. I felt like they deserved to make more money, and I wanted to give them whatever I could afford to give them.
Parts mark-up, though, is just something that I can't afford to pay right now. Is what it is on both sides of this coin, but if they'd have just said that they wouldn't be able to do it for me, we wouldn't be talking about this right now, and I'd still have enough trust in them to continue using their services.
I straight up told them "this is what I can afford right now, and this is why. If you don't want to do it, that's OK." Heck, the service manager Roger may well have thought that he was doing me a favor! For all I know he was caught in the middle of a game of telephone between a lazy tech and a customer in a tough situation.
But from my perspective, though, the job went totally sideways when they insisted that I needed close to a thousand dollars in unnecessary parts and labor and then doubled down on the insistence when I pointed it out otherwise.**
Next Injectors
Any doubt in my shop they ALL come out and be tested by a Bosch Service Center.
There are NO options on this.
So in short I would have said Mr Kimbal "We don't do this type of work, take it elsewhere " and it would be handed back to you simply with a diagnostic fee.
**This part is something that I feel where you and I have had a very large misunderstanding, because I am also upset by the injector work that I never authorized and am unsure that I even received. What you just wrote about "I don't do this type of work" is why I trust YOU!
"Pinching off the tubes after each injector," if I'm not mistaken, is not only a dodgy and ill advised way to test them, but also potentially can damage them in the first place. Hell, I brought them the van, asking them to diagnose whether it was the injectors or the HPOP in the first place! I wish they would have just straight up told me, from the get-go, in the very first phone call when I asked them whether they had the diagnostic capacity to discern whether it was the HPOP or the injectors that had gone bad, that all of the injectors had to come out and get tested. Massively preferable to "yes we do" and then seemingly playing parts darts on my behalf!**
Now as a final comment with possibly a question.
In your narrative you mention you are a Mechanical Engineer involved in building a widget of some sorts . Presumably then as an employee!
Now I assume the company you work for builds the "widget" with profit margin built in & determined by finance & costing departments
Does the company you work for drastically reduce its profit margins for one off job?
To suggest so, no doubt your Sales Director would be received with total incredulity & be dismissed !
So why do you expect a shop to cut its profit margins just to suit YOU?
As you can see the outcome was less than acceptable!
This was at least 75% of your wrong doing as I see it
Sorry
Dennis
**I work exclusively for small companies and it has been my job to do these kinds of negotiations in both directions. It's perhaps not the best example to make your point. I get that margins are thin all around, though, and am often the most happy to just take no for an answer. Very preferable to a yes, and then a dubious and unauthorized price increase to exactly where we negotiated from.
Again, I like you man. And although I disagree with some of your takes on this, and think that a lot of them come from the kinds of misunderstanding that tend to happen between writer and reader, I appreciate your perspective as a shop owner. Honest to God, though, through this entire process I wished I could've just taken the van to you, because you are smart, helpful, highly experienced, jovial, and no BS. Of any shop I know of, YOU are the one who deserves the business. One of the only reasons I'm responding is because it's you in the first place and I respect your opinions and your immense input to this community.
All said and done, though, I've had very few outright bad experiences with shops. In fact, come to think of it, this is my only one. Again, I can't say that they are dishonest, I can't say that they are definitely a bad shop. I just had a bad experience that matched with others that I've read about here, and felt somewhat obligated to share.