Comments on: Mechanical Difficulties http://www.mh-z.com/blog/mechanical-difficulties/ Just another WordPress site Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:29:39 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Kevin Chang http://www.mh-z.com/blog/mechanical-difficulties/#comment-18750 Kevin Chang Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:12:54 +0000 http://www.mh-z.com/blog/?p=570#comment-18750 Having been through 3 cars, my strategy is simple. Go to a nice reputable dealer for diagnosis, get a complete itemized list. They are usually very conservative and will list more items than necessary. Tell the dealer "This is my budget for this year, what should I fix first?" They are more than happy to prioritize the to-fix list. Afterwards I'd call around mom and pop places that don't have too many negative ratings, and ask them the cost to repair specific items. Ask them the cost of using genuine part vs. 3rd party. If it's something like brake or timing belt I'd buy the actual part from the dealer, bring it to the mom and pop place, and get it repaired. So I do follow a similar intuition that I think dealers are *usually* not as shady as some of the smaller stores. I don't think the mechanics have incentives for cheating you-- they're paid by the hour and don't have much interest in getting the dealership (that they have no financial or emotional ties to in the first place) to get low priority repairs done. Having been through 3 cars, my strategy is simple. Go to a nice reputable dealer for diagnosis, get a complete itemized list. They are usually very conservative and will list more items than necessary. Tell the dealer “This is my budget for this year, what should I fix first?” They are more than happy to prioritize the to-fix list.

Afterwards I’d call around mom and pop places that don’t have too many negative ratings, and ask them the cost to repair specific items. Ask them the cost of using genuine part vs. 3rd party. If it’s something like brake or timing belt I’d buy the actual part from the dealer, bring it to the mom and pop place, and get it repaired.

So I do follow a similar intuition that I think dealers are *usually* not as shady as some of the smaller stores. I don’t think the mechanics have incentives for cheating you– they’re paid by the hour and don’t have much interest in getting the dealership (that they have no financial or emotional ties to in the first place) to get low priority repairs done.

]]> By: donut http://www.mh-z.com/blog/mechanical-difficulties/#comment-18748 donut Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:35:15 +0000 http://www.mh-z.com/blog/?p=570#comment-18748 depending on the kind of car you have... the more advanced ones from Germany, dealer mechanics relies too much on the "factory provided software" to diagnose your problem. This is especially worse for BMW under its full warranty program, because if the software didn't say it's the problem, the software won't authorize the repair, and the mechanic will have a hard time justify why they did something else that the software didn't tell them to do. at the end of the day, BMW dealer mechanics are just a bunch of morons who can't think on their own 2 feet. but if you have a japanese (or even american), dealerships should be pretty good =) i found a good place around work to take my car to... not the cheapest, but they are the most reasonable. they'll tell you what NOT to fix without you asking them, haha... depending on the kind of car you have… the more advanced ones from Germany, dealer mechanics relies too much on the “factory provided software” to diagnose your problem. This is especially worse for BMW under its full warranty program, because if the software didn’t say it’s the problem, the software won’t authorize the repair, and the mechanic will have a hard time justify why they did something else that the software didn’t tell them to do. at the end of the day, BMW dealer mechanics are just a bunch of morons who can’t think on their own 2 feet. but if you have a japanese (or even american), dealerships should be pretty good =)

i found a good place around work to take my car to… not the cheapest, but they are the most reasonable. they’ll tell you what NOT to fix without you asking them, haha…

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