margaretramirez•3mo agoProlific Poster

I hit 500 hours on a single timing belt job and it made me rethink the whole 'book time' system.

4 comments

4 Comments

Remember when shops used to just charge you for the time the car was actually on the lift? I had an old Volvo that needed a heater core, a job known for taking forever. The shop gave me a flat rate price based on some manual, but the guy ended up finding a nest of corroded lines that doubled the work. He stuck to the original quote because he said the book time was a guess, not a promise. That kind of honesty feels rare now, which is what makes @xena_bailey18's point about the system being set up to make you pay more ring so true.

grant4781mo ago

@mark_ward so you're saying book time is rigged from the start? But doesnt that mean the whole 'hourly rate' model is just as bad since they can stretch a 2 hour job into 4? Seems like the only honest shop is the one who eats the loss when things go wrong, which is exactly why nobody does it anymore.

mark_ward3mo ago

Book time is a total scam, man.

xena_bailey183mo ago

Yeah, calling it a total scam is pretty spot on. I read this article about how shops use those flat rate times to make everything look simple, but they're almost never right. It's just a way to charge you for five hours of work when the job only took two. The whole system is set up to make you pay more, not to show real labor.