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PSA: A customer argued that charging $150 for a diagnostic is a rip-off, but my shop owner said it's the only way to cover the time for complex electrical issues.
He said, 'If we just guess, you pay for the wrong part, but if we spend two hours tracing a short, you pay for the fix,' which made me rethink flat-rate pricing versus hourly for diag work, so what's your shop's policy?
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gavin4694mo ago
$85 at my shop and they don't roll it into anything. So if the fix is a loose fuse you're out 85 bucks for a 30 second fix. I asked the front desk guy about it once and he just shrugged and said, "That's the price of finding out it's not the transmission." Real helpful.
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corap215mo ago
What if shops charged a lower diag fee but applied it to the final repair cost?
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leehall5mo ago
That idea about the lower fee getting applied to the repair is SOLID. My mechanic does a $35 check that goes toward the work if I choose to do it there. It made me way more likely to say yes when my brakes needed pads, because I wasn't just throwing that money away. It feels like they're invested in fixing the problem, not just charging me to look at it.
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