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Diagnosis
?My wife?s car won?t start, at times. I am pretty sure that it needs a new battery,? says the Customer.
?I would suggest that we check out the car to determine what is wrong,? replies the Service Advisor. ?It might not be the battery.?
?Is there a charge for this diagnosis??
?I would think $45 worth of diagnostic labour should determine the cause.?
?You are just trying to rip me off,? says the Customer. ?I know it?s the battery - just install a new one.?
Dealerships can only work on what they are authorized to do. In this case, the battery goes in and out goes the car. Three days later when the car won?t start, the customer is upset and accusations of ?incompetence? and ?rip off? start coming our way. We are not incompetent ? we were never paid to diagnose the problem properly in the first place. (If we had received authorization to check the vehicle, as suggested, we would have discovered the worn starter solenoid contacts.)
I don?t presume to know anything about cosmetic dentistry or structural engineering, and for good reason. People in those professions (as in any profession) spend years learning their skills so that they become competent practitioners.
When it comes to the Service Department of new-car dealerships, customers are not so easily humbled at the expertise required to diagnose and repair vehicles. In fact, some customers are often quite willing to offer armchair diagnosis ?on a hunch? or because ?my neighbour?s car made the same noise last week?.
This type of approach would be like walking into a doctor?s office with stomach pains, and suggesting to the medical staff that they remove your appendix. The medical staff would look at you as if you?d lost your mind.
Service Advisors or technicians require ?symptoms? from customers, not ?diagnoses?. Some people are significantly better at communicating symptoms about their ailing vehicles than others. One example might sound like this: ?My car won?t start at times ? most times, it is okay. There is no pattern; it just makes a clicking noise, but the lights work. If I boost the battery it usually starts. What would you recommend??
On the other hand, others believe they know, or should know, all about cars and they tend to show off their ?expertise? - especially if they are in the company of someone whom they are trying to impress. When it comes to cars, a little knowledge is often a dangerous thing.
One of the most underrated aspects of a technician?s job is the diagnosis. Technicians attend years of schooling and apprenticing in order to learn how to conduct a proper diagnosis on your vehicle. The last thing they want is to misdiagnose a problem because it costs them (and the dealership) time and money, and the customer is unhappy.
All technicians, apprentices, and some customers can remove and replace parts. The real skill is in figuring out which parts to replace. When a technician opens the hood of a car, there are no big arrows pointing to the fault. Nor is there a magic computer, despite what many customers believe, that can be hooked up to cars, telling technicians, at a glance, all they need to know.
Of course, scanners and computer test equipment can offer assistance on many repairs, but they usually only assist in pinpointing specific circuits in vehicles. Many of these circuits contain multiple components. There is no substitute for the ?human computer? that resides in the brain of the technician.
In many diagnostic cases, general repair shops will, after initially attempting a repair, advise their customers to, ?Take your vehicle to a dealership?. When that happens, a customer could very well show up at a service department having already spent $300 because his/her car wouldn?t start. He/she resents being at the dealership at all, and will, unfairly, proceed to take his/her frustrations out on the Service Advisor or technician.
However, there is a good chance that the dealership technician working on your vehicle has experienced your specific problem before. That?s an advantage that new-car dealerships have over general repair shops. Whatever type of vehicle you drive, the dealership that sells that make knows it from bumper to bumper.
It?s important to note that dealerships are specialists in repairing their own brands of vehicles. They also are current about prices charged by general repair shops, and offer competitive rates on all services. So, in order to avoid scenarios like the above, servicing your vehicle at a dealership may not only save you time and frustration, but money as well.
In closing, I would suggest that you pay dealerships to diagnose your vehicle and then hold us responsible for that diagnosis. If we replace parts that do not solve your problem, then we are at fault, and we will be on the hook. Leave the diagnosis and the responsibility to the professionals.
Ken Shaw Jr. is President of the Toronto Automobile Dealers Association and is a new-car dealer in Toronto. E-mail comments to president@tada.ca
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