When Selling on Price Backfires
A salesman representing a brand name car shop knocked on our door to sell us discounted oil changes.
The offer was fairly good as far as offers go. You pay for a certain number of oil changes up front and the cost of each one is substantially below retail.
All good and fine.
But I said no. Not really interested. I told him I plan to keep taking my Honda Odyssey to Ralph Schomp, the dealer I bought it from.
Why I Turned Down a “Good” Deal
A few years ago, my father-in-law started up an auto repair shop with a couple partners.
Dishonesty and all kinds of fraud plague the auto repair business, so their goal was to create a shop where everybody was totally honest — no shenanigans.
And yet in spite of this stated goal, my father-in-law struggled to find honest mechanics.
One of his mechanics kept telling every single customer they needed a new ball joint. Obviously, my father-in-law became suspicious. How could every customer need a new ball joint?
One night he closed up shop and told his best mechanic to come back to work an hour after closing. He didn’t give his mechanic any prior information. All he said was, “Give this car a check and tell me if it needs any work.”
Turns out, everything was fine with the car. It didn’t need a new ball joint at all.
But what “ball joint guy” had figured out is that most people have no idea how cars work, so they’ll believe anything you tell them. If you tell them they need a new ball joint, they almost have no choice but to believe you.
“Ball joint guy” had also figured out that replacing ball joints was quite lucrative. High labor cost, low material cost, so he got to keep a bigger piece of the profit.
Needless to say, they fired “ball joint guy” pronto.
It’s Not Just Mechanics Who Are Dishonest
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the problems my father-in-law ran into while trying to run an honest shop.
Later on, he discovered that one of his partners (who was also the operations manager) had been intentionally overcharging customers and pocketing the difference.
So if the cost of the repair was $100, he’d charge $110 and keep the $10 difference for himself. Over a period of a year or two, he stole around $20K from the till.
Figuring the whole thing out was an accounting nightmare. It took a couple months of secret monitoring to collect enough records and evidence. They literally had to let the partner keep stealing until they had built their case!
Long story short, they arrested the dishonest partner, brought their case against him, and he was found guilty. He went to jail, and he’s still there.
Trust Trumps Price
Based on my father-in-law’s “insider experience,” I’m personally very hesitant to try any auto repair shop. I figure most mechanics are like “ball joint guy” — making up imaginary repairs that put more money in the mechanic’s pocket.
But I feel good about Ralph Schomp. They’re not the cheapest, but they’ve provided consistent quality service. They honor their price quotes. They always throw in a complimentary car wash. And they treat everybody with respect.
It’s one of the best dealerships I’ve ever done business with (or even visited).
So the brand name company wants me to buy cheap oil changes from a door-to-door salesman? It just seems like a gimmick to get me into the repair shop where they’ll try to get me to pay for expensive, imaginary repairs.
-Ryan M. Healy
