Car repairs non genuine parts

[Bob Vegana.]

Yeah, that's what that NRMA joint my mate trialled at was like.

15 minutes to smash out a basic service including a check-over for upsells, or some bullshit like that.

Mate was knocking them out in half hour or so, thinking he was impressing them, until they pulled him up on it, and told him pick up the pace. He thought it was a little unusual, when there were three blokes out on the shop floor, with 5 jobs booked between them for the whole day.

[Soopy]

Quality in the insurance shops is shit house. A few old work mates work in one and the say its like a concentration camp, high work loads with the main focus on numbers. The quality shops will stay around if they have a strong customer base(I hope...).

The problem is, every fucking retard thinks privately owned panel shops are all shonky cunts. But AAMI will be good to me, because they're a big business!!

[Blow]

The problem is, every fucking retard thinks privately owned panel shops are all shonky cunts. But AAMI will be good to me, because they're a big business!!

Word will spread, have a look at basic reviews on google etc, didn't look good last I looked.

Problem is most people have no idea what they are entitled to. They have a smash, ring the insurance company and they say "no problem, bring it to us and we will take care of everything and have it done in 5 days." Or you could take it to your local guy, book it in to be assessed and the insurance company goes "sorry, we don't have anyone available to look at it for 2-3 weeks unless you bring it to us".

As for pay rates, I believe the smart shops don't pay to bad, around 30ph with a mandatory 5 hours OT per week.

[Bob Vegana.]

Mother in-law just pranged her Yaris for the second time in this year.

Interesting to see how it plays out this time, because now it looks pretty fucked. Drivable, but fucked. Driver's door, bumper, guard, headlight, and untold steering and suspension damage, from what I can tell.

[dnegative]

I have found over the last 10yrs, most tradesmen will tell the kids to not bother with it.

There is still money in my trade but I was told by them to go to uni, smoke cones, fuck all the sluts and avoid this cunt of a place.
They were partially correct, the fucking and the drugs would of been good but I know damn well I would of been worse off for it.

All the apprentices we have are fucking useless, we have 4th years who struggle with the basics of diesel fuel systems, major fucking problem when your an apprentice diesel mechanic.
Truth be told it is the tradesman's fault for not teaching them anything but when the cunts turn up and couldn't give two fucks about their career and tell you to piss off if you try talk to them then they are on their own.


/Not allowed to hurt them anymore, few had a sook after a few practical jokes at their expense.

[Soopy]

There is still money in my trade but I was told by them to go to uni, smoke cones, fuck all the sluts and avoid this cunt of a place.
They were partially correct, the fucking and the drugs would of been good but I know damn well I would of been worse off for it.

All the apprentices we have are fucking useless, we have 4th years who struggle with the basics of diesel fuel systems, major fucking problem when your an apprentice diesel mechanic.
Truth be told it is the tradesman's fault for not teaching them anything but when the cunts turn up and couldn't give two fucks about their career and tell you to piss off if you try talk to them then they are on their own.


/Not allowed to hurt them anymore, few had a sook after a few practical jokes at their expense.

Bit of a worry Re: fuel system.
But you're right about tradesmen not training fuck all. I mean, they should be expected to be a teacher, but a lot of the time apprentices aren't allowed to the job they're being trained to do unless they're at tafe. That's a total fucking waste of time.

[Bob Vegana.]

There's that old saying, "What you're taught at Tafe, you learn at work".

It's at that point now where kids walking in off the street are doing service work straight off the bat. Sure, they might learn the process involved, but what about spotting potential component failures? All because everybody in the workshop has to be porductive.

[Soopy]

There's that old saying, "What you're taught at Tafe, you learn at work".

It's at that point now where kids walking in off the street are doing service work straight off the bat. Sure, they might learn the process involved, but what about spotting potential component failures? All because everybody in the workshop has to be porductive.

Yep, 1st year should be spent fetching spanners and watching the tradesman work. Not sweeping floors or changing oil all day.

[Bob Vegana.]

Back when I was a first year, I was the first to arrive, and the last to leave. The first and last hours of the day were spent cleaning, setting up, and packing up. Outside of that, I was helping the other techs, and being a gopher. Very rarely did I work independantly on a car, unless I was giving it a wash, or putting a set of mats, or some other difficult-to-fuck-up accessory on it.

I was never really expected to be properly productive and independant til the 3rd year of my apprenticeship.

[irsa76]

For some stupid reason the dealers I worked for all decided to get the apprentices to do the pre-deliveries. Until the respective sales managers ordered a stop. I mightn't be a good general mechanic but I must have done something right when every sales manger at every dealer I've worked for has specifically asked that I do the new car work. Fuck, it's not hard to do, but it's easier to fuck up it seems. I was fitting A/C before the end of my first year FFS, the only apprentice allowed to do it. The other one manged to completely fuck a TR Magna dash trying to fit the switch!
Funnily enough the other guys doing new car work were generally the old guys who've been in the trade for decades, might be cranky old cunts but they knew their shit and you learnt real quick when you fucked up.

[plz_2_pimphomo]

There's that old saying, "What you're taught at Tafe, you learn at work".

It's at that point now where kids walking in off the street are doing service work straight off the bat. Sure, they might learn the process involved, but what about spotting potential component failures? All because everybody in the workshop has to be porductive.

I would hope it would be common sense, hey the oil looks like a rainbow maybe I should tell someone.

[Soopy]

I would hope it would be common sense, hey the oil looks like a rainbow maybe I should tell someone.

You soon learn that there is no such concept with apprentices.

[Falc&Send]

Insurance companies screwing panel beaters is the oldest game in town. Back about thirty years ago some bright spark in either the NRMA or GIO came up with the idea that they would only pay if the beater bought all the parts he quoted on, a lot of them fixed instead of replaced some stuff and the insurance companies wanted to sight the parts invoices or no money. You could have seen what was coming at high speed, the beaters bought the parts, still repaired what they wanted to, claimed the dough then sent the parts back for credit. That scheme had a very short life when the parts managers went nuts and rang the insurance companies. The panel beaters thought it was a money tree for a while and were pissed off when the insurance companies pulled the plug on the whole thing.

Still happens. I used to work in parts at a dealer and the amount of parts that were sent back from panel shops was unreal. I used to process the credits for them. I used tell the boses about it but they didn't want to piss the panel shops off by refusing the credits in case they went somewhere else to buy their parts.

[Falc&Send]

I would hope it would be common sense, hey the oil looks like a rainbow maybe I should tell someone.

They wouldn't know that that is out of the ordinary because the diagnostics computer/iPhone app didn't tell them. This is my observation of dealership monkeys, maybe private workshops are different. Dealership I used to work at had only one or two qualified tradespeople to about thirty T/As or apprentices. Still charge the customer full rate to have car serviced but most people weren't aware and thought that getting service done by dealer was better than by a private workshop.

[Captain_Slow]

This has been a fascinating thread.

Apprentices sound like a chicken and egg problem. What was the going rate for a qualified panelbeater again - $19-21ph someone was saying? What about for a mechanic?

If that's the case we shouldn't be surprised that our best and brightest aren't taking up automotive trades...

Having said that, we don't get apprentices where I work but we do get graduates, and plenty of those appear to have left uni without being able to write but expecting to be able to run the place within a year or two of starting. Seems to be a complete absence of the realisation that you need to start at the bottom and learn basic skills first before you can be in charge.