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Dear concerned car owner,
Dealing with transmission shops.
This section should be easy: Ask questions, ask questions!
In the transmission business, there is
a lot of room for the shop to, well... be dishonest. Some
transmission shops in my area are trustworthy and very good at what they do.
Now let's define what is good, and what is bad.
Just as I've stressed throughout the book,
you need to find someone you can trust and believe. You will probably
only set foot in the transmission shop once during the life of your car.
Thank God for that. Most car transmissions are made to last the life of the
vehicle if properly maintained and serviced regularly. Most automatic
transmissions have a filter that should be replaced, and the fluid changed
periodically. Check the owner's manual for service interval, but a good rule of
thumb is to change the filter and the fluid every 25,000 miles under normal
conditions.
What are normal conditions
you ask? The owners manual will usually list what they feel is normal and
severe driving conditions in the scheduled maintenance section of the manual. I
have found that the term "severe driving condition" usually refers to having
the air conditioning on while the engine is running. If this was the case, it
might suggest that you service the transmission every 30 days to avoid
premature wear and internal damage.
The manufacturers do a great job at
protecting their rears from lawsuits, and will sometimes be a little too
protective, so also ask your mechanic for his opinion. If you are in need of
transmission work, you should ask
your regular repair shop if they do transmission repairs in house or
subcontract the work to another shop. If your regular repair shop is
willing to send the car to their transmission shop,
let them do it for
you.
My shop does not do automatic transmission
repairs inhouse. We have used the same transmission shop for 25 years, and for
the most part have had good experience. We mark up the price of the
transmission work just enough to cover the cost of handling and the overall
hassle we go through to get transmission repairs for our good
customers. Trust me, we do not make a great deal of profit doing this.
We do this for our good customers.
The customer who has been down the transmission shop road before knows he/she
does not want the hassle. As I write this portion of the book, I think of the
three cars that we have at the transmission shop right now that were supposed
to have been ready two days ago. Who
does the customer call/complain to? Not the transmission shop. My
shop is also the one you bring the car back to for any warranty problems
that you might have with your transmission. It is nice to know that the shop
that you regularly do your repair business with is the middleman for
you.
Our transmission shop will always back
us in a questionable warranty situation, and we have much more pull than
you would as a one-time customer. If you are calling around for price quotes on
transmission work, I wish you luck. I have called around my area to check out
what the competition is doing, and even I cannot figure out what these guys are
doing. Especially when it comes to transmission work-
do not go on price alone.
Not until your car is in the transmission
shop and your transmission is on the floor and torn apart in many pieces
will they give you the exact total. I can tell you, after many phone
calls in my area, there is a big difference in price, almost double in
some shops! Once these guys get your transmission on the floor and you signed
that work order we talked about earlier, you are at their mercy. I
really liked talking to the transmission shops that were honest and up front
about their pricing, and what they would probably find inside the transmission
of my 80,000 mile car that had never been serviced and had been making this
strange noise for the last couple of weeks.
If it is going to cost $1,400 dollars, tell
me now. Do not sway me in at $800 dollars and work me up to
$1,600 dollars later. This is
what usually happens. If you need transmission work, get the
worst-case scenario up frontso you will not be disappointed in the end.
Things to look for at a transmission shop: Look in the parking lot for vehicles
that appear to be abandoned. I always wonder how many of these cars came in on
those inexpensive loss-leader ads, and the final bill ended up being so much
that the owner had to forfeit ownership of the car-or just left it rather than
pay.
What is the average age of vehicle in
the parking lot? If most of the cars are 10 to 15 years old, they might not
be qualified to work on your newer model. I want my mechanic to be experienced
with cars just like mine. Do you see
any company vehicles that you recognize? Companies that are well
established usually have a fleet manager who is in charge of maintaining the
company's vehicles. Do those companies have a good reputation in the
community?
Most fleet managers go by price first and
warranty second, and overall quality is not as important as getting the cars
back on the road fast and cheap. The fleet manager wants to keep his/her budget
under control, and keep the vehicles on the road. Government or city vehicles
in the parking lot tell me that the
shop was the low bidder, and will probably do the least amount of
work just to get those vehicles back on the road. My best advice to you when it
comes to transmissions is to maintain your transmission and service it
as needed to hopefully avoid having to deal with transmission shops
Click on the link above to go to the
site.
Sincerely,

Austin C Davis
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