How do mechanics get paid, and how does this influence your wallet.

Most people get paid hourly. You work 8 hours a day and you get paid for those 8 hours. Well, most mechanics don't get paid like that. It's a little bit more complex. Most mechanics, especially at dealerships, get paid by a system called flat rate. Basically you do one job and you get paid a specific amount of time for doing it no matter how long it takes. This amount of time is called a flat rate unit, or FRU. Usually one hour of time is divided into 10 FRUs.  So lets say you go to the dealership to get your oil changed. You are billed a specific amount of money which includes parts, labor, shop fees, etc. Out of that money, the technician would get paid 3 FRU for example. That would be about 1/3 rd of an hour, or about 23 minutes. So the technician will get paid 23 minutes to go find your car, pull it in the shop, place it on the lift, request and get the parts, make sure the parts are correct, perform the oil change and usually perform a vehicle inspection, fill tires and fluids, etc. Then clean the interior, test drive the car and park it outside. Then fill out the stories on the computer to close the lines on the repair order and fill out the inspection check lists, etc. and get ready for the next car. So lets say that same tech performs 3 oil changes, that would be about one hour at whatever his hourly rate is. If he gets paid $20 an hour, then after 3 oil changes he would have made about $20. 

         This system can be either good or bad, depending on where you work and how fast you are. If you work at a place that doesn't have a lot of volume, then a technician may be sitting down for half the day, even if he spent 8 hours at the dealer, and only make a few hours since there's no work to do. Now, if you work at a place with a lot of cars then you might want to stay late to work on as many cars as you can to make all the money you can. The more work you do the more you get paid. Also, if you're a very fast person or know how to do a job quicker than however much it pays you will end up making more hours than what you spend at work, so it's totally normal to work 45 hours in a week and actually make 60 hours of pay. So obviously, a tech is going to try to make the most FRUs possible at any time. How does this get accomplished? That's the part that's going to affect the customer. 

         Manufacturer's have their own specific warranty labor times for the jobs that are performed. Let's say replacing a water pump pays 1 hour. When a customer is paying instead of warranty it is normal to multiply the warranty time times 1.25 or 1.5, etc depending on the particular dealership. So let's say a tech has to do a water pump. He might get tempted to do it so fast that he get's sloppy, careless, cuts too many corners, does the job improperly, doesn't check his work, doesn't clean the area after working on the car n order to finish the car and move on. Or if it's customer pay he might be tempted to adjust the FRU times in his favor and add a couple of extra FRUs in there for his own sake. Both situations in my opinion are not acceptable. A customer should get the same price for the same job and have the same quality of work performed every time. But this happens every single day. Sometimes calculating the FRU times might get more complicated if various repairs overlap, meaning repairs that are in the same area or related to another. For example, if you're doing a water pump and the hoses that are connected to the water pump normally you wouldn't charge the customer separately for both, since you already removed the same components to get to that area. You would charge for the water pump and add accordingly to finish the replacement of the hoses instead of adding the complete amount as if you were replacing the hoses separately. This is where again a tech might find himself tempted to charge for both things as if they were separate to make more money. Also the service advisers get paid basically on commission from what they sell, so they could potentially bump up the FRU estimate to make more money for them and the technician too. On the other hand, if you're a good customer the tech and adviser might agree to charge  the customer less to help them out and make them happy. Most dealers are well managed and stuff like this doesn't happen a lot, but it does explain why if 3 people call in for an estimate on the same job they might get 3 different prices. 

         Most techs at a dealership level have a high level of pride in their work and will not try to rip off customers, and the ones that do often get reprimanded or fired. Some techs are super fast and have really good mechanical abilities and can perform excellent quality clean repairs faster than most other people, while others may take twice as long to do the same thing. It really does depend on the individual. Usually the guy who is doing diagnostic work will be slower because they think too much about what is going on, while the guy that does the heavy line (engine work, transmission work, etc) will be faster, but can't diagnose things as well as the diagnostic guys. The good thing is that at a dealership the techs will talk to each other when they have questions and share their knowledge and can usually figure stuff out better than any independent shop out there. And overall, even the guy that is being sloppy, or way too fast, will still make better repairs than any independent would due to their knowledge and experience of working on the same cars every day. 

         So in conclusion, flat rate can be brutal or it can be great depending on where you work. My advice is to get to know your service adviser and develop a good relationship with them. Don't be afraid to ask questions if you have any. An honest adviser will usually have a good explanation for you or will ask the tech to explain the repairs if it's too complicated for them to understand. If you have the option shop around, call multiple dealers and ask for a price on the same repairs. Maybe you can save a few hundred dollars like that. And remember that out of the $100 plus dollars an hour that the dealership is charging, only about 20 to 25 percent of that is for the technician, so please don't think the mechanics are trying to rip you off. It's just the price of the dealer's having to pay techs, adviser's, cleaning employees, warranty department, management, payroll, etc.