Tools for Finding a Good Mechanic : Weighing the Pros, Cons of Dealership, Small Garage
Finding the right mechanic to work on your car probably never has been and never will be a simple matter. Cars are complicated, increasingly so, and humans are fallible, as always.
North County residents who’ve got rattles in their radiators, clunks in their carburetors or wobbles in their wheels have a range of options as they look for someone to set matters right. There are factory-authorized dealers, corner service stations, specialized garages dealing with one or two specific makes and quick-fix outlets.
Despite state licensing and independent certification programs, though, there is no way to be sure if the mechanic leaning under your hood is a dullard or a dream.
“The days have gone by when anybody with a wrench could be called a mechanic,” said Jim Conran, director of the state Department of Consumer Affairs. The basic problem, Conran said, is that cars have become too complex for many mechanics. “You really need a technician now,” he said.
North County garage owner Phil Copeland sees the same problem. Good mechanics are getting tougher to find, he said. As cars become more and more complicated, many mechanics are not motivated to keep up with the technology, he said.
And, even if you find a competent mechanic, there is almost no way to know if he or she will be honest.
San Diego County has 2,736 repair facilities licensed by the state’s Bureau of Automotive Repair, which is a division of the Department of Consumer Affairs. Last year, 2,500 repair complaints were filed with the bureau in the county. More than 500 service stations, smog inspectors and mechanics were cited for violations, and fined more than $241,000.
And those figures are expected to rise.
According to Conran, the bureau filed more complaints against repair providers during the most recent three-month period than in the entire previous 12 months.
“There’s no way to regulate honesty,” said Maury Kramer, director of garage certification for the Automobile Club of Southern California.
Unfortunately, finding a good mechanic can be tough proposition. A mechanic you see on a regular basis is more likely to provide good service, to know your car and take the time to do the job right. A lot of consumers apparently believe that searching for a good mechanic is a worthwhile undertaking.
According to a Los Angeles Times poll conducted last spring, 72% of North County residents said they have a regular auto mechanic. The 28% of respondents who said they had no regular mechanic tended to be relatively new to the community.
The key to reducing your chances of getting a bad mechanic is to shop around.
There are a variety of certification programs that try to assure customers the person working on their car has passed at least some kind of scrutiny.
The most basic is the state’s licensing program. Every repair facility in California must take out a license from the Bureau of Automotive Repair in order to operate. Never take your car to an unlicensed garage.
Many mechanics are certified by the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence, or ASE. One criticism of ASE tests is that they are written exams with no hands-on requirements. Still, it can be comforting to know the person working on your car has at least been grounded in the theory behind his job.
New car dealers usually have their own training programs for mechanics, often sponsored by the manufacturer, and some oil companies have rigid certification procedures of their own.
The Automobile Club of Southern California has its own certification program for garages. In order to receive the auto club’s stamp of approval, a garage must undergo inspections, background checks and a survey of customers. (A good garage may not be certified if, say, its work is restricted to brakes only or if it is part of a chain that hasn’t been certified. The club will certify only an entire chain, not individual shops.)
While choosing between certified and non-certified garages, consumers must also decide if the service they are looking for is best offered at a dealership, local service station, specialty garage or quick-service establishment.
It is a misconception among consumers that they will pay more for service at a dealership than at a service station, said Terry Maxey, a service manager at Toyota of Carlsbad.
“We see the bills from customers taken to the cleaners by service stations. They pay X amount, the service station can’t figure out what’s wrong, and then the station says, ‘Take it to the dealer.’ ”
Maxey said his firm recruits mechanics from local technical schools. Would-be mechanics then take ASE exams before moving on to schools operated by Toyota.
In order to advance through the ranks, the mechanics must pass the ASE tests and a series of Toyota courses. When a mechanic has 60 months of experience and has passed all Toyota courses, he or she receives Toyota’s top classification.
Most other auto makers have similar training programs.
Phil Copeland, owner of Lake San Marcos UNOCAL, said that despite their training programs, dealerships lose many of their best-trained mechanics who can make more money working for service stations.
“Usually a dealer only has one or two real vets,” he said.
Besides, Copeland said, dealer service managers, the people who write up a repair order, are often paid a commission on what they write, so their incentive is to write more repairs.
Instead, Copeland said, independent service stations rely on repeat business. Their diagnosis must be right the first time because parts they order for a repair are not usually returnable.
It is not necessary to have a mechanic trained specifically on your car, Copeland maintains, since most repair jobs are somewhat generic regardless of make, and since some oil companies have their own training schools for mechanics.
Hugo Hahn, owner of Hugo’s European Car Service in Encinitas, believes specialty garages are the best option for certain car owners.
“We specialize in Volvos,” he said. “We know everything there is to know about Volvos. If you go to a gas station to have a problem fixed on a Volvo, that person will not be as familiar with it as we are. We can be much faster, and so less expensive.”
At the other end of the spectrum are places like the Jiffy Lube in Escondido, where oil changes have been turned into a study in speed. Henry York, manager of the store, said most oil changes take barely 10 minutes, and include a safety check by the three or four people who change the oil and lube the car.
But service station mechanics said such fast service may be convenient but can offer a false sense of security, since the employees at quick change franchises do not have enough time to thoroughly inspect a car’s safety points.
The Auto Club’s Kramer thinks each type of repair facility has its advantages, and it is up to the consumer to pick the one that best suits his or her needs.
For example, Kramer said, service stations are still generally less expensive than dealers in their hourly labor rates, but the gap is closing.
A dealer is more likely to have the right part you need on hand without delay. And that part, if it is unique to your make of car, is likely to cost less since the dealer receives parts from the maker at a wholesale price. Service stations pay more for those parts.
If your car’s maintenance or repair is covered under the warranty, of course take it to the dealer.
On the other hand, service stations are much more personal. They do far less volume and will often take more time with your car. At a dealership, oil changes are often done by trainees or inexperienced mechanics.
Consumer Affairs director Conran worries that many small garages simply cannot keep up with the changes, mostly in computer technology, that have taken place in automobiles. He takes his car to his local mechanic for some jobs and to the dealership for others.
“No one can be competent on every car. If you take your car in to a guy and ask if he can fix it, of course he is going to say ‘yes,’ ” Conran said.
“But to keep up, these small guys have to pay a lot of money to go to classes. And when they go they have to close their shops. Most of them are honest, but that doesn’t mean they are competent.”
