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Confessions of a Shop Owner is hosted by Mike Allen, a third-generation shop owner, perpetual pot-stirrer, and brutally honest opinion sharer. In this weekly podcast, Mike shares his missteps so you don’t have to repeat them. Along the way, he chats with other industry personalities who’ve messed up, too, pulling back the curtain on the realities of running an independent auto repair shop. But this podcast isn’t just about Mike’s journey. It’s about confronting the divisive and questionable tactics many shop owners and managers use. Mike is here to stir the pot and address the painful truths while offering a way forward. Together, we’ll tackle the frustrations, shake things up, and help create a better future for the auto repair industry.
Mike Allen [00:00:00]:
So thank you for coming on a day that we don't normally record because I got a bit of a bee in my bonnet and wanted to make some, some commentary. So look, I think there is this conversation happening on some of the channels that we all are active in about, I mean nobody around the bush. It's about no charge diag. Right. And there's like flittering around other parts of it, but it's really about no charge diag, free diag and how it's unethical or bad for the, bad for the industry or some other such nonsense. And I think the real deal here is that they're making noise. It's not about protecting the customer. It's about the fact that they're uncomfortable with capitalism and the market is evolving and competitive pressure is forcing them to explain their value statement in a way that the competition doesn't have to when they use this methodology.
Mike Allen [00:01:07]:
And I want to kind of get into that and break down a few of those points that are being made. But I also don't want to step all over you. Would you do me a favor and just tell me a little bit about a core that you had in yesterday where another shop who was very proud to charge for their diagnostics at.
Bryan Pollock [00:01:25]:
Oh yeah, man, yeah. There's a Nissan, Nissan Frontier, little Nissan frontier with a 4.0 V6. Customer's original complaint was that it was a long crank and the transmission was kicking. That's what it was written up. That's what the customer described it as. So hard shift. And so I go out there, oh, and in the notes it said customer already had cam sensor replaced. Cool.
Bryan Pollock [00:01:54]:
So dig through. Another shop charged her like 174 or 178, I can't remember. $170 something Diagnostic had the same code that I had. When I got into it. I did some investigating. What I found out is the cam sensor on the passenger side bank one cam sensor was only putting out three and a half volts and bank two on the driver's side was putting out 12 and a half. Bank two cam sensor was also brand new. And how they left it basically was they charged her diag, charged her for the cam sensor, charged her for the labor to install and said hey, we replaced this cam sensor but it's doing the same thing.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:34]:
The cam sensor must have damaged something. You might have to take it and get it programmed. Buy a shop that does programming. So we have shop that and I get a lot, I get really frustrated about this and I understand my, my market is it's goofy out here. We're out here in the middle of nowhere. We offer a service that, you know, I'm not going to say nobody else around us, you know, there's, there's a couple shops in West New York that offer this service but you know, most shops don't even offer a mid level diagnostic service. And the idea that somebody was going to charge $178 and they couldn't even get the stupid cam sensor, put it on the right side and then they said, well, you're off, you're gonna have to take it somewhere else. Like is this.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:25]:
But it's, it's multiple times, it's multiple times a week, right? It's the same thing multiple times a week. For us. We're seeing this, we're seeing premiums charged at other shops and the car doesn't run right and you bring it in and something's not plugged in.
Mike Allen [00:03:43]:
So what is a bigger problem for the industry is it shops that charge a lot for diag because they know their worth, they know your worth and can't diagnose their way out of a wet paper bag or shops that don't charge for diag, they pay their technicians and they do the right diagnosis.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:04]:
Yeah, it's charging. Charging beyond your actual skill set is actually a huge problem in this industry and we see it a lot. And it's the elephant in the room, right? And the thing is people that listen to this are so engaged with the industry and committed to excellence that everybody's gonna be like, it's not like that. It's not like that. Well, okay, let's take a step back.
Mike Allen [00:04:24]:
Why aren't there any videos being made by dudes with low cut shirts ranting about shops that are charging more than their value?
Bryan Pollock [00:04:33]:
It's not, it's the, it's the elephant in the room, right? It's the elephant names. Yeah, it's the elephant in the room. Nobody wants to talk about, nobody wants to talk about the idea that, you know, it's, it's funny what seems like happens is when a shop can really school something and do it very efficiently, they want to charge for the outcome, right? They're like, oh well, it doesn't matter how long it took me, I'm bringing you a fixed car. But when they're not familiar with the system or they don't know how to test a certain system or they've made a couple wrong moves or whatever. Oh no, no, no, we're not charging for the outcome. You're gonna have to pay me for my time. Right. And it's like, you look at it, and they always, you know, and I get it.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:21]:
It's a business. You always want to be on the winning side. But to take this moral standpoint, I mean, you gotta, you gotta pick a side and get on it. I mean, we charge for outcomes, and we, and we, and we charge a lot of money for some of the outcomes.
Mike Allen [00:05:35]:
Customers not there to pay for diagnostic. For a diagnostic line item and then a part line item and then a labor line item and then a sales tax line item. They're paying.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:43]:
They want a fixed car.
Mike Allen [00:05:44]:
Fixed car.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:45]:
Yeah, they want a fixed car. They want a fixed car. You know, and I get it. There's gonna be outliers to these general rules that we're talking about right now. For sure there's gonna be outlier cars. But, man, I, I, you know, at least if the customer doesn't pay for diag, they got what they paid for. Right. And.
Bryan Pollock [00:06:06]:
And I don't know. And I don't know.
Mike Allen [00:06:08]:
Like, there's. Well, there's a couple of outcomes in most of the cases for diagnostics. Right. There's a correct diagnosis and an incorrect diagnosis.
Bryan Pollock [00:06:16]:
Yep. Yep.
Mike Allen [00:06:17]:
Or an incomplete diagnosis. You know, whatever.
Bryan Pollock [00:06:19]:
We'll say we're talking about the 90%. Just the 90% of automobiles. We're not going to talk about those 10% that are super unique cases that, you know, weird. Right.
Mike Allen [00:06:28]:
We'll talk about correct diagnosis if the customer paid for it and then they pay for the repair, or the customer didn't pay for the diagnosis and then they paid for the repair. And is the customer harmed in that situation? Yeah, I don't believe so. No, I believe, as a matter of fact, they've come out better now. And we'll talk about the. Well, you built the charges, the diagnostic pricing into everything in a minute. But if the diagnosis is incorrect and the customer paid for an incorrect diagnosis or they didn't pay for an incorrect diagnosis, either one of them is bad for the customer because they've got faulty information. Right. But what's worse than.
Bryan Pollock [00:07:07]:
I feel like, I feel like in our personal experience as a shop that deals with incorrect diagnosis as paid and unpaid a lot. It's a lot harder for me to convince somebody they got to pay me 200 after they paid the last ass wipe 150 bucks or 200 bucks and the freaking car still broke.
Mike Allen [00:07:23]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:07:24]:
Like, if they didn't pay for nothing, they're like, you know, did the old. The thing that we always talk about with free is autozone, right? Like if they went to autozone and I'm like, dude, yeah, that's why it's free, man. There's not a lot of information there. They're like, it's not that hard of a seller. But when they paid a guy $200 to scan for codes and read some bulletins and wing a pardon because he read something about it on an identifix track and the car's not fixed and he put it on the road, that customer's injured. They're gun shy. Yeah, they're gun shy, right? So I don't know, man. Well, as far as damage to the industry, which I don't even talk about with that anyways, because part stores are doing free scans anyways and we can't.
Bryan Pollock [00:08:07]:
We can't outrun corporate parts stores anyhow.
Mike Allen [00:08:09]:
Wait, pause. It's not just damaging the industry. It's bad for the environment, it's bad for the social structure and it's bad for ethically bad in general. Let me read this post from you. Plenty of businesses have made money and employed a lot of people and provided a needed service at a price point consumers can afford with doing things that are devastating to the environment socially and ethically. They said they were meeting demand. They said they were innovating. They said they were keeping costs low for the customer.
Mike Allen [00:08:43]:
And now their names live in infamy because somewhere along the way it makes money became the only litmus test for it must be good. Oh, wait. Oh wait. Okay, then he says now I'm not saying this is the same thing. Okay, so this is totally not all of those things that he just wrote. So, so discount. That was just delete it all. You don't even need that on the post.
Mike Allen [00:09:07]:
Because he's not saying that this is fucking horrible and bad for the environment and the social fabric of America. He's just saying that, I don't know some other thing is horrible like that. But what I am saying is we should careful. We should be careful what we normalize just because it pays. So 1.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:28]:
Yes, we should be careful what we normalize just because it pays. And charging for subpar diagnostics. We should quit normalizing that because we normalize the out of it. We normalize the out of. Dude, how many times do we have to see RYR2024? Well, what are you offering that's better than 2023 to bump your labor rate? 30 bucks this year. What are you doing?
Mike Allen [00:09:49]:
Raised our rates beyond our value.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:50]:
Yeah. And then every in February Everybody's like, I got no freaking cars. I don't understand why I got no cars in my shop in February. And I'm taking a break from car number 37 for the day to say, hey man, maybe you shouldn't have raised your labor rate. Maybe you shouldn't be bragging about your $300 frickin oil changes that you can't freaking produce enough marketing to outrun that at the counter. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't get it, man.
Mike Allen [00:10:15]:
All right, so clearly I button my shirt now so I can stop being silly. I'm not gonna stop being silly, but clearly I'm talking about, I'm talking to and about Lucas's post that he made earlier this week, one of his walking around outside the shop posts. But I want, I do want to respond to some of the points that are being had in this argument. And the first one is the. Oh, you're charging for diag. You're just charging everybody for their diag. You're socialist, right? You know what? Yes, I am. I raise my labor rates to offset the free diag.
Mike Allen [00:10:47]:
You know the other things that I charge for that I don't tell my customers about? Loaner cars, shuttle service, credit card fees, because I don't fucking charge my customers a separate line item for credit card coffee in the lobby. You know, not everybody gets a loaner car, but they all pay for it. Not everybody uses my shuttle service, but they all pay for it. Not everybody gets coffee or a snack or a Coke. They all pay for it. It's called a business plan.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:11]:
And not everybody waits in the waiting room, but they all pay for it. Not everybody sits there and sucks your air conditioning up, but they all pay for it.
Mike Allen [00:11:19]:
I don't understand how that's so hard to believe. Now none of those other things are bad for the environment or the social fabric of America, just free diag. Just to be clear. So anyway, they get fired up about diag hurting the trade, but the outrage is not there over shitty diag, which we've just talked about.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:38]:
Yeah, the lack of competency hurts way more than the free diagnostic. And then the idea that just because it's free. I don't know, I know some of your guys a little bit. You got some pretty sharp guys working for you. So you get this whole new world, it's free, you know, you get whatever. And it's like, oh no, man, Mike's got a couple of sharp guys working for him. I don't know that they're getting Lesser, lesser skills than the shop up the road that's charging 200 bucks to die.
Mike Allen [00:12:06]:
The car in total clear. We fuck some cars up, man. We make same.
Bryan Pollock [00:12:12]:
Same.
Mike Allen [00:12:13]:
All these people on their high horse talking about how I'm destroying the social fabric of America by having they're the cars up too. They also up some cars. Yeah, right. You show me the perfect shop and then stay out of it. Because if any one of us goes into it, we will it up.
Bryan Pollock [00:12:30]:
Just like a free lunch.
Mike Allen [00:12:32]:
Oh my God.
Bryan Pollock [00:12:33]:
Yeah, I know.
Mike Allen [00:12:34]:
So. I don't know, man. And so look, there's also this growing belief that I've made the analogy before about driving about. It's like, you know, if I'm driving on the interstate and I'm doing 80 miles an hour, anybody who's driving slower than me needs to learn how to drive because they don't know how to drive as good as me. Anybody who drives faster than me needs to be fucking arrested and thrown under the jail because they're reckless and dangerous. Anybody who's doing it different than me doesn't know what they're doing and they're crazy. Yeah, right.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:02]:
Everybody's pretty convinced that there's only one way to run.
Mike Allen [00:13:05]:
Oh my God.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:06]:
Even, even if that were true, let's. Let's just imagine. Let's go to imagination land. Let's imagine that somebody is right. There's only one way to run. But that, that's going to change from market to market. I've told you before, if I had a shop in downtown Houston and I had to fix Land Rovers, probably wouldn't be doing too hot, right? Just like if a shop in downtown Houston had some farmer come by with a loader tire on a trailer and he's like, I need you to take care of this for me. Because whoever takes care of this is going to be doing all the other work.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:39]:
They probably wouldn't do that great out here, right? That's. It's, it's. There's. Even if there is only one correct way to run, it wouldn't work in all the markets anyways. I'm so sick of this bs. All markets are the same. No, they're not. They're are not the same.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:53]:
I've heard that too many times. You know it's not true.
Mike Allen [00:13:58]:
Yeah, we have to accept and agree that there are variances in markets. There are variances in business models and plans, there are variances and systems and processes. Just because it's different doesn't mean it's crooked. Right? There are shops out there that have good quality people, they use good quality parts, they have a great warranty, they give great customer service and they're cheaper than me. That does not make them a crook.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:23]:
Nope.
Mike Allen [00:14:24]:
And there are ones out there who are all of those things that are more expensive than me, and that doesn't make them a crook. There are ones out there who don't use as good a quality part. They don't pay their people as well, they don't give us good a warranty, and they're more expensive than me. That doesn't make them a crook either. That's just a factor of their expense structure. And their customers. Yeah, their customers are buying.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:44]:
So how close, maybe how close the guy is to retirement or whatever. Right? I mean, there's, there's many factors that go into that.
Mike Allen [00:14:50]:
Oh, my God.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:52]:
I mean, you know, I made the point the other day. People always, the cool thing to do is make fun of the mobile mechanics. Like, oh, they're out there messing stuff up. They're out there messing stuff up. And somebody said that the other day. And I, I made the point. I go, they're like, yeah, mobile mechanics mess up way more stuff than shops do. I go, bro.
Bryan Pollock [00:15:09]:
I said, every mobile mechanic a month before he started his business was cars up at somebody's brick and mortar. What are you, what are you talking about? Every single. That's where they all come from. Nobody wakes up one day and says, I'm going to be a mobile mechanic. They all worked in a shop. 90, a vast majority of them worked in a shop and they were in shops screwing cars up before they went out on their own and decided to screw cars up on their own. If they're, if they're that bad, right, That's. We lose sight of the reality, I think, I think sometimes I do the same thing.
Bryan Pollock [00:15:44]:
I do the same thing. You know, sometimes we lose sight of reality.
Mike Allen [00:15:48]:
I think people just need to realize that if you meet someone who's doing it differently, maybe before you automatically condemn them, you ask questions and find out how they're doing it, why they're doing it that way, how it works, what are the drawbacks, what are the benefits? Before you just assume this is different than what I do, therefore it must be bad for the social fabric of America and the environment. Yeah, look, I mean, Lucas will tell you this. He had a, effectively a two and a half bay shop, right? He couldn't raise a car up all the way in the third bay for years. And he. It was super easy to be booked out weeks and to be slammed and overwhelmed. And he had a very defined viewpoint of how things should be done and how a shop should be run. And then he made the leap to this big ten bay, big, beautiful garage Mahal that he has now. And good on him for that.
Mike Allen [00:16:39]:
But the financial realities of operating that business are a little bit different. And there ain't no booked out two weeks anymore.
Bryan Pollock [00:16:45]:
Yeah, there's a lot of. There's a lot of. Sometimes you got to make a judgment call without all the facts. Maybe four was like, no, I need all the results to make this judgment call. I can't do that. You know, I have to do that. I have to get through a whole lot of cars every day to feed our guys. Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:17:05]:
Every day I'm in a car, I'm into a car almost every day. And I do a fair amount of cars. I do typically between 8 and 13 diags a day, depending on what's going on. Every single day I've got a car where I have to use my experience and what's going on to make a judgment call instead of going two hours deeper into that car every day. And 99% of the time it works out. Right. And a couple times here and there, you freaking swinging a miss and you got to eat it.
Mike Allen [00:17:32]:
Well. Oh, well, I just, I wanted to make this video to respond because I don't think it has anything to do with ethics and has everything to do with gatekeeping and being scared of a competitive marketplace. And the market is evolving. And this is something like if I wasn't paying my tax. Right. Well, that would be an ethical issue if I was, you know, not doing real diagnostics and we were doing swap agnostics or identifixing it. Right. Or whatever that would be.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:01]:
You guys are doing real diagnostics. I've seen the scope captures. They're happening.
Mike Allen [00:18:06]:
The actual diagnostic test that has changed in my business is whether or not the customer pays for it.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:12]:
Whether. Whether or not it's a line item. Yeah. Whether or not it's.
Mike Allen [00:18:15]:
And I raised my labor rate by 16 bucks when I made this transition to offset the lost revenue for diagnostics. Right. Just like I would if I went and bought five new loaner cars. I would raise my labor rate to offset that expense.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:30]:
Yeah. Yeah. You're not going to buy them.
Mike Allen [00:18:31]:
It's fucking business.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:32]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:18:33]:
And I'm also. Just a quick statement. I think Lucas is onto something. This is far more comfortable.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:37]:
Is it?
Mike Allen [00:18:38]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:39]:
I'm going to save everybody from doing mine.
Mike Allen [00:18:41]:
I got to get.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:42]:
I'm Going to keep it buttoned up.
Mike Allen [00:18:43]:
Like, I need some gold chains.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:44]:
Oh man. We used to have a guy that worked for us that had the big gold chain that had a big S on it. His last name was Campbell, so we called him Soup.
Mike Allen [00:18:53]:
So I think, I think it is 100% gatekeeping and it's fear of a competitive marketplace that's causing this. I did write something because I was trying not to be on a rant. It was like, I think we all truly want to elevate this trade. Right. We all have a desire to change the industry to make it better. We just have widely variable opinions of how that should happen.
Bryan Pollock [00:19:17]:
Sure.
Mike Allen [00:19:18]:
My way to do that, what I'm going for is building customer trust, reducing friction in the buying process, providing great value. I'm providing real diagnostic value to the customer. I'm paying my technicians appropriately. I've got a better warranty than damn near everyone.
Bryan Pollock [00:19:35]:
Yeah. And you're making it easier for your guys to get the appointment sold to the customer to bring in the car in the shop.
Mike Allen [00:19:40]:
It's not unethical, guys.
Bryan Pollock [00:19:42]:
It's the market thing. It's something that I would not do. Right. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing. But somebody said, I need my car diagnosed for free. That shit'll sit in my friggin parking lot. Right.
Mike Allen [00:19:53]:
If you're booked out two weeks, if you're a one man show, if you're a, a specialty shop, if you know, if people drive from 20 miles away, 50 miles away, 100 miles away to come to your shop, why would you give anything away?
Bryan Pollock [00:20:06]:
Yeah. Right.
Mike Allen [00:20:07]:
I believe that, that free diagnostics is a, is a cost of customer acquisition in a general repair shop that's trying aggressively to grow.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:15]:
Yep. Just like a reasonably priced oil change.
Mike Allen [00:20:19]:
So anyway, get that off my chest. My not quite as hairy or manly as Lucas chuckers. And I think now that I've got that out of my system a little bit, we can all agree that the key to success is seven days a week, flat rate technicians, only cheap oil changes and free diag. Right?
Bryan Pollock [00:20:40]:
It's the only way to do it.
Mike Allen [00:20:41]:
It's the only way to do it, baby.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:42]:
Only way to skin the cat. No other way.
Mike Allen [00:20:46]:
All right, Peace out, brother.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:47]:
See ya.