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This podcast is dedicated to changing the automotive industry for the better, one conversation at a time.
Whether you're a technician, vendor, business owner, or car enthusiast, we hope to inspire you to improve for your customers, your careers, your businesses, and your families.
William Fairbanks [00:00:00]:
About how to get it colder.
David Roman [00:00:01]:
What's that?
William Fairbanks [00:00:02]:
This is our discussion about how to get it colder.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:04]:
This is a discussion of proper protocol according to somebody who has, like, tons of experience and really knows what he's doing versus somebody who doesn't even care if the car actually runs, if he can push it out into the driveway.
David Roman [00:00:22]:
This is about pragmatism. This is about pragmatism. Am I going to get a sufficient amount of value that I can translate to the customer for the cost and the hassle of setting up this contraction?
Lucas Underwood [00:00:39]:
All right, can I just stop you for a minute? Can I just say one thing? I'm not even, like, outside of that, okay? I have reached out to Thomas on multiple occasions with these, like, really weird, one off AC problems that nobody else was able to fix.
David Roman [00:00:58]:
Okay? But that's. That's what he does.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:00]:
I understand.
David Roman [00:01:01]:
I'm just saying just that all day long, I get pretty good at it and go, oh, I've seen it. Because you've worked on 10,000 of the same thing.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:10]:
You've been a shop owner, done that every day for how long? You're still not good at it.
David Roman [00:01:15]:
It took 29 years for Becky Witt to figure it out. So you come back to me in another 17 years, and I'll have it all figured out.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:24]:
I'm just saying that Thomas is a brilliant person when it comes to AC systems, and he know, like, dude, he has saved my butt so many times.
David Roman [00:01:33]:
I'm not questioning that. I am asking for the. Give me the pragmatic argument for getting this behemoth vacuum pump with this enormous hose to be able to pull an even deeper vacuum to some spec that no one knows about, is not in service information, but it's in some certification that nobody ever takes, by the way, because you just have to do this, like, mail order thing. Ship it in. They'll send you a card, whatever.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:05]:
Is that how you replaced your last technician? He sent in a letter to get a credit card?
David Roman [00:02:12]:
That's how you get your max cardinal. You just fill out the test, and you mail it in. That's it. And they send you the card. That's it. That's all it was.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:20]:
Can I just ask, then why didn't you do that when your last tech quit and you needed a refrigerant? Why didn't you?
David Roman [00:02:26]:
I still have this card. Anyway. That's his card, man. Hypothetically. I may still have his card.
William Fairbanks [00:02:35]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:02:36]:
On file everywhere. And then you're telling me I got to use this nylog gasket thread sealanthe. Just the verbiage freaks me out. I'm gonna goo up my seals with sealant. I don't have a sealant.
William Fairbanks [00:02:51]:
Sounds like stop leak. Exactly.
David Roman [00:02:54]:
You know, blue devil says it doesn't clog up the AC system.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:59]:
Well, the good thing is, I had asked Thomas before we're recording this, to come on the show so he can explain it to you himself before he hears this and wants to murder you like everybody else.
David Roman [00:03:11]:
No, he's gonna explain it to me. I'm not gonna listen.
William Fairbanks [00:03:14]:
I don't argue with him. Just.
David Roman [00:03:16]:
No, no, I don't. It's all, you understand, like, the technical stuff. I don't care. I'm saying, you know what he wants to do?
Lucas Underwood [00:03:23]:
He wants to build a Mac and cheese truck.
David Roman [00:03:25]:
Mac and cheese truck. That's what I'm going to do. And it. It's, it's the.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:29]:
And you can put some nylon cheese.
David Roman [00:03:32]:
If you're an AC guy and you have to come in and solve difficult to. To solve ac problems, and you're charging $350 just to come out and look at this vehicle, then it makes sense to have this in giant. This giant contraption, say, oh, that shop didn't know what they were doing because they don't have this garden hose hooked up to your car, this enormous 17 inch diameter vacuum hose hooked up to your car. This contraption that I custom made in order to pull this slightly deeper vacuum to this exact micron. I would do the whole dog and pony show, too, because if you don't, then you just look like a schlub coming in and coming behind the shop and finding that they didn't pull the fuse out and pop a new fuse, or they used some cheap fuse, or they never checked the fuse, and that's all that was wrong with it. No, no, you got to come out with a just, like, giant cart and this enormous gen. Like. Yeah.
David Roman [00:04:34]:
You come out carrying it over your shoulder like a firemande hooking it up to the car and go, oh, no, ma'am. It needs to go to this micron vacuum reading. Yeah. Stand back. Stand back. I like this guy. The good news is, this is going to be very sophisticated. And then you charge it and it works.
David Roman [00:04:54]:
Imagine that. Imagine that. The whole time it was just a bad fuse. I would do the same thing. And then he charges the $1,000. They pay it. They got work in Aceh in Kansas. You just gotta hook up one of them cans to it and just go.
David Roman [00:05:09]:
And cold ish air comes out and they leave happy. Meanwhile, he's freaking out. And here's the other thing too. He's in California. They've got bureaucrats walking behind him measuring to make sure that a couple of molecules of refrigerant don't just go off into the atmosphere so they can slap them with some fine. In Kansas, they don't care. You know why? We're free. We live in America, in Kansas, the way our founding fathers intended.
David Roman [00:05:43]:
Just to open that sucker up and into the atmosphere. Cause you know what? That flippin private jet that John Kerry's flying is going to emit more emissions in that one flight then every single car I just vent off into the atmosphere for all of eternity.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:03]:
You know the best part of this? Monday morning, the EPA is gonna be slamming.
David Roman [00:06:09]:
I have three AC machines to properly capture. Have you three AC machines? I don't have one. One wasn't enough. I had to get a second one because the government decided that this new refrigerant needed to be used.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:20]:
Okay, you gotta have a hybrid one.
David Roman [00:06:22]:
No, no, I don't know.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:24]:
You have to have a hybrid one.
William Fairbanks [00:06:26]:
Hate on either. Not in case you free, remember?
Lucas Underwood [00:06:28]:
Oh, yeah. You understand that you.
David Roman [00:06:31]:
We evacuate them and with the machine, with a hybrid, we evacuate them. We just hook them up, suck it all out, right? And then we hook up a vacuum pump to it. Okay. And then when we fill it, we use cans. You just, just weigh the cans. That's it. And you make sure that you inject it with the, with the oil using the little thing. You don't want talking about the little squeezy thing.
David Roman [00:06:59]:
You know what I'm talking about?
Lucas Underwood [00:07:00]:
I do, yeah.
David Roman [00:07:01]:
Okay, so that, that eliminates the need for a hybrid. Anything. You put the poe oil in there with the little thing in there and then you fill it up with just straight refrigerant and then you're good.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:13]:
I like my machine better.
David Roman [00:07:15]:
The hybrid machine. Yeah. I'm gonna spend, I'm gonna spend $10,000 for the three hybrids we charge a year.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:25]:
The three 7800 for the like 50 hybrids we've charged this year.
David Roman [00:07:30]:
You have not charged 50 hybrids.
William Fairbanks [00:07:32]:
You might do more hybrids if you had a machine.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:35]:
Yeah, and we advertised. Hey, if you didn't live in free America. And besides, all those clients, man, if they knew that you were just pinning their refrigerant into the atmosphere.
David Roman [00:07:44]:
I mean, we don't, we don't do that. I'm just saying.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:47]:
See how he's backing this one out?
David Roman [00:07:48]:
People do that. People do that. I'm just saying if I were doing that, which I'm not. If I were doing that, if I weren't doing that, nobody would care because it's whatever. But in California, he doesn't have the EPA. He's got the EPA and carb and probably 16 other agencies watching his every move. So I understand why he does what he does. I'm saying that I'm in a shop that also has to deal with brakes and oil changes and tires and other junk.
Lucas Underwood [00:08:25]:
I will share this. There was a whole post in his group about the vacuuming procedure for the AC systems, and it had thousands and thousands and thousands of comments. The majority of people did not understand, like his logic. But then once they did, they all agreed that that was the proper way to service it. So I'm only saying that to say that it is highly likely that David has just offended another 1500 to 2000 people, probably. And I mean, we're used to that by now.
David Roman [00:08:58]:
And, you know, I'm saying that like, I regularly disparage people from California. Do you know how many listeners we have in California? We have a lot. You know why? Because they come after me every single time I release some random podcast talking about California. Now, I don't speak disparagingly of Californians per se. It is mostly their voting choices. And the government there is awful.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:24]:
I just. I'm just telling you, there's a lot of cartoons, there's family guy episodes, there's Simpsons episodes with angry mobs. And you should probably watch some of those just to make sure you understand.
William Fairbanks [00:09:35]:
What, you understand what's going on. You're gonna bring the pitchforks.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:40]:
That's it. And torches and torches. Maybe some tar.
David Roman [00:09:46]:
Anyway, introduce our guest, William.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:48]:
Introduce yourself, brother. Oh, man.
William Fairbanks [00:09:50]:
Hey, thanks, guys. William Fairbanks, vice president of sales for shop controller.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:55]:
And that is a brand new name on the market.
William Fairbanks [00:09:57]:
Brand new name on the market. Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:59]:
How did you get there? Where did you come from?
William Fairbanks [00:10:02]:
Well, if we wanna go way back in the time of shop, we wanna.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:04]:
Go all the way back in the time of ship.
William Fairbanks [00:10:06]:
So outside sales is my thing. Ever since I've been out of school, been in outside sales, and I sold everything that you could imagine. Right. You know, water purifiers, fax machines, office equipment, you know, you name it. But I always liked to peddle on my cars, my parents cars, my sister's cars. I was always kind of never really thought of like, being a technician, but, you know, understood cars and liked doing that. Never really wanted to be like a technician.
David Roman [00:10:34]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:34]:
Right.
William Fairbanks [00:10:35]:
Didn't want to do it for a living, right. Didn't want to be locked into a shop. And about 20 years ago I walked into the situation where the local district and advanced auto parts in Knoxville were hiring an outside salesperson and kind of seemed like a match made in heaven. So I did that for like twelve years. Really outside sales for them. Eventually moved up kind of the ladder and did some weird kind of it stuff with Salesforce CRM and ran a small team of Salesforce admins. Do customer facing and employee facing kind of, you know, programs inside Salesforce either to help them sell stuff or help our customers connect with advanced auto parts better. And did that for about five years.
William Fairbanks [00:11:17]:
And then CEO of Steer by mechanic advisor came calling me because of that partnership with advance and steer thought I was out of place and was like, you seem like a salesperson. We connected, started doing that and then met Mike Kuverick, the CEO of Shop controller. And Mike made me an offer I couldn't refuse to come help. This, what we call a 25 year old startup out software has actually been around for 25 years. It was just archaic and server based and the old owner was really using as a lifestyle kind of business and wasn't really promoting it. Kind of had his local base of shops in Arizona and was just kind of living off of that and not really growing it.
Lucas Underwood [00:11:58]:
Well, that's why I wanted to have you on is because I thought that that part of the story was so neat. Yeah, right. Is it almost feels like because we were chatting a while back and the thing that came to mind is this is like something that's been around for a long time, but it's been very dormant. It almost, even though there were people using it, it was dormant. And we've seen a couple of those softwares and we've seen some like some of the cheaper softwares. Is it vip shop management? That's kind of like.
William Fairbanks [00:12:25]:
That's one of them.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:25]:
Yeah, that it's, it's like super cheap and, and it's never been like hardcore marketed or pushed. They've never come to any training shows or anything like that.
William Fairbanks [00:12:33]:
Yep.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:34]:
What, what do you think the logic behind that was? Was it just that he didn't want to get out and push it or you.
William Fairbanks [00:12:40]:
Well, you know, I think it goes a lot along the lines of what we talk about a lot in this industry. You know, people that get in this industry note they're good at something but not necessarily the best at running a business. And that's why all of us exist is to help those people get there. And I don't. Yeah. Again, I think he made a lot of money doing something else, and I just wanted to kind of fund retirement.
David Roman [00:13:01]:
Right.
William Fairbanks [00:13:01]:
And not have to tap into the. I don't really know that. I didn't know him personally, but that was kind of the idea that I got from Mike and Jason, who kind of bought the company from him and took it in this next direction.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:12]:
So we talk all the time about people buying shops, and that's like David's big thing is don't go start a shop. Right. Don't start from the ground up. Start with the foundation. Start with something. What do you think about that from their aspect? I mean, I know you're not them, you're not the one who bought it.
William Fairbanks [00:13:28]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:29]:
But what do you think that, did that make it easier for them? Did that create an advantage? Was it a disadvantage?
William Fairbanks [00:13:36]:
I think it's an advantage because you already had one, you already had a group of customers that were using it. You could, you'd have to go bag people to say, hey, we are going to go this different route, but we want to bring you all along with the journey and you get to be our trusted advisors and tell us, hey, does this work? Does this not work? You know, what are those shop owners? So we didn't have to go out on social media and beg a bunch of people to. We had paying customers who were already willing to take that kind of mantle for us and give us that feedback. Plus you had already a base of the software, so you didn't have to go start from scratch. And just so they didn't throw it.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:11]:
Out, they took what they had and began to build upon.
William Fairbanks [00:14:14]:
So, yeah, they have nothing with the original software. It is still what it is. And the customers that want to stay that way, they're still paying customers and they by all means can stay that way. We just took that existing kind of foundation of that software and then, you know, got some opinions, got some other people from some other companies who had done this in the past and started building that next iteration of the, you know, the cloud base, the, you know, where it can be mobile and it can be friendly and all those things. Right? For sure.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:42]:
And that's what I thought was so neat about it as we were chatting. Is that a, you kept that base of what they had and those people stayed. I'm curious how many of those people stayed. Because one of the things that happens all the time is we see these shops that stay with a really antiquated software, right? We still have shops using pen and.
William Fairbanks [00:15:02]:
Paper still you have shops using pen and paper. It's crazy the amount of people that are still doing.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:05]:
I know, right? It's insane. So like what do you know? The number of people that said, I'm staying with what I got, probably around.
William Fairbanks [00:15:14]:
100 where we're at right now. I mean they will eventually, as long as your shop controller customers will eventually use the new platform or they will not have one. We will not continue to keep both versions going. Right. It's not an economic thing for the business. I don't know that that's tomorrow or ten years from now, but eventually we will sunset again. You think about 1980s or 1990s software. It's getting harder and harder to find people who can actually go back in time and, and figure out how to continue to maintain it.
William Fairbanks [00:15:49]:
To maintain it, yeah. And continue to, to make it. Is it worth something?
Lucas Underwood [00:15:53]:
So is that, I mean it's not cloud based, right? Is it the base, the old one?
William Fairbanks [00:15:58]:
The old one, it is not cloud based. It is completely server based. If you think about like all data or an old Mitchell. Not, I'm not saying anything bad about those, I'm just saying if you think about those. Yeah, it's very server based. Local shop. Right. You got.
Lucas Underwood [00:16:11]:
Right.
William Fairbanks [00:16:12]:
You know, you go, you're going to download the program and then you're going to update it through, you know, hopefully nowadays through web services. But you know, still, you know, making those cds, you know, back in that.
Lucas Underwood [00:16:23]:
Was it one of the ones that, that had a monthly subscription or was it.
William Fairbanks [00:16:28]:
Okay, so yeah, it's still subscription based.
Lucas Underwood [00:16:33]:
I mean I'm not saying anything bad about it.
William Fairbanks [00:16:35]:
Okay, but why would they decide to continue?
Lucas Underwood [00:16:37]:
Why would you, why would you have a subscription for something like that? You know what I mean? When you could have a cloud based, I mean, is it fear?
William Fairbanks [00:16:46]:
You think it's fear and there's a cost difference, right? So, yeah, but it's, look, change is not fun for any human being. We are naturally resistant. You all know this just as much as I do. But we live in an industry and work in industry that is probably the most change resistant.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:05]:
Yeah.
William Fairbanks [00:17:06]:
As far as ever seen. And what, that's what boggles my mind about it is inside the shop, the technology that comes out, it's changing every day. They have to change in order to survive. To survive. But when they can make the choice not to, man, they hold on a little bit tighter because I think they're forced to change so much.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:26]:
Well, they are, but do you think that those are the ones that we're going to see slowly fade away. I mean, I know, I hate to say that. I'm not trying to talk just about your clients.
William Fairbanks [00:17:38]:
I'm talking about, in general, the pen and papers, the ones that are willing to go with the new technology. Right. And it's the generation that's here now and that's coming. Right. And again, this isn't like I'm calling anybody a boomer, but that generation is slowly going out as far as who spends the money. And the next generation, they want your shop to look nice and clean, and they want fancy technology and they want that, that customer journey. And you're talking about somebody's going to go up to you and go, can you text me? And you're going to say no, and you're not going to get their business, and then you're not going to get any of their friends business, those kind of things.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:15]:
So I've talked to a lot of shop owners, and I know you have to. And it's almost like they're making a decision. Right. If I change, I mean, David would go out of business just for general principle. Right. If you didn't have any bills, you had to pay for that bill.
David Roman [00:18:32]:
I call some more.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:35]:
You say that, though. Would you really?
David Roman [00:18:37]:
Yes. You know, the, the only thing that will keep me going is that, like Cody was talking about so many sketchy shops, it's hard to find.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:49]:
Yeah. A decent shop.
David Roman [00:18:51]:
A decent shop. And so, I mean, I take my car to my shop and I don't worry about it.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:58]:
Right.
David Roman [00:18:58]:
But I would worry about taking it anywhere.
William Fairbanks [00:19:01]:
Well, the biggest thing that I see are these conglomerates, these, these people that are, that, you know.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:07]:
Yeah, like the big chain and.
William Fairbanks [00:19:08]:
Yeah. You know, the, the server streets, the car fixes of the world. They are going in and buying the businesses of all those shops who aren't willing to make those changes. And they're painting them and they're making their nice and they're putting the latest and greatest technology, not just the back end technology, not just the greatest development machine, but the front end, the customer facing technology.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:28]:
They're putting makeup on the pig.
William Fairbanks [00:19:29]:
Yeah, right.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:31]:
Did you see that deal about aztec? And what do you make of that?
William Fairbanks [00:19:36]:
I mean, it's not shocking, I know.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:39]:
But the collision industry is really upset.
William Fairbanks [00:19:42]:
Well, yeah, they should be. You talk about of all of all the different branches of the industry, the ones who have, you don't get talked about. You never hear about it. They don't have to do anything different. They've just been doing the same thing all the time, because they're not fighting for anybody's business. It's being handed to them on a platter. Yeah. Now their world is about to change.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:00]:
Right? Well, and that's a, that's a rough change, too, because they've already been fighting the DRP thing.
William Fairbanks [00:20:05]:
Right?
Lucas Underwood [00:20:06]:
They've already been fighting the financial aspect of it. And so now, hold up. You're taking even more. You're taking even more money.
William Fairbanks [00:20:14]:
But there's, but I bet, I guarantee you there are a certain amount of business owners in that branch of this that saw that coming, and they did what they needed to do on the front end, and they're, and now they're sitting back smiling now because they're going to be the ones thrilling in it.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:30]:
You know Ken Miller that runs the Northwest show in New Jersey? We were talking and he said, man, he said, I don't do the DRP thing. I'm like, what do you mean you don't do the DRP thing? You're like a collision shop. Don't you have to? So, uh. Uh. He's like, they bring me their car, they want it fixed. They want it fixed, right. They want it fixed in a, a very professional manner. And, and it's going to meet the standards.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:52]:
They're going to come to me and they're going to pay me. If they want the money back from their insurance, they can go get it, but I'm not dealing with them. And I commend the heck out of that.
David Roman [00:20:59]:
Yeah, right.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:00]:
Because that takes a lot of guts.
William Fairbanks [00:21:01]:
In the, does take a lot of guts. That's really putting yourself out there and taking a chance, man. I don't know.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:07]:
Well, I mean, if you were just talking about Geico and what they did.
David Roman [00:21:12]:
To you, I mean, collisions, a nightmare. I don't, I don't know.
William Fairbanks [00:21:16]:
Collision is a nightmare.
David Roman [00:21:17]:
I don't know how you deal with that. You'd have to almost get into, like, custom stuff.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:22]:
I mean, I don't know. I was talking to him and he's like, he's like, we got book time for, for pulling the tape off. We got book time for putting the tape on. We got book time for wiping the mirror after we got.
William Fairbanks [00:21:33]:
Now, my question for him would be, what is his follow up and feedback from his customers once that's done, how are they going to the insurance companies and getting their money back? You know what I'm saying? That. Are the insurance companies going like, what.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:48]:
What is this, that, what do you like? You go to the doctor.
David Roman [00:21:51]:
They don't always fight it, though, because what they'll do is they'll come back, they'll come in with a, an initial estimate, and it is off, like, way off. $1,300 on a $5,000 job. They're like, well, this is what we're going to pay. Send in supplementals. So I do, and I send 17 supplementals, and then they pay me, they pay the customer, and they end up paying the full 5000. It's like, well, why'd you make me jump through these stupid hoops? It's almost like they're like, well, let's see if you'll jump through these hoops.
Lucas Underwood [00:22:25]:
Right?
William Fairbanks [00:22:26]:
Yeah. How important is it to you?
David Roman [00:22:28]:
Yeah.
William Fairbanks [00:22:28]:
Right?
Lucas Underwood [00:22:29]:
Yeah. Well, and look, I'm telling you, if you, if you watch them and you watch some of the things that those insurance companies do and some of those organizations do, why do we normalize it? Why is it normal for us to have to fight for it and try and get it? When you go to the doctor and what do they do? Your copay is, and if your insurance pays, you'll get check back from them. That's it. Right, right. I went to the eye doctor a while back.
David Roman [00:22:57]:
I lost the experience ever, though, because you start getting random bills from random companies, they're like, hey, this doctor had to come in and consult on this deal, right? And the insurance only paid a $1,000. You owe another thousand.
William Fairbanks [00:23:13]:
I didn't ask that.
David Roman [00:23:14]:
I didn't ask for this doctor come in. Like, I didn't know this, I didn't approve this. Like, I don't know anything about this. I know who you are.
William Fairbanks [00:23:20]:
I get where you're going, but. But the doctors don't always fight for you sometimes.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:24]:
Well, that's what I'm saying.
William Fairbanks [00:23:25]:
Take that in their own hands.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:26]:
I agree. I mean, dude, this last deal that I went through where I went to physical therapy, they told me that it was gonna be 900 and some dollars, right? I ended up, they send me a $300 bill and they send me a dollar 400 bill, and then they send me a dollar 600 bill. And like, I'm trying to figure out what's going on. Is this the same bill or is this for different visits or what is all this? Right? It ends up being like $16,000 at one point, and then it comes down to $7,000. And they say that blue cross, blue Shield paid the part that they were supposed to, and now I owe them like $1,600. And so the price keeps changing. I don't even know what to pay I don't know what and for what. So they send it to collections, right? We're 19 days in, and they send it to collections.
David Roman [00:24:12]:
Yeah, they knew.
Lucas Underwood [00:24:13]:
And so they send it to collections. Collections calls me up. I didn't even answer. I didn't say anything to them. Then a couple days later, I get the bill, and it says, a new statement is available from UNC Health. So I open it up. Right. There it is.
Lucas Underwood [00:24:27]:
Click on it. $698, the exact amount they told me, the t. And it shows where blue cross Blue Shield paid this, paid that. So I just click the button, I pay it, and I go on about my way. Collections calls me up, and they're like, well, actually, you owe us $2,000 now. And I'm like, do what? I'm like, here's the proof that I paid the bill. And she said, no, no, no. But there's a collections fee because it went to collections.
Lucas Underwood [00:24:49]:
So now you owe us $2,000 because they won't pay because you paid them. And I'm like, good luck.
William Fairbanks [00:24:58]:
Take me to court, baby.
Lucas Underwood [00:24:59]:
I'll see you in court. But I mean, like that, dude, it's all scummy as.
William Fairbanks [00:25:04]:
Yeah, when you start getting it, it's a racket. And anytime we're in any business where you have to involve. And the insurance part of things, somebody's getting hosed, man. That's all I can tell you.
Lucas Underwood [00:25:17]:
I don't get anywhere around it. Usually it's the worker, and I don't.
William Fairbanks [00:25:20]:
Know why and why we allow it to happen. I mean, you know, it's not to get on a soapbox, but there's a lot of things that go on in this country. Money's the driver behind all of it. But we are the money for sure. That's what people don't understand, is we tolerate it. We continue to let it happen. It might be hard on us, but if we really wanted something to change, we just stopped spending money. Yeah, on.
Lucas Underwood [00:25:44]:
That's what David said. If we just stop paying taxes and we all stopped paying taxes at once.
William Fairbanks [00:25:48]:
We could do about it, right?
Lucas Underwood [00:25:50]:
David all of a sudden likes you alive.
David Roman [00:25:53]:
I'm just saying, they don't have enough police officers to deal with 300 million people not paying the taxes.
William Fairbanks [00:25:58]:
I mean, people start talking about, like, the, you know, the inflation on groceries are too high. Well, let's go a week. Did nobody buy groceries?
Lucas Underwood [00:26:05]:
Oh, boy, some suckers are gonna go away.
William Fairbanks [00:26:06]:
Yeah, man. I mean, we have to. We are so fat and happy that we don't understand that we're the driver. We are the driver. We are in control. That's what having the consumer economy that we have is.
Lucas Underwood [00:26:18]:
I'm gonna piss David's slap off. Sorry.
William Fairbanks [00:26:21]:
Oh, yeah.
David Roman [00:26:22]:
Properly into the mic. I gotta point it off into, like, left field.
Lucas Underwood [00:26:25]:
Would you. Anybody ever tell you complain a lot?
David Roman [00:26:28]:
I'm just telling you, the sound's gonna be like, huh? Huh? That's what it's gonna sound like.
Lucas Underwood [00:26:33]:
Oh, don't worry. I have this awesome editor that's gonna make it sound fantastic.
David Roman [00:26:36]:
I try, but it does still, like, come clean out. It's annoying.
Lucas Underwood [00:26:40]:
As long as they're saying you make.
William Fairbanks [00:26:42]:
Them work too hard.
Lucas Underwood [00:26:43]:
I know exactly what's going on here, but, but, so it's the same thing with repair pal. Okay? And I know I'm gonna upset them and they're gonna be mad about this, but I'm gonna tell you what. The fact that they went to hundreds of shops and said your labor rate's too high for your area, but they sent letters to all the shops in all the areas all at the same time to say that their labor rate was too high, and we.
William Fairbanks [00:27:10]:
Everybody's labor rate was too high.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:11]:
Right, exactly. Exactly. And so if you feed into that, we're feeding the monster. Correct. And the more power that they get, the more clients that they have, the more people who need to use it. You know, there were a lot of shops within asog, and they said, hey, look, if we calculate all of our jobs that came from that particular source, they're only 30% gross profit.
David Roman [00:27:34]:
That's because they're not doing any remarketing. You know what we started doing? One, the warranty stopped being three years. It's not one year, one year. The other thing too, is, hey, that's our number, not the repair pal number. That's our number. If you want us to deal with it, we're happy to do the business. We're happy to take care of you. We'll call everything in.
David Roman [00:27:58]:
You'll save $50 off your deductible. You call that number. If you go in through repair pal, you're on your own. That's it.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:05]:
Does it actually work, though?
David Roman [00:28:07]:
I don't know. We'll see. Well, we have to make changes because we can't. I can't do three year warranty and also get undercut on the price or three year warranty, and I can't use the parts that I want to use because now they're dictating the repair process to me and I'm willing to do it now, dude. They're like, hey, we're not going to use this part. We're going to use this part. Hey, I don't know why you need this, too. I don't know why you're doing this.
David Roman [00:28:32]:
I don't know why you. And it's not every. It's. It's. It's so stupid. It's per contract. That's what's frustrating, because you call in and you're like, well, I hope they've got the ultra premium platinum super.
William Fairbanks [00:28:46]:
So it's based on the contract?
David Roman [00:28:47]:
It's based on the customer signed. Yes. Which is based on the price of the vehicle. So they'll go in and they'll say, sounds too complicated.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:57]:
I know.
David Roman [00:28:57]:
So they'll go in and they'll, hey, this $45,000 car will carry an $8,000 contract. Well, they know that, hey, this car is going to come in for this kind of repair, and. And so they'll pay out three, four, $5,000 and not give two craps. But if they sold a $15,000 car with a $3,000 contract, they are going to fight you tooth and nail, because one timing chain job or not even the timing chain, the gasket. The gaskets leaking, you need a gasket. Oil pan. They're gonna fight you, every penny upside down on that contract.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:35]:
It's so funny you say that, because we had that exact thing happen and had it not been for December, right? Because she worked in collision, and, buddy, she knew how to pull their strings, and she knew how to rock their world. And it was to the point that, like, I don't know who he was, but a very senior person at Silver Rock ended up calling the shop, and he wanted to talk to the owner, right? And he said, I don't know who you got on that front counter, but they're a hell of a negotiator. And, like, in repair, I don't know that that's a good thing. But in collision, the girl is good at what she does. But. So they. He reaches out and he said, let. Let me just.
Lucas Underwood [00:30:13]:
I'm a. I'm gonna put it all on the table because I want you to know where we're at with this. I'm like, all right. He's like, when they buy a service contract, right? He said, we have a specific margin in that contract. And he said, that margin has to be this, and we will not pay a dime more than that. There's no if, ands or buts about it. It doesn't matter what's wrong with the car. It doesn't matter how the car is broken.
Lucas Underwood [00:30:34]:
It doesn't matter what happens. We're only going to pay that much. And we have terminology and legal things within the document, legalese that protects us. So if we need to renegotiate, if we need to back out of the contract, we've got a way out. But he said, we're not paying more than this, right? And he said, what I want to share with you is, is this client has just got this car. Now, this car was the fourth car that they delivered to my shop from Carvana that was in such bad shape, we told the client to send it right back. This was the best car out of the four cars. And both front struts were snapped off and were like, the springs were attached, but the struts, the top of the strut itself, the chrome part had broken and it wasn't even attached, in other words, like it was flopping vehicles.
Lucas Underwood [00:31:27]:
It was an Audi TT. And they went through four of them.
David Roman [00:31:30]:
That's weird.
Lucas Underwood [00:31:31]:
One of them had. And, and luckily December was there at the time. So she walks out. They sent a black one. She walks out and she looks at the black one and she's like, oh, no, this one's been totaled. Like, he doesn't want this. This is totaled. But the title and all the documentation says that it's clean.
Lucas Underwood [00:31:45]:
And so she calls the client. The client says, no, no, no. They said, it's not been wrecked, dude. She went out there with a fine tooth comb and she said, no, look here, look here, look here. This car has been totaled. There's no way they would have fixed that and it not be over the value of the car because I know how much it costs to fix that. That car was totaled. And so all of a sudden they stopped talking and they just came and picked the car up because it was really obvious.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:07]:
Like she put pictures up, right?
William Fairbanks [00:32:09]:
No idea.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:10]:
And so we go through this whole process and they finally, they're like, look, he's got $6,000 and you're saying you want to use factory parts on this car. And the factory parts to fix this car are going to be more than $6,000. He will not have any additional warranty if he fixes this car. And so we go to the client, we said, what do you want to do? Because this is all they're going to pay to and if you want the warranty. And he's like, I have looked all over the country for one of these.
William Fairbanks [00:32:34]:
Cars, like, this just had to be that car.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:36]:
This is the only one I can find. It's like the, it's the new TT and the temperature controls are like in the vent itself and it's got all these like cool bells and whistles. It's a beautiful car. Can be expensive to fix.
William Fairbanks [00:32:48]:
David just bought it.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:49]:
I know, but like, I was so amazed that they came right out and.
William Fairbanks [00:32:54]:
Dude was like, they just said it.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:55]:
And I asked him, I said, you want to come on the podcast and talk about it if you'll give me a job? He's like, they'll fire me in a second, right? But it was crazy because they admitted that there was a specific value attached to that contract.
David Roman [00:33:08]:
That makes sense, though. Like, they're not going to keep paying out. They'll be upside down on everything, but they just market.
Lucas Underwood [00:33:15]:
Like, that's not the case, right?
William Fairbanks [00:33:17]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:33:17]:
Oh, yeah.
William Fairbanks [00:33:17]:
That's the problem.
David Roman [00:33:18]:
I don't think they just talk to the consumer about it at all. The consumer just assumes, and they let them assume they funnel the cars to Carmax because the car, Carmax, what's broken that they slap the part on, they ship the car. That's it. They don't look at anything else and we tell people we look the whole car over. We do that with every car, max or non Carmax, doesn't matter. Every car gets looked over. And so we will turn everything that we find in everything. So when they come to us, yeah, they probably don't want to deal with us and so they're not going to, they're going to make it difficult for us to deal with it because we're going to turn way more work than Carmax.
David Roman [00:34:02]:
But the problem is Carmax is backed up for a month. They can't find help. Whatever, whatever, whatever. And they're doing, they're like reconditioning cars. So we get, we initially, we were getting a lot of vehicles where customers would call in the Carmax, they'd say, hey, we're a month out, but my car doesn't start. Okay. Call this number. And then they would funnel the calls to us.
David Roman [00:34:24]:
The idea, though, is to not have them do that a second time. Come straight to us.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:29]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:34:30]:
So we, we didn't make a big deal of it before because it was whatever. You come back to us, you don't come back to us. Eventually we'll see again or we don't.
William Fairbanks [00:34:41]:
But that particular customer isn't like your customer. Bottom and you're not trying to get them to you just happened to get them.
David Roman [00:34:47]:
Exactly. Yeah, it was whatever. And maybe you didn't like our, the process. You didn't, because, you know, we have a process.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:55]:
Well, but see, they're. The warranty itself turns the consumer against the shop.
William Fairbanks [00:35:01]:
Absolutely.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:02]:
Because of what they say and what they do. In this case, silver rock killing the messenger. Exactly.
David Roman [00:35:07]:
That's where we record our phone calls and put them on the ticket.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:10]:
Now, well, in this case, Silver Rock calls the client and says, oh, they're trying to rip you off. And I loved it. I loved it. Because when the dude calls me, he's like, not gonna lie to you. He said, we did call him and tell him that we wanted him to pull that vehicle from your shop. And he said that he had been coming to you for over ten years and that that car wasn't going anywhere. And he said, I told him that you're ripping him off by trying to use these parts and marking them up more than what the dealer would and all this stuff. And he said, no, actually, you're ripping me off and they're ripping you off.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:39]:
I have no problem with this. So we just kind of laughed about it and went on, you know, wow. But I mean, right, and filling back that onion, man.
William Fairbanks [00:35:49]:
You never know what you're gonna get.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:50]:
Exactly. And so it's like the Santio program that Napa and Technet use, right? Napa 360 or Napa 3636 is Santio and Technet is the same thing. They're both through the same company.
William Fairbanks [00:36:03]:
Yep.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:03]:
Like that company, you call them up and you say it's broken, and they say, how much to fix it. And you say, here it is. And they're like, all right. And they write the check and they pay it, and you're done, and it's over with and there's no fight. So I don't understand why.
David Roman [00:36:19]:
Because they have a monthly, like, funnel of revenue coming in constantly. The more cars, the more shops that sign up for it, the more money they can get because they're covering the thing. So they got to cut. It's not the same as we're set. We're selling a set dollar amount contract, and then that's it. So we have to maintain the expense under that certain dollar amount. It's not the same thing. So it makes sense for them to be like, okay, yeah.
William Fairbanks [00:36:46]:
Then I think the difference in Sanzio is in, like, the Carvana Silveruck thing is they're selling civil rock to a consumer is they're selling a, to a commercial, to a commercial company who's then backing that, not necessarily even the shop. Right. I mean.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:00]:
Right, yeah. So, yeah, and I see that. I see that for sure. And, you know, and that.
William Fairbanks [00:37:06]:
And that just lets you know what big corporations think of the consumer versus a commercial business. Right. I mean, we're silly.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:13]:
I have a number.
William Fairbanks [00:37:14]:
We're silly. Right. We don't, we don't do the things that we need to do to as consumers to protect ourselves.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:19]:
I've said this before, but, like, I remember the first time I watched the whole Mad Men series. Right. Did you ever watch that?
William Fairbanks [00:37:25]:
Yes.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:26]:
Good show. Right.
William Fairbanks [00:37:28]:
I mean, sales of sales.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:29]:
Right. But I mean, really think about it. That's when, around that time is when all of a sudden we realized that advertising didn't have to be truthful anymore. Right, right. And you had to prove that it wasn't truthful and if you had enough money it was going to be pretty hard to prove that you did something wrong. Right. And so I don't think that there's truth in advertising anywhere. I mean, like us as shops, we try to portray ourselves as positive and we try to create a good image.
William Fairbanks [00:37:57]:
Yeah, but you got to tell a story. Right. And then they'll, the old adage never let details get in the way of a good story. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:04]:
Well, but I mean, like, and those are just details.
William Fairbanks [00:38:06]:
It's not necessarily a lie, but it's just details that you need to, that you need to tell somebody to.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:12]:
They force these, they force these pharmaceutical companies to drop the details at the very end of it. But by God, those boogers can talk fast, can't they? So, David, tell us about this medicine you're taking.
David Roman [00:38:25]:
Gotta fix my thyroid mandae.
William Fairbanks [00:38:27]:
That's also about the same time, if you think about that series when businesses started realizing that making things to last wasn't, wasn't profitable.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:38]:
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely.
William Fairbanks [00:38:40]:
Planning the whole thing of let's repair it and fix it and keep it going. Started it took it a longer time but started going away to where? Now today it don't matter what it is. We just throw it out. It's cheaper. Just throw it away. Go get it. Buy a new one. Except for cars and houses.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:54]:
Yeah. Those are two that you have to.
William Fairbanks [00:38:56]:
That you have to continue to maintain and fix.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:58]:
Well. And it's around about the same time that those corporations, and maybe there were always people who were there and saw it differently, but it was about the same time that things like the dupont stuff happened and the Monsanto stuff started and all that kind of started kicking off and so they realized that they had enough money and they had enough power, that it didn't matter whether what they told somebody was true or nothing, that they could just do whatever they wanted.
William Fairbanks [00:39:24]:
And in the same respect, money, to not have to worry about it.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:28]:
That's true, but it almost reflects back in the same way to repair shops. And hear me out on this. It's a stretch, but David will love it. But. So think about this. In the Dupont case, right? What was the situation? Well, there was a group of staff that knew this chemical was really dangerous. Right, right. And so this small group of people knew about it and they covered it up and they said, well, if everybody doesn't know about it, we can't be guilty.
William Fairbanks [00:39:56]:
Right, right.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:57]:
Well, it's the same thing in a repair shop. If that technician does something that makes his life easier or he breaks something and doesn't tell anybody, David doesn't know about it.
William Fairbanks [00:40:06]:
Right, right.
Lucas Underwood [00:40:07]:
It doesn't mean that David is less guilty.
William Fairbanks [00:40:09]:
Well, it goes back to, like, the whole philosophy of the president. You don't tell them things, so the president can have maximum deniability.
Lucas Underwood [00:40:16]:
Right.
William Fairbanks [00:40:16]:
He didn't have to get in front of people and say, yeah, I knew that. He can say, no, I didn't because nobody told him.
Lucas Underwood [00:40:21]:
I'm not sure that any of our recent presidents knew anything anyway.
William Fairbanks [00:40:24]:
I'm telling you, I would at least go back to Reagan. They just don't have any idea what's going on. And they just.
Lucas Underwood [00:40:30]:
They seem confident. Maybe a little delirious.
William Fairbanks [00:40:34]:
Maybe.
David Roman [00:40:34]:
They do.
Lucas Underwood [00:40:35]:
You think so?
David Roman [00:40:36]:
They can't.
William Fairbanks [00:40:37]:
Some of them can't even remember where they went to the bathroom last night. They might have known, but they cannot remember the next day, so they.
Lucas Underwood [00:40:44]:
Nah, bro, I promise they know. They know where they went to the bathroom because their diaper gets pudgy.
William Fairbanks [00:40:51]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:40:51]:
It just gets a little warmer.
David Roman [00:40:53]:
You're gonna get us canceled. That's what's gonna end up happening. The DOJ is gonna come and bust our door down anyway.
Lucas Underwood [00:40:58]:
No, it's all registered to your door.
William Fairbanks [00:41:06]:
He's got you on that one.
David Roman [00:41:07]:
That's true. That is true. Dang.
William Fairbanks [00:41:11]:
Anyway, this is fun.
David Roman [00:41:12]:
I. For 01:00 a.m. loyal to our regime.
Lucas Underwood [00:41:18]:
Oh, shit.
William Fairbanks [00:41:19]:
He used the r word.
David Roman [00:41:21]:
I support. I will be a good worker in the mines. Okay. I'll do as I'm told. Anyway. All the way back to Eisenhower. I think he was probably last one that kind of knew and went.
Lucas Underwood [00:41:35]:
He was. He was. And that's a.
David Roman [00:41:36]:
Something's going on here.
Lucas Underwood [00:41:38]:
That's a that's a really interesting story. And, and, but in the same respect, Eisenhower was told about the Soviets and Eisenhower was told about a lot of the stuff that was happening and, and knew about it but did not take action. And then people that told Eisenhower about it mysteriously died.
David Roman [00:41:58]:
Yeah.
William Fairbanks [00:41:58]:
They were just, they were just no longer here.
Lucas Underwood [00:41:59]:
Yeah, they were canceled, like David's gonna be. And so, I mean, like, I don't know how far it goes back, but I think it probably goes a good ways back, don't you? I mean, it probably before Eisenhower.
David Roman [00:42:13]:
Probably before Eisenhower. Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:42:15]:
I would say Truman or Roosevelt is probably your last.
William Fairbanks [00:42:18]:
Say Truman, because that's when that. Really. Yeah, really. The.
David Roman [00:42:25]:
Woodrow Wilson was a sketchy, sketchy dude.
William Fairbanks [00:42:29]:
Are you an expert?
David Roman [00:42:32]:
I've heard some things. Let me say that.
Lucas Underwood [00:42:33]:
Jaskin yourself.
David Roman [00:42:40]:
Anyway.
William Fairbanks [00:42:41]:
Yeah. Maximum viability. It's a real thing and it's, it's in all of our lives and.
David Roman [00:42:45]:
Absolutely.
William Fairbanks [00:42:45]:
Especially if you run a business. I'm not saying right or wrong, but like correct. You are dependent on the people that work for you to tell you there's nothing, what's happening or not happening and there's nothing you can do about it.
Lucas Underwood [00:42:55]:
So it becomes the culture of the business. It becomes the structure of the business. It becomes.
David Roman [00:43:00]:
It's really difficult.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:01]:
It is.
David Roman [00:43:02]:
I'm telling you, like, that was one of the things that, you know, they was Kim Walker that was talking about values, company values. And, you know, some companies, it's really easy to just slap up some values and say, this is how we do business. And it's. It's easy, er, operating a certain type of business to never have to get into the gray area. But one of the things I said, look, don't lie. I don't want anybody to lie. And so I've got a catch. I got to catch Juan.
David Roman [00:43:42]:
We hire this new guy and I told Juan, I'm like, hey, you can't tell him that because that's not true. You can say this because it may omit some details, but we're telling the story. Don't, like he said, don't let details get in the way of a good story.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:59]:
Hey, listen, misses Khan, our new, our.
David Roman [00:44:01]:
New clients, well, even clients, it just depends because sometimes they just want to hear what they want to hear. Anyway, we don't lie to them. But I told them, I said, don't lie to the warranty companies. You know, you just tell him.
Lucas Underwood [00:44:16]:
Back yourself into a corner you didn't realize you backed yourself into.
David Roman [00:44:18]:
It's not even that. Like, why? If it needs a replacement.
William Fairbanks [00:44:23]:
If it's up to them to decide and all that.
David Roman [00:44:25]:
Well, it's not even that. It's just like they start asking for a bunch of details. And he's like, well, they're asking for details, saying, okay, great. Just repeat the same five things. What you know to be true. Technician inspected it. He said that this is what's wrong with it. It needs to be replaced.
David Roman [00:44:42]:
But why? Technician inspector needs to be replaced. I said, just repeat yourself. They'll stop. They want details. And I get that they're trying to fish, but them asking for details shouldn't spur you to then start creating things out of thin air. And I hire this new guy, and he's sitting on the phone calling this warranty. And dude, he was just, he was just pulling things out of like, yeah, it was ad play and it was making noise and this, that, like, I haven't talked to him about it because, you know, I. I was on the way out the door.
Lucas Underwood [00:45:18]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:45:19]:
And then I came here. I told Juan, I'm like, dude, it worries me how, like, I just rolled off his tongue. Like he was just talking. Having a cat. Yeah, exactly.
William Fairbanks [00:45:32]:
Came in.
David Roman [00:45:32]:
Because if you're gonna lie to the. If you're gonna. If you're gonna avoid a difficult conversation or you're going to try to alleviate some frustration by then throwing a lie out there, and you can just do it casually, you're gonna lie to me, you're gonna lie to your fellow employees, you're gonna lie to your customers, you're gonna lie to everybody. And we're not gonna know when you're telling the truth and when you're not telling the truth. And when it actually matters, we're not gonna know. So it becomes a muscle. It's. You have to work at because it.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:04]:
Is easier saying the uncomfortable thing.
David Roman [00:46:07]:
For example, I enjoy being around Lucas. See, that was a lot.
William Fairbanks [00:46:11]:
I was gonna say, absolutely good at it.
David Roman [00:46:15]:
And stop and say, I hate you, Lucas. See, I'm not lying there. I have to work at it.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:22]:
I have no problem telling you I hate you.
David Roman [00:46:24]:
Right?
Lucas Underwood [00:46:25]:
I'm good at telling you I hate you.
David Roman [00:46:27]:
You have to work at it is my point. And it's really difficult.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:31]:
You're pretty easy to hate, though.
David Roman [00:46:33]:
It's really difficult to not lie.
William Fairbanks [00:46:39]:
Is it that difficult to not lie?
David Roman [00:46:40]:
Not revealing. Not revealing everything. Like Dutch? I think Dutch conflates not lying with. I'm going to tell you every, every detail, whether you need to know it or not. I'm gonna tell you everything.
William Fairbanks [00:47:00]:
Right.
David Roman [00:47:00]:
That's sometimes not necessary. It's like, why are you trying to get that person upset? They're going to hear this one thing, shut everything else off. You're over sharing at that point.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:13]:
Yeah, I don't disagree.
David Roman [00:47:16]:
What do they need to know right now that is both truthful and will make them feel good. And that's all you have to do with customers, with the warranty company. Just repeat the same what you know to be true and then that's it. But he conflates the two. He's like, no, you're not being truthful. It's like Steve Roberts, when he got upset, Kyle Loke had installed a power steering pump and something had gone wrong because something got screwed up. I don't remember the details of the story. And Dutch came back to him and goes, well, just tell him that, hey, the power steering pump is going to need to be replaced.
David Roman [00:47:54]:
And then that's it. And Steve Roberts got so upset and he's like, you're lying to the customer. What are you talking about? I'm not lying to the customer. It's like, that's true. We just don't need to get into the dirty details.
William Fairbanks [00:48:06]:
Right?
David Roman [00:48:07]:
Like, what's the point?
William Fairbanks [00:48:08]:
It's going to be everything sometimes, right?
David Roman [00:48:10]:
It's our screw up. We're going to fix it. And that's almost what you end up having to do is take a step back and go. If it's your screw up, fix it.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:18]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:48:19]:
Tell the customer what's truthful. But you don't need to get into the details.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:22]:
My technician is an idiot. He wrote your car.
William Fairbanks [00:48:25]:
Sorry, I hired the wrong guy. And it really should have got him to work on your car. My bad, right?
David Roman [00:48:30]:
Turns out he didn't know what the hell he was doing. But he learned on your car. Yeah, exactly.
William Fairbanks [00:48:36]:
It went bad when we were working on it. We don't have to replace it. It's on us. Don't worry about it. Move on.
David Roman [00:48:40]:
Do what's right by the customer. Always and almost to the detriment of the company.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:47]:
But we begin to tell ourselves stories, right? And it's like the company you keep, you know what I mean? We talk about a lot of the coaching companies and like, hey, be really careful about the people that you let give you advice and lead you and guide you.
William Fairbanks [00:48:59]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:59]:
Because I have seen some folks be told things that they should do or not do that probably were not ethical. Right. And if they ever got caught, would be a way worse look for them than just owning it to begin with. Right? But, but they get into those circles and the people say things that sound good and that's what they want to hear. So they make decisions based on that. And just like the deal with Kyle. Right? And you know, there were dissenting opinions within that group. Dutch believed one thing, Steve believed another thing.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:31]:
You believed another thing. There were tons of different opinions that shared within that group. In some of these other groups, there are no dissenting opinions. There's one or two people that are looked at as the authority.
William Fairbanks [00:49:43]:
Authority on it.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:45]:
Yeah. And so what happens? Well, next thing you know, you have a whole generation or a whole group of shop owners that believes there's the.
David Roman [00:49:54]:
Guiding principle has to be who's benefiting here.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:57]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:49:58]:
I mean, is it? I would rather lose money than reputation.
William Fairbanks [00:50:04]:
Yeah, well, you can make one of them back.
David Roman [00:50:07]:
Yeah, I make the money back. The reputation.
William Fairbanks [00:50:10]:
And look, man, as I longer the automotive industry is fighting years and decades in the I want seventies and eighties of just that thing. Right? People didn't trust him. They might not even been doing the wrong thing, but because there was some who were. Yeah, and they got a reputation. The industry as a whole got a reputation of like americans woke up one day and decided they'd rather go to the dentist and get a root canal done without Novocaine than car repaired.
David Roman [00:50:39]:
But it became a priority for some of these shops. I'm okay losing the money to do the right thing and savor the reputation. If I can't save the reputation and there's no way to, I'm going to lose the money. I still want to do right by the customer because I have to sleep at night. I got to know that I did absolutely everything I can in the particular situation to do right by the customer. Some of these shops though, go, I am not losing the money. Right. The dollar is more important, the reputation.
David Roman [00:51:14]:
We'll see what we can do about that. And then they will lie, cheat and.
William Fairbanks [00:51:16]:
Say there's just not enough. There's just not enough, especially in this industry, that believe their reputation means something.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:23]:
Well, I mean, they've been given the.
William Fairbanks [00:51:24]:
Lie though, because they don't, they don't understand what's coming. That's changing.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:29]:
Look how many people or how many shops have two stars, three stars, and they're packed.
William Fairbanks [00:51:34]:
Been in business for 30 years and they bragging because they got 40 Google reviews and I'm like, you should get 40 Google reviews in a month.
David Roman [00:51:41]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:41]:
Well, so, you know, back to what you were, what you were talking about and the client perception. Two weeks ago we had a situation in the shop. I feel terrible about it. I. Dude, I woke up for four nights in a row thinking about what happened. We didn't do anything wrong. It was a stupid, simple mistake that anybody could have made. We built an estimate.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:01]:
We gave him the price for the estimate. The advisor said, hey, can you look at this? I looked at it. It was a front wheel bearing and a Honda. I thought it was a press out. I didn't say anything about it. I said, yeah, it looks like any other estimate. The margins are good. They're.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:15]:
They're fair. They're where they're supposed to be. We're at least to our profitability range. Gross profit per hour is going to. We're going to make money, and if we can move some stuff around, we'll be able to fit him in and get him back on his trip. The dude was from London. He had bought a car. No, it was a.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:29]:
It wasn't a Honda. It was a Subaru. And so he had bought this car just to drive around the country, and then he was going to sell it. And so I walked. She came in, and she said, hey, he's really upset and says that we're trying to rip him off. And I'm like, okay, well, I'll go out and talk to him. And so I walked out, and I said, usually we're all within about 10% of each other, blah, blah, blah. And so he said, well, everybody else is telling me it's like $500, and you're like, $900.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:56]:
That's really weird. Let me go check and I'll see. I'll check and see if there's any cheaper parts or any, you know, let me just check. It turns out she had accidentally clicked the button for two front wheel bearings instead of one. And so I went and I told him the truth. I was like, man. I was like, this is completely our mistake, and we screwed this up, and I'm really sorry. It was just a mistake.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:14]:
It wasn't intentional. He said, yeah, that's kind of a likely story, isn't it? I just don't feel comfortable with this. And, like, dude, it broke my heart because I know it was a mistake. You know what I'm saying? I know it wasn't.
William Fairbanks [00:53:24]:
But just as much on him.
David Roman [00:53:29]:
That was. That's on him. You can shop where you can track that. You.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:35]:
Oh, we would have fixed it before you got the bill.
David Roman [00:53:38]:
I'm saying, you had. You sent the estimate out. He would have seen that was $900. He would have come back and questioned it. And then you would have showed him and said, look, we had two wheel bearings on here. I removed one. It's right here. Cause you can see where you took one off the bill to lower the price down.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:56]:
No, it wasn't two wheel bearings. It was the time for doing both front wheel bearings as opposed to one.
David Roman [00:54:01]:
Oh, you're on your own there.
William Fairbanks [00:54:03]:
Sorry, dude.
Lucas Underwood [00:54:06]:
Not giving you any more advice. I hate you.
David Roman [00:54:08]:
Maybe. Maybe you can pull up service information and show them to.
Lucas Underwood [00:54:12]:
Yeah, but then all of a sudden, I'm showing him the hours, and then it's into another conversation. Why is it.
David Roman [00:54:18]:
But we would have called, right?
Lucas Underwood [00:54:19]:
If we did the job, we would have called.
David Roman [00:54:23]:
No way I would have caught that. How you gonna catch that?
William Fairbanks [00:54:28]:
Well, no, because, you know. But, you know, by looking at the job.
David Roman [00:54:31]:
I know. Like, if. If we put the wrong time in there. I don't know. I wouldn't have caught it. I'm just telling you I wouldn't caught it. 900 for a front wheel bearing. I.
David Roman [00:54:43]:
Maybe I would have stopped and questioned it when. But you're looking at metrics. I don't look at metrics. I just look at my bank account, if it's go up and.
Lucas Underwood [00:54:52]:
Well, I mean, look, the thing with the Subaru's is. Is we have a lot of Subaru wheel bearings that are expensive because especially in the back ones, they don't come out easy.
David Roman [00:55:00]:
The back, that's a different situation. Rear wheel bearing on a busted old legacy. 96 legacy. That's a four hour job, buddy. Plus the wheel bearing, plus $800 in parts.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:11]:
Yeah, well, so it's. And everything else. Well, we still. We still deal with that with some of the fronts that have to be pressed in and out and things like that. We, you know, I just. We see them, they're rusty and. And sometimes they'll add time. I just didn't think anything about it.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:24]:
But it was. It was what he said that I felt uncomfortable with this. And then all of a sudden, like, I'm thinking about it, well, if that was my wife or if that happened to me and I didn't know, I would feel uncomfortable too. Right? And so that. That's the reputation our industry's earned in.
William Fairbanks [00:55:38]:
A lot of ways, right?
Lucas Underwood [00:55:39]:
Because a lot of people have taken advantage of that. And if they just.
William Fairbanks [00:55:42]:
If he had just paid it, they just took it and rode on with it, man.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:44]:
Right, exactly. Fixed it.
William Fairbanks [00:55:46]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:47]:
Because my technicians aren't like that. They're gonna be like, whoa, hold up. Something's wrong. But a lot of technicians would just say, I'm gonna get my extra hours.
William Fairbanks [00:55:54]:
Take that bill of hours. Yeah, right.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:56]:
Because they're paid flat rate, and it's like, well, my paycheck got easier this week. I actually made more than $250.
David Roman [00:56:02]:
They wouldn't have been incentivized to stop. Say, I guarantee you, and I don't. I've got three texts. Two of them don't even look at the time. Brandon would have stopped and gone, why are you putting 3 hours on this? This took me an hour.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:17]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:56:18]:
He looks at the times because he wants to check to see if he's taken too long or whatever he wants.
William Fairbanks [00:56:23]:
He wants to be efficient. So he's efficient.
David Roman [00:56:25]:
So he looks at time. Everybody else would have been like, hey, this said replace wheel bearing.
William Fairbanks [00:56:30]:
It's replaced party time.
David Roman [00:56:31]:
Yeah, I'm done.
William Fairbanks [00:56:32]:
3 hours.
David Roman [00:56:33]:
No, no, they wouldn't even. Yeah, we pay a flat salary, and they get paid the 40 hours, and that's it. Whatever. They get done, right, the more the better. But they. I've got two texts that, because they don't look at their billed hours, they just don't look at it. So they wouldn't have caught it.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:52]:
At least when Eric messes it up, it's like a bad one. He put, like, 74 hours on a rear windshield whopper a while back. He comes in and starts making estimates. He's, like, going down through. It's the first time he's ever, like, really had to make estimates. I can't remember what was going on. We were behind and shorthanded or something. And somehow he meant to type point something and put 74 hours in it.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:13]:
Sends it to the client, and the client's like, that is one ridiculous rear windshield wiper.
David Roman [00:57:18]:
$74,000 for those.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:20]:
Never actually looked at it. Thanks, ass.
David Roman [00:57:26]:
Did we solve anything? Why'd you bring up aztec? It's because you saw the thing.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:30]:
Yeah. A lot of people are really upset.
David Roman [00:57:34]:
Just happened.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:35]:
Yeah.
William Fairbanks [00:57:35]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:35]:
Well, so it's been building up. I'm not gonna say the. I'm not gonna say the person who. Who told me about this. There's these two people who have, like, this collision thing. I'm gonna. I'm absolutely gonna step a slap into hot water here. And they are very abrasive, and they're very loud, and they talk a lot, and they, like, get out on social media, and they call all these people out, and they, like, do all this really aggressive stuff, and everybody.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:08]:
But them's wrong. And there's even been fights with these people at shows. Like, they just. They're rowdy, right? David's kind of people. Like, David.
William Fairbanks [00:58:17]:
David's kind of people.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:18]:
I mean, like, you could. You could go down here to this mma fight that's happening tonight.
William Fairbanks [00:58:22]:
I. Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:23]:
And you could probably find these people in there, right?
David Roman [00:58:25]:
I want to know what that girl was getting recorded doing.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:27]:
Oh, you didn't see that, did you? Oh, my goodness. That was intense.
David Roman [00:58:32]:
Little girls walking around, just screaming at whoever.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:34]:
She's on the phone, and she's like, I did not give you consent to record me. And, like, David and I are walking and we're like. She's like, I'm gonna release all the videos of you. Oh, you're just sorry, cuz you got caught. Oh, man, I wonder. David's like, I bet it was her singing voice. I bet it was her singing voice.
William Fairbanks [00:58:55]:
Singing.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:59]:
She didn't get her vocal cords warmed up is what David says.
William Fairbanks [00:59:02]:
Just the warm ups. Yeah, that was just a warm up stage.
David Roman [00:59:05]:
It was just the warm ups. And you recorded it now you got it on social media. Feel bad for her.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:11]:
Do you, though? Do you really feel bad for her?
William Fairbanks [00:59:14]:
I got a funny feeling. David doesn't feel bad for a lot of people.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:16]:
No, he doesn't.
David Roman [00:59:17]:
I feel bad for everybody. You kidding me?
William Fairbanks [00:59:21]:
For everybody.
David Roman [00:59:22]:
You know how many repairs I've let walk out the door for freezies? You know how many repairs I do for free now? Ask Brandon. Yeah, I don't know how often he's like, are we gonna be eating this? Cause you feel bad for so and so?
William Fairbanks [00:59:34]:
And I'm like, no, he's a big o softy, Lucas.
David Roman [00:59:38]:
I feel bad for everybody. I'm a terrible business owner.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:41]:
Except that part everybody does.
William Fairbanks [00:59:43]:
He feels bad for everybody. Except for Californians.
David Roman [00:59:47]:
They made that bed. They made that bed. They need a lay in it. They made that bed.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:54]:
That was awesome.