"Shop Supplies" BS from Car Dealership...

[New Hunter Okotoks]

Today, I went in to pick up our 2014 Pathfinder from Okotoks Nissan and find out that there is a charge for 10% of the bill for: "shop supplies" All that was done was an oil change and a bunch of, "check items" that would only take a guy 2 minutes to perform. Shop supplies cost: $18.22!! I was told that was what pays for floor mats for the guys, rags and such. You would think that would come out of the $130 for the check items but I guess not.

In the end it was probably the best $18 of my life because they won't get another service out of me. The next one was going to be a doozy too at well over $400...+ Shop Supplies!!

I generally do the oil changes on the vehicles but my back is screwed right now and can't crawl underneath cars anymore. Also, this is the wife's vehicle and she was adamant from day 1 that it would only be going to the dealership for service because she didn't want to worry about anything not being covered under warranty. I tried to explain that as long as I could prove that I did the essential maintenance, all would be fine if anything happened. But we all know the old adage:" Happy Wife, Happy Life" so I let it go. Until now. I showed her the charge and she is not very happy either! She doesn't want to go back anymore and said that she will ask her brother to do the maintenance from now on. We will just make sure to document everything, keep receipts and even take pictures proving dates where possible.

[levigne25]

Originally Posted by New Hunter Okotoks

Today, I went in to pick up our 2014 Pathfinder from Okotoks Nissan and find out that there is a charge for 10% of the bill for: "shop supplies" All that was done was an oil change and a bunch of, "check items" that would only take a guy 2 minutes to perform. Shop supplies cost: $18.22!! I was told that was what pays for floor mats for the guys, rags and such. You would think that would come out of the $130 for the check items but I guess not.

In the end it was probably the best $18 of my life because they won't get another service out of me. The next one was going to be a doozy too at well over $400...+ Shop Supplies!!

I generally do the oil changes on the vehicles but my back is screwed right now and can't crawl underneath cars anymore. Also, this is the wife's vehicle and she was adamant from day 1 that it would only be going to the dealership for service because she didn't want to worry about anything not being covered under warranty. I tried to explain that as long as I could prove that I did the essential maintenance, all would be fine if anything happened. But we all know the old adage:" Happy Wife, Happy Life" so I let it go. Until now. I showed her the charge and she is not very happy either! She doesn't want to go back anymore and said that she will ask her brother to do the maintenance from now on. We will just make sure to document everything, keep receipts and even take pictures proving dates where possible.

It's just a way to steal your money , big scam . I always ask them what supplies did you use ? One squirt of brake cleaner and they charge ya for 5 bottles of the stuff

[canadiantdi]

I've seen a thread like this before. Prepare yourself my man!

I agree though, imagine McDonalds charging you an extra fee for a napkin or timmies charging a cup fee.. absurd. Build the costs into the price you charge. Don't tack on extras to make your "price" seem lower than it is!!!

[Ranch11]

Shop supplies from anywhere is BS! At work we get contracted mill wrights to come out and do pump maintenance. Every time they come out they charge us 95$ for shop supplies! I asked one time what involved shop supplies. They said rags and paper towels. That's alot of friggin paper towels!

[Salavee]

That rip-off program seems pretty normal these days .. especially auto dealers but a lot of other service shops are pulling it off as well. As long as people don't complain, they will stay with it. Just like the $300.00-$400.00."Document fees" when you buy a new vehicle. That is the biggest pile of crap I've seen. It started with a few dealers and now it's a plague. Most buyers think it is legit. Gad !! Leave it to an auto dealer...
I wish folks would have paid me a big bonus for the priveledge of dealing with me and buying a product at my facility.

Good on you for calling them on it.

[tirebob]

I used to invoice shop supplies on customer bills but at a zero dollar sale value. It is because it would remove inventory value from the system and allow me to better quantify true profit margins on a daily basis rather than monthly/yearly.

Being charged on the invoice or having the dollar value simply calculated into the job on the backend and then figuring out your profitable sales point are both justifiable, but when they just blanket a bill at 10% of the job cost, that leaves a lot of room for abuse by the dealership. I invoiced shop supplies (removing inventory costs) at different levels based on the specific job as some jobs use more shop supplies than others...

[CaberTosser]

Having it in there automatically is a bit much. On my bills I'll often throw in a few bucks for the small things such as solder, acetylene, Teflon, pipe dope, glue, etc. One needs to account for the numerous little things as they're sure as heck not free to me, but its certainly not a default charge.

[lmtada]

Breakfast before 10:00am at the shop I go to. Bacon, eggs, pancake, toast, coffee. Half hr and you are done. Restaurant inside of dealership. $5.00 for additional plate.

[Dr. Phil A]

"I agree though, imagine McDonalds charging you an extra fee for a napkin or timmies charging a cup fee.. absurd. Build the costs into the price you charge. Don't tack on extras to make your "price" seem lower than it is!!![/QUOTE]

Timmies does charge a cup fee. If you take your own go cup they will drop 10 cents off your coffee.

[tirebob]

Exactly...

When I am balancing some guys 4 monster mudders on his 20's, I would remove anywhere from 8 to 12 shop supplies (valued at a cost of 2 dollars per supply) by invoicing the shop supply part number because I would use a crap ton of expensive wheels weights etc, but when simply changed over and balance a small car rims I would only invoice 2 shop supplies as barely any were used. I would invoice these at a zero cost to the client, but the shop supply cost still factored into invoice total profit margin. I still charged more money overall to do the more expensive job, but nothing is more irritating to the client than being nickled and dimed right to his face...

Originally Posted by CaberTosser

Having it in there automatically is a bit much. On my bills I'll often throw in a few bucks for the small things such as solder, acetylene, Teflon, pipe dope, glue, etc. One needs to account for the numerous little things as they're sure as heck not free to me, but its certainly not a default charge.

[Salavee]

Originally Posted by CaberTosser

Having it in there automatically is a bit much. On my bills I'll often throw in a few bucks for the small things such as solder, acetylene, Teflon, pipe dope, glue, etc. One needs to account for the numerous little things as they're sure as heck not free to me, but its certainly not a default charge.

Depending on the type of service one provides, additional charges for supplies can be justified. However, at an auto dealership that posts a $120.00 -$140.00
per hour shop rate I'm thinking "shop supplies" are already well covered... maybe twice or more by the sounds of this.

[New Hunter Okotoks]

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Here is a list of their services. Today I had the "Maintenance 3" and total was almost $217.53, WITHOUT any extra filter ad ons or anything like that. Just the basic was done.

Here's what is interesting. The Maintenance 4 would be way over $500 and looks like they do a ton of stuff; but look at the list.... "check this, check that". A guy looking under the hood and walking around the vehicle can do most of that in literally 2 minutes. It's not like the guy is taking off the serpentine belt and going over 100% of it with a light! They actually list "horn operation" as one of the service details! None of it requires a Journeyman mechanic and would surely be done by a tech. By my estimate, that Service 4 could be done by a tech in well under 1.5 hours.

I actually know of one shop that would charge people for a service like that but do none of the stuff that actually took the time, like the brake flush and adjustments. That shop was in Ontario and was caught red handed by my friend who had marked components with a marker to prove that nothing had been done. Not saying they all do it but does brake fluid really need to be changed annually or after 30,000 kms?? How would anyone really know if it had been done or not?

[artie]

What gets me is that most places you go charge you for air to fill up your tire. They have this fancy little machine on the wall that takes a lonnie. Problem is most of these machines do not put out enough pressure to pressure up a truck tire. So you get a low tire half filled for a lonnie and then wonder where you can go to get enough pressure to fill it properly. I have talked to a lot of people who have bought their own small machine but that only works if your close to home. I have not had good luck getting enough air out of one of those machines you plug into the truck as it takes a long while just to get enough air to get you home.

[canadiantdi]

Originally Posted by Dr. Phil A

"I agree though, imagine McDonalds charging you an extra fee for a napkin or timmies charging a cup fee.. absurd. Build the costs into the price you charge. Don't tack on extras to make your "price" seem lower than it is!!!

Timmies does charge a cup fee. If you take your own go cup they will drop 10 cents off your coffee.[/QUOTE]

Wow, I honestly didn't know that!

[Dr. Phil A]

Brake fluid absorbs moisture over time. This changes the boiling point of the brake fluid so if you are braking down a lot of hills, the fluid will eventually fail. I will change the fluid a couple of times by just pulling the fluid out of the reservoir and topping it off. Repeat the process in a couple of months to get the rest of the stuff out. Brake fluid is cheap. You also end up with rubber fines from the plungers and seals in it too.

If you followed the owners manual service schedule to the km it would surprise you how long a vehicle would last. I bought a new 2007 Cavalier in Jan 2008. Did all the maintenance myself as I am GM trained. Ran it to 400,000 km then sold it to a buddy. Car is still running and is pushing 450,000km. My cost was mostly maintenance and brakes. Cheap unit to operate.

As for shop supplies it is usually a percentage which is not realistic. On a larger job where there are things like cleaners, varsol tank requirements, silicone, scraper blades, etc, it should be capped.

They could add it to the hourly rate and it would likely be more in the long run.

[Twisted Canuck]

I got dinged $49 for 'shop supplies' my last major service with Toyota on my daughter's car (that was the one they tried to charge me over $600 to change out the thermostat, a 20 minute job). When I had a loud chat with the service manager, he defended it and told me shop supplies covered: the cardboard on the floors, the thin poly on the seats, top off the wiper fluid if it needed it, and 'if they found any screws missing out of panels or such, they would install a new screw AT NO COST! I told him 'of course there is a cost, it's called shop supplies, and you are charging me on the off chance that you MAY have to perform some 'courtesy' service (that's what he called it).....and if they didn't find anything to fix, well you still get charged! I told him charging for services that aren't performed is called 'fraud'! He got quite offended at the use of that particular word, and called it an 'industry practice'. I agreed with him that the whole industry is crooked and commits fraud daily. Charging hours 'from the book', not what is actually worked! 20 minute job gets charged 2 hours? They're all a bunch of crooks. Which is why I was happy to meet a good mechanic from this forum to do my work from now on. Another shout out to Spencer, you're the Shcnizzle!

[twofifty]

We're lucky they haven't worked up the nerve to charge a 15% gratuity

[Dog hunter]

Ever looked at the price of shop supplies,things like loctite, wd/40 , degreasers, gasket compounds,adhesives some of these items are scary expensive. Caterpillar makes a product to use on exhaust manifolds that cost 300$ for 470ml, these costs have to be accounted for.

[New Hunter Okotoks]

Originally Posted by twofifty

We're lucky they haven't worked up the nerve to charge a 15% gratuity

Not yet...

Remember that not all that long ago, there were no such charges for shop supplies. Then some Controller or General Manager somewhere came up with the idea for the forced shop supplies charge and it stuck because enough people just paid. This will only get worse now that the Manufacturers are extending oil change intervals by thousands of km. The Manufacturers also want to keep costs for maintenance down so that the numbers for "Annual Operating Cost" are kept low for when Consumer's Reports does the cost of ownership for each model. So how do dealerships get around this? By charging a 10% tax on every service that goes through the dealership and calling it: Shop Supplies.

"You can shear a sheep many times but only skin him once." I'm done with going to the dealership for anything but recall stuff from now on. The funny thing is that the Service Advisor was just telling me about the cheap tires that go on expensive new vehicles and that for how much we had just paid for this vehicle, it could have come with decent tires on it. The next breath was me asking about the shop supplies and her defending it by telling me about rubber mats for the guys and shop rags etc. So it's horrible that the Sales side of the dealership ripped me off with cheap tires on an expensive new vehicle but it's ok to skewer me for almost $20 for shop supplies? Not anymore..

[CaberTosser]

Nice to see that the maintenance 4 includes checking the "propeller shaft", do they also verify if the bilge pump is working or adjust the trim tabs?

[New Hunter Okotoks]

Originally Posted by Dog hunter

Ever looked at the price of shop supplies,things like loctite, wd/40 , degreasers, gasket compounds,adhesives some of these items are scary expensive. Caterpillar makes a product to use on exhaust manifolds that cost 300$ for 470ml, these costs have to be accounted for.

Yes I do know what most of this stuff costs. Does $130 or $140 per hour not cover a couple shots of WD-40, a wipe with a shop rag, a shot of brake Kleen, etc.? Do Passenger cars use a lot of exotic Caterpillar exhaust manifold product? I also have an idea how much it costs a restaurant to give me a straw, a few napkins, some ketchup and run my dishes through the dishwasher but I've never been separately billed for it.

Any idea what it just cost this dealership to stick me for under $20 of shop supplies?? All future services. All future vehicle purchases. All future parts purchases. (I was actually about to order tires for the Pathfinder when I noticed the shop charges today.) It just cost this dealership thousands of dollars to stick me for shop supplies today. That's how much it can cost to nickel and dime some customers for shop supplies.

[Puma]

The charge that boils my blood is the truck charge.

My security contractor used to put $125.00 on each invoice per visit. If he made more than one service call in a day, you betcha, another truck charge !

I told them to take a taxi, it would be cheaper for me !

[Dog hunter]

Is it 130 or 140? Probably 120. The cat product was an example , as far as what it costs the shop the service manager is probably happy you wont be back and i have a feeling you wont like the next shop either, all i know is shop supplies are expensive and neccesary.

[levigne25]

Originally Posted by Salavee

That rip-off program seems pretty normal these days .. especially auto dealers but a lot of other service shops are pulling it off as well. As long as people don't complain, they will stay with it. Just like the $300.00-$400.00."Document fees" when you buy a new vehicle. That is the biggest pile of crap I've seen. It started with a few dealers and now it's a plague. Most buyers think it is legit. Gad !! Leave it to an auto dealer...
I wish folks would have paid me a big bonus for the priveledge of dealing with me and buying a product at my facility.

Good on you for calling them on it.

Do like I did , I told the salesman I will only buy this vehicle unless you wave the 300-400$ paper fees , otherwise I don't want it . Believe me they will for a sale , to many people let themselves be taken and never complain , the more you let them get away with this crap the more they will want from you

[levigne25]

Originally Posted by Dog hunter

Ever looked at the price of shop supplies,things like loctite, wd/40 , degreasers, gasket compounds,adhesives some of these items are scary expensive. Caterpillar makes a product to use on exhaust manifolds that cost 300$ for 470ml, these costs have to be accounted for.

Face it there ripping us off , they never use 40$ worth of shop supplies on indevidual customers

[levigne25]

Next thing is restaurants charging us to park in there parking lots to go sit and eat there food

[huntsfurfish]

Originally Posted by twofifty

We're lucky they haven't worked up the nerve to charge a 15% gratuity

Shush. Dont give them any ideas.

[Leeper]

So, should I or should I not have been charging an extra ten percent for cutting oil on each barrel job? I hope those customers can sleep well knowing they ripped me off for shop supplies. Leeper

[New Hunter Okotoks]

Originally Posted by Dog hunter

Is it 130 or 140? Probably 120. The cat product was an example , as far as what it costs the shop the service manager is probably happy you wont be back and i have a feeling you wont like the next shop either, all i know is shop supplies are expensive and neccesary.

Not exactly, sure, I was trying to take off the oil change portion to make it fair. I made sure to put up a copy of their Maintenance Program earlier in the thread to show what was included in the service that I received.

You are right, anyone who tries to rip me off is not going to be very happy with me.

You don't work in the auto fixing business by any chance do you?

[canadiantdi]

Originally Posted by Leeper

So, should I or should I not have been charging an extra ten percent for cutting oil on each barrel job? I hope those customers can sleep well knowing they ripped me off for shop supplies. Leeper

Charge enough for the job so you get a reasonable profit after all your costs are accounted for.