It is a commonly known Fact that mechanics get away with charging people large amounts of money on a daily basis for work they haven't done. Let me explain...

If you bring your vehicle to a Mechanic's shop and ask him to fix something, the first thing he does is reach for one of a number of differently published books, which is available for nearly every year, make, and model of vehicle ever made. This book then tells him how long any particular job will take. Such as, if you need to change a starter on a 1986 Mercedes Model 190E, the book may indicate that it will take 5 hours to change. When in reality, it probably only takes an hour or two at the most. Yet, it has now become the industry standard for mechanics to swear by these stupid books, and they get away with charging you for 5 hours labor, when it actually only took them 1.5 hours. Now, when you're talking about anywhere between $60-$75. per hour labor, that adds up to be one very expensive difference!

My question is, how do they get away with this crap, legally? This is not only dishonest, in my opinion- it's the same as stealing.

Like it's not enough that they make over 50 bucks an hour (I sure wish I made even close to that much), but then they have to exaggerate how long it takes them, on top of it?!! How do they get away with it?

Part of the answer lies with the manufacturers. Now, this applies mostly to agencies, dealerships that have the franchise for a particular marque.If a maker wants to persuade a garage to sell his marque he will use the timings in the maker's workbook as part of the argument, the sales pitch, to persuade the garage to sign up . The maker will say 'Look how our timings are' meaning 'Look, you can charge X hours for this job because the makers specify that as the time (even though we think you'll do it in less )'

Years ago this was standard practice and servicing was a big part of the garage's income.Nowadays there is far less servicing to be done. When a new car is sold now there'll be an early service check and after that the dealer won't see the car for, maybe, years and the vehicles are so reliable that there aren't the running repairs between services. However, it may be that non-franchised garages and their mechanics still use the old books of many makers to good and highly profitable, effect. They are probably repairing older vehicles than those seen by franchised dealers but have no qualms in charging a franchised dealer's rates. The franchised dealer does, at least, have the argument that he has had to install a lot of equipment at the maker's demand,sell only that make and so rely on that make for his new sales and probably had to have his mechanics trained under the supervision of the car maker so as to be expert in that marque. So he may feel justified in his charges.

(We don't even change tyres at the rate we used to.That's a pity for the garages because there was more profit in tyres than anything else apart, maybe, from batteries. A tyre may last tens of thousands of miles without obvious wear. Batteries also last longer.If you ever wondered why there are places that sell only tyres or only batteries, there's your answer: these places creamed off the most profitable part of the car repair trade but don't have to have skilled mechanics to pay to do any fitting)