Ever get an ad and head to the store, only to not find what you Want? The old Bait N' Switch, did the salesman convince you to buy a substitute? In calling an auto repair shop to get an estimate, many times a very attractive price will be offered, hence you take your vehicle in for repair, only to have a call back from the shop that the situation is worse than originally thought. This is what nobody wants.
The nature of a quote is to find out what something is going to cost. It is dangerous to bite on the lowest estimate because... 1st, sometimes the cheapest provider is not the best and then cheap becomes a problem. 2nd, often the final price is way different than quote. Quotes can be damaging for all parties involved. Many times what your friend or even another shop has told is bad on your car is not the case. Over the years we have seen misperceptions of a cars needs go both way. Sometimes the issue is not a huge it is small, other times we have seen what is thought to be a small issue turn out to be a bad engine or transmission. We encourage people to let us determine the issue before Speculation Gone Wild happens. Manage expectations with fact not fictions.
At our shop we try to not quote because if anything changes a customer is thinking "what's the deal". We approach repairs by first assessing the true needs of the vehicle, next we call with an estimate and projected time of repair. Sometimes while repairing other problems or issues arise, and this is when we start taking and sending pictures to our customers or maybe we say come up to shop so we can display the issue.
Our goal is to keep the customer informed of the facts and explain the repair in understandable language and offer as many realistic options as possible. Remember all quotes are not created equally. Also what quality do you want in parts and repairs, or is it all about Price.
Chasing the lowest price will put you in a loop of bad, low end providers. It is not likely you will ever find a shop you will like. At Jerrys we work with our customers to find the right mix of price and quality if possible.
