Las Vegas GF Chat Room

Today I know of 1 or 2 super transmission technicians that still operate shops. They both are independent owners / operators. They work in Long Island, New York. Although there are still transmission franchises today that exist, the list is short. I have no clue whose who any longer. Most all the people i knew have come and gone. Including myself.

 

Red, just send the car out to Oregon. If they don't firebomb it first when it gets near Portland, MrV could probably do the repairs.

 

Portland has "turned the corner" and seems to be heading back toward pre+BLM "normalcy."

We have the Rose Festival going on, and thus far the turn out has been amazing (perfect weather helps).

Here's a snippet:

Spare me the LBGT comments: this town is LGBT friendly and makes no bones about it.

 

Here's a flash V. EVERYWHERE in the US used to be LGBT friendly....until the comparatively few queers in the NYC & LA/SF media decided to go on an all-out assault and push it big-time into normal people's faces. Commercials, movies, tv shows....it's one of the reasons China rightfully laughs their asses off at us and will continue to do so on their way to surpassing us in EVERY ASPECT OF POWER, as long as we keep displaying such a perverted weakness.

Nobody needs gay pride shit or parades. We never did. Gay people did well enuf before when they just kept to themselves. They're basically mistakes of nature or just choose to be strange, and with that comes proportionately small billing. And for the VERY small population of them, it was far better when they did their thing and we did ours. Now, all the people who hate our country or hate how we should all respect our history etc. see an opening to hate straight people, white people, and anyone who loves this country, so they boisterously push their gay and trans gender freak agenda on us. These last few generations are truly sick overall.

 

Was that you at the last Starlite Parade I attended around Y2K?

Wife and I were viewing the parade from the fifth or so level of a parking structure, looking down: as the LGBT people passed by in parade some intolerant people next to us dropped beer bottles on the passing throng.

CRASH !

Not everyone in Portland was / is LGBT-friendly.

 

No doubt about it, UNKOOL1 is a disgrace and almost as despicable as Chrissy BLOAT Mitchell!

 

I just wanted to elaborate a little more on your question above, since my mind as been focused on the good days. There actually is a lot to understand if you even give a shit. Besides, my mechanical posts might be interesting for some and a change from fighting with Kewlj's bullshit.

Franchises like 7/11 were once privately owned. I think they now became all corporate owned unless the past private owner had some type of granny clause. I had a friend who was in that granny position with a 7/11, but corporate eventually made it impossible for him operate. They would send alleged spotters to watch the action, along with endless on demand surprise inventories. Accuse him of stealing and buying supplies privately from the distributors. Of course, that would cut corporate out of its profits. They once came in and removed all 7/11 coffee cups saying he was not reporting all sales and always short on cup inventory. He had to go out and but typical cups. It eventually became too costly to fight corporates endless accusations and legal teams. They eventually settled on a buy out price cheating him out of a ton if he sold it privately. By now they should have 100% control of all stores. (I think)

McDonald’s would be a good franchise to say that although most are independently owned and operated, they are forced to abide by stern franchise agreements and uniformly operate. Complaints could breach your agreement with them and become costly.

Those I mentioned above are multi-billion-dollar franchises today. Most transmission or auto franchises including my own would be considered two-bit operations when compared to them. Of course, car dealerships would be excluded. While talking of car dealerships, everyone thinks bringing their cars back to a dealer is best today. This is not always the case. Usually, a dealership has one top technician. Most of all other mechanics at the dealership are low end incompetent part replaces. Some cannot even do that right. The advantage they have is if they diagnose something let’s say that is electrical. They put the part in and it didn’t correct the problem. They take it out again and put it back on the shelve. Then they move on to next guess until they find the problem. They do have access to top shelve information and data via corporate.But, they don't understand it. if a private shop buys an electrical part and it doesn’t fix the problem, they can’t return it. To work for private shops the technicians usually are step above most. A private shop may have 3/4 technicians while a dealer has 20 plus. There just are not that many available. Today the labor force for auto repair is in dire straits.

A couple of my shops did the transmission work for several car dealers. That was a grand slam if you could hook up with them. It involved a lot of maneuvering to land them. In almost all cases you had to hook up with the owner of the dealer. Sometimes the service manager could get you in but risky if owner finds out the payola found its way to manager not him. I always dealt with the owners, and once a month had to go to their private office and pay in cash the kickbacks. It was usually a certain agreed amount per job. You usually could average anywhere between 5 and 15 cars per month. Each job had an average ticket of $1,500.00 to $3,000.00 a pop. (Back then it was huge) We always had a look at what was coming out and had years of experience before outside repair shops could work on out of warranty vehicles. Today most all transmission repairs usually start at 2K and go way up from there. I had a Cadillac car dealer owner who was a multi-millionaire. Every time I handed him the envelope, he acted like he never saw cash before. He would smile across his face while counting the hundreds and pat my back several times thanking me. It was weird.

One of my shops did work for 4 car dealers in the area. We looked like a new car dealership. We had brand new cars under warranty all over the place. We had our yard filled and were forced to parking many along the side of a busy road. Everyday when I showed up, I was always relieved to see none of them damaged by accidents on road. That never did happen.

Now dealers have their own remanufactured plants that supply dealers. There usually very expensive especially after adding labor. So, many people prefer dealing with a reputable transmission shop today.

It appears I once again drifted not getting my point across about quality of auto franchises. As you could tell I’m not very busy today.

Red, I will address your question above in next post.

 

Thanks for responses. I find this all very interesting. The dealer relationships sound like a key to making it work big-time, which is not obvious at all.

 

I also find it interesting and I really knew nothing about how any of it worked/works.

In my entire life I've never had transmission problems, and other than having the old "shift kits" installed in various muscle cars I've owned, I haven't done business with those shops. I'm sure today's auto transmissions are a completely different thing.

 

Here is the rest of that answer Redietz,

Every franchise would love perfection and few as possible complaints. Sadly, that is a tough nut to crack when it comes to transmissions.

Short answer is “yes” the individual local franchisee owner is in full control of the quality. Including all interactions with customer, starting with phone communication, location greeting, cleanness, professionalism, sales, delivery, and finished product. You would be surprised what a clean office with coffee and donuts, clean shop, and well uniformed dressed workers play on first impression.

A person may know they have a bad transmission but, still need to be sold one.

Advantage of multiple franchise locations is having access to many different owners who might have experienced and or know the answer to your current banging your head against the wall problem.

We didn’t have the computer access that is available today. We would have monthly meetings that required the manager or owner to participate in. Once we went into other state locations, we had to travel often and find usually a local hotel conference room to hold meetings.

We trained for phone procedures, sales techniques, closing, and all the other stuff involved. We would even record telephone conversations playing the customer with owners not knowing it was us. When owners would complain how business sucks in their area we would play these recorded conversations back to them, exposing how pathetic they were. We had phone procedures all typed out on paper with blanks for the answer you got. With a little practice you would know where to go and what to ask next which was already typed out based on the previous answer. 99% of all first communication is usually by phone. It’s your job to get that customer out of the market and to your shop. All without giving any price. Once you give a price the customer will find several other shops that will beat it. If you’re not the cheapest in town you have no shot at retaining that customer you gave a price to. Offering free road tests, free diagnostic performance checks, free computer scans, etc. works

When I had just two independent shops the quality was top shelve. Sadly, when it got big, I would say 50% of the shops I wouldn’t bring my car too.

Finding and trying to train people usually not well educated that are clueless a technical job is like dealing with the devil. Good mechanics and mechanical technicians are like finding a needle in a haystack. Anyone that is good and qualified is usually over paid and not going anywhere.

There were cases where after we discussed a complaint with the customer, we (corporate) gave the franchisee the chance to correct the problem. If they did not handle it, we would make certain the customers car was fixed along with returning all costs. Including the repair, tows, car rentals, and any other out of pocket confirmed costs. We then would collect the funds from franchisee in accordance with our agreement. Even with all that you know the customer bad mouthed that location every chance they got.

Auto franchises are only as good as the people who are working in them. I would say most suck.

Reputation in your area is what’s best to go by. The name of any franchise doesn’t mean a thing when it comes to auto repair of all sorts. It’s beyond their reach.

Being able to sell my chain to investors was one of the happiest days of my life. It took almost a year of back and forth negotiations before it happened. When I left the closing, it was like having 50 lb. weights removed from my shoulders.

While my boys hung in for another decade with a few locations, that’s when it became fun and rewarding again for me. They had full access to me and my talents where all others usually don’t have that luxury.

Of course oil changes, brakes, tune ups, and many other general repairs on vehicles are acceptable and fair. But when it comes to serious repairs today you really need to find a reputable and fully equipped shop. I know some shops today that carry 5 different lap top computers and still need more trying to service all the different vehicles. The computers average price could hit 10K each. These computers need to be updated constantly with expensive yearly fees giving you links to car manufacturers data. This data is constantly being updated, sometimes every month. I know shops that teamed up with other repair shops to help reduce and chop up the fees. It’s not just one link that gives you access to all the manufactures. Everyone of them have their own individual site and fees. There are a couple manufactures that won’t give full access to everything you need, hence forcing you to go to the dealer. There also are individual computer guys that will come to your shop and flash or upgrade the cars computer you are working on for a reasonable fee. Hundred to two hundred dollars per car. That gets expensive really quick.

After replacing or just repairing most electronic transmissions today they must have all control modules and ECU’s reset so they could re-learn new parameters, along with flashing into it any recent updates posted.

If done right these electronic transmissions work perfectly. No more vacuum lines, throttle cables, manual linkages, governors, the list is endless of what use to cause shitty transmission performance. Many transmissions today are fly-by-wire.

Today you need shops that are equipped and have people that actually have brains.

Good luck with that…

 

Informative posts, BH.

Your point about the dearth of competent new hires is not just limited to transmission repair: it's aacross the board and I have to ask myself "Why?"

Back in the Day this didn't seem to be a problem.

I understand that there are insufficient techs the field of aircraft repair, for example: now that's a scary thought, trusting / hoping that the commercial jet you're in doesn't fall out of the sky due to incompetence.

I guess when kids today grow up playing video games instead of building things with Erector Sets like we did long ago, the interest in all things mechanical doesn't get kindled and nurtured such that when it comes time to find work tech fields are not considered.

There will be a stiff price to pay for such hubris.

As for the "payola" thing, that still goes on: I won't mention specifics but paying kickbacks to owners and managers to get their regular, exclusive business / favors is well entrenched.

 

Thanks for the education. It does impact my personal decisions here.

The city I live in has roughly 70,000 people. There are two slightly smaller cities within 30 miles, therefore the TRI airport letters. I know Johnson City pretty well, but not the other two. I figure, with this car, it's likely my last or next to last car, so I'll be careful with the repair decisions.

From what you said, and what little I know locally, I will probably research transmission shops all across the state before making the call on where to get things done. Knoxville and Asheville (NC) will be part of that research. I will not make a snap decision, which means I need to do the legwork now so I'm prepared when it's time. Both cities are more upscale than here, which doesn't mean much in and of itself, but suggests I may be able to find more fully equipped shops.

 

Predictably, kew lasted less than a few days before he just couldn't help himself again.

While most people know kew lied about there being any "incident" at all, as soon as serial idiot PositiveVariance comes on pontificating his belief in kew's crazy story that never had a case filed in Clark County, the twit just couldn't resist looking for more attention by making the death of some BJ player all about him.

 

Buddies Kew and Comrade Dietz from Forrest Gump Lane in Big Johnson City can't help themselves! They are both notorious attention whorez! Kew 100 times more then Comrade!

 

Interestingly, that fool PV, who claimed to have used ALL KINDS of "forensics" as he stumbled through trying so hard--and of course, failing--to discredit my win, completely ignored every one of kew's hoax's missteps....from his stupid claim that "the casino rushed video right on over to his attorney before even being asked" to not knowing the difference between a plaintiff and a defendant--and the other half dozen or more flub-ups (aka, LIES) in-between.

Then he tries to pretend to know how much a lawyer would get along with kew, in a hypothetical situation, which he wants to be real no matter how dumb it makes him appear.

Our weather here is annoyingly similar nearly every day, with highs in the 70's, lows around 48, and some sporadic rain almost every afternoon or evening. And it's gonna be like this for another 8 days. So being entertained by these dopes isn't all that bad

 

Gotta wonder Roberrt whether you'll dry up and blow away now that KJ seems to have stepped into a pile of shit and left with an arura of stench permeating his memory: without a foil you're probably "lost."

Hey, is the Cal-Neva still open, and if so do they tell you anything about the tunnel that JFK allegedly used to secretly travel unobserved to MM's room for a little nookie?

What happens at the Cal-Neva...

 

Unfortunately the Cal-Neva and all its glorious history has been closed I think since 2015 or thereabouts. The only casino in Stateline now is Crystal Bay, and I like the property.

 

I had an Olds Alero that started running rough. Sounded like it was missing. I thought it probably needed new plugs and wires. I took it to Firestone Auto Care in Joplin, Missouri. After they had it in the back for an hour they came out and said I had an interior engine problem and they don't do internal engine repairs.

So I took it to another shop. They diagnosed it and said I needed new plugs and wires. I told the guy about Firestone. He said "well, it's really hard to find good techs these days." They put the new plugs and wires in and it ran like a top.

 

V, PV said Nersesian would have accepted 15%-20% instead of his usual 33% because the casino from kew's hoax settled quickly.

Do high-profile attys really do that?

 

I guess you never needed a lawyer in Nevada.

The attorney's fee is determined by spinning a wheel behind the receptionist's desk.