I agree with you 100%.

 

Time management always seems to be an issue. Shops take on lots of jobs and then can't juggle them properly. It's worse when a shop loses interest and sidelines the car. I don't know if it's that they get bored or they realize they're upside down with their estimate and going to lose money or something else. I'll never forget a shop insisting on modifying a head gasket to remove a fire ring for O-ringed heads, installing the heads, and then being surprised when they had a milkshake in the crankcase - they actually had the ***** to charge me the labor and parts to R&R the head gaskets! That was a Mustang but the shop is a vendor here, my car was held hostage 50 weeks and was actually an ornament in their office for part of that time. That was a lesson learned years ago - never again!

My car is in a shop now, it was supposed to take two weeks but I realized that was way short, a part delay idled the work and the slot on the lift was lost. More things happened. I'm pushing 3 months now but should have the car this weekend assuming no additional issues. A small fuel leak that required some disassembly to get to has slowed progress too but is now solved. A difference here is that I've been kept informed. I can't say there hasn't been breaks in the work or bumps along the way but I've mostly known what was going on and understand the world isn't revolving around my job. I'm also not likely to be patient much longer! :-P

End of the day communication is important and many shops fail at it hard. Time management also important, don't tell someone something will get done in three weeks and forget to tell them you're going to take a week off that will halt progress or fail to mention you double (or triple!) booked other jobs. Friends of mine own shops, I see this happen and I know it drives car owners crazy (sigh).

P.S. The shop that held my car hostage? Awhile later I found out a techy celebrity was going to upgrade their high end car and was considering that shop. I shot him an email, much to my surprise I got a kind response thanking me for letting him know how the business was run and they were crossed off the list. Word of mouth reputation isn't directly tangible but if a shop screws up enough word gets around....