Had the worst Monday in 6 years of turning wrenches

Last week I had a customer bring in a 2015 F-150 that other shop said just needed a new battery... turns out it was a corroded ground wire hidden under the fuse box that took me 4 hours to find. Then the guy argued the price and tried to tell me my labor rate was too high. Has anyone else had a job snowball into a nightmare over something this simple?

2 comments

2 Comments

thomas_young1mo ago

Honestly man, is it really that bad? Customers argue about price all the time, that's just part of the gig. Finding a hidden ground wire is annoying but four hours of diagnostic time isn't the end of the world, especially on an F-150 where you know stuff gets buried under the fuse box. Maybe I'm just numb to it after years of retail nonsense but a snowball nightmare is like a transmission swap that reveals a cracked block, not a bad ground. You got paid for the time, the guy left eventually, sounds like a win to me.

hugo_jones21mo ago

Man, yeah I get what you're saying but I dunno. Had a buddy who ran a shop for like 15 years and he told me about this one truck that came in for a check engine light. Three trips, six hours of labor, finally found a chewed up wire under the intake. Customer paid but left a bad review online and it cost him way more in lost business than he made on the job. @thomas_young you're right that arguing is normal, but that kind of hidden crap adds up way faster than people realize. Getting paid for the time doesn't fix the stress of chasing a ghost all day while other work sits. Some days it's definitely more than just annoying, it wears you down.