Scott Schmidt

Hey folks, apologies if this question is a little off-topic, but I had my GLS 450 in for service the other day and the service advisor told me something about the job being a "six hour" task. That made me wonder if their service technicians got paid a certain amount for a task, or whether they got paid an hourly rate instead. I believe autobody shops, at least when it comes to insurance reimbursement, get paid in accordance with a table of standard manhours instead of by how long the job actually takes. I was just wondering if that's the same situation with Mercedes mechanics, as it could have some bearing on the quality of their service. If anybody knows, thank you.

TheAce

They get paid based on the expected amount of time for a job. These are all well documented on the computer. An efficient tech can get paid for more than 8 hours of work in an 8 hour day. On the flip side, an inefficient tech can get paid less than 8 hours for an 8 hour day.

mikapen

That's correct.
They get paid "flat rate," which includes diagnosis but also standing at the parts counter, clean up and other things.

Yes, an experienced tech, with the special tools they've accumulated for their work, can do a job more quickly, more efficiently, and probably better than a recently certified one.

They can easily accumulate $40,000 worth of tools - an investment in their profession and productivity.

ygmn

They have FLAT RATE and FLAG HOURS.
Flat is normally the lube tech guys who just change oil and do tire stuff. they get paid by punching the time clock so to speak.

Flag hours is when they get paid by the job per MB's book that says hours a job should take. (dealer uses this for quotes too normally or they will add a bit if they are short for month)

This is why they hate diagnosing since it really does not pay once you find issue and say the tech at first went down the wrong path and wasted hours.
Once they find issue and repair the book says they get so much for diagnosing & repair hours for that issue only not all the ones that were wrong.

A good tech will look through the service writer tickets to find the GRAVY jobs - the ones they know they can do faster than book.
Seniority also allows the techs to choose first in some service depts.

Tough to make money today due to the time it takes to troubleshoot with all the computer controlled things in a car and how a rear left tailight can make a rear window not work anymore or something crazy like that.

mikapen

You actually have flag rate and flat rate reversed.
Flag rate is time clock based, flat rate is by the job.

The best service managers will pay technicians for diagnostic time, usually not charged to the customer, but rewarding techs for their diagnostic expertise, and those folks will be placed on the difficult jobs.
Also, a good service manager also doesn't allow cherry picking, but assigns the job to the appropriate technician.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to choose shops, because you don't know these things until you've been a customer with a difficult problem.

Dealership Groups tend to have similar emphasis (or non-emphasis) on Service quality, across ALL brands in their stable.
There's one Group in a nearby city that I would never take a car for service.

An opinion Reinforced with my last A Service, where I went to one of those shops because I thought "how could you mess up one of those." They proved that it can be done.
They tried to sell me new tires, even though my new Conti's only had 500 mi on them, and they charged me for a rotation which they didn't do. Inflated my tires exactly 50 psi left side and 32 PSI right side.

Thirteen brands in that town are owned by the same dealership group, and the service from all of them is is crappy at best.

Not only do I fear taking my car there, I would never work there as a technician.

OTOH there are a couple of dealerships that are stellar, and I would just love to work there. And guess what - people trust them. Justifiably so.

Unfortunately, dealership groups are snapping up franchises everywhere, as owners are cashing out of an empire they've built.

So I expect service experience in general to decline. 🙁

W205C43PFL

Like others mentioned, at least true in Canada.... :

MB techs are paid based on the job that is estimated required, if a tech gets a 1 hour job done in 30 minutes, they get paid for that full 1 hour and they can move on to another job. If they get the second job that is estimated to be done in 2 hours, done in 1 hour, they get paid that full 2 hours.

The reverse is true, if a job is estimated to be done in 1 hour yet the technician takes 2 hours to get it done. They only get paid for 1 hour even though they spent 2 hours. For that reason, they like to rush things to get things done as fast as possible, the problem with that is, they might not get a job done properly as a result, clips might break, oil might be underfilled or overfilled (been there done that as a customer).

Plus Service A and Service B is also offered through Premier Express service which speeds things up, they might not actually go through all those inspections listed in Service A and Service B to speed things up, most likely. In that case, they just do an oil and filter change for Service A but charge you for all the things (inspections) they didn't do. Premier Express is also two technicians doing the work so things gets sped up, problem is what if both do the work incorrectly or one did the work properly but the other think the their colleague did it wrong so they do it differently which was actually work. Two persons, more chances of going wrong. Or if we think positively, one can do something wrong, the other technician corrects the mistake. I seen interns or students doing the work as well in that case, not saying just because they are inexperienced they will mess things up for sure, but something to think about.

That said, not all dealerships or technicians are equal, there certainly are MB dealerships that actually do every step properly. Those don't get enough positive attention.

This is a least true for Canada, not fully sure about the USA. So what I said might not be applicable in USA at all.

W205C43PFL

At factory level, a worker could be rushing things to get the car assembled quickly to go home on a Friday or they had a bad weekend when they came back for work on a Monday.

Not saying this is absolutely true but there is a possibility.