Not All That Blooms in Spring is Beautiful
In Spring our grass turns green, flowers start to bloom, we hear the birds start to chirp. Unfortunately Spring is also “POTHOLE” season. As the ground thaws the streets deteriorate and the pesky potholes appear. You can’t miss them, they are everywhere. It only takes hitting ONE to throw your cars alignment off. Wearing out tires and suspension parts prematurely.
It is for this reason we are offering, for the month of March only, a full warranty front end alignment. Simply put after we perform a front end alignment on your car, and if and when you hit a pot hole, we will realign it for you again FOR FREE.
This offer is for the month of March only. We will warranty the alignment until May 31st*. Pothole season should be over by then.
http://ekautomotive.com
The Two Biggest Misconceptions In Auto Repair
The two biggest misconceptions in auto repair both have to do with struts and shocks.
1) “If a shock or strut is not leaking than it’s not bad.”
“Shocks and struts are for making the cars ride more comfortable. I don’t need them because I’m happy with my cars ride.”
If you really want your vehicle to be safer you should replace your shocks and struts every 50,000 miles. Shocks and struts are designed to keep your tires on the road. They work hand in hand with your tires along with your brakes and steering system to help improve the safety of your vehicle.
What exactly are your shocks and struts doing? For one thing they’re helping distribute the weight of your vehicle properly over all four tires. This helps your vehicle stop sooner by making sure too much weight doesn’t shift to the front of your vehicle as it comes to a stop. Proper weight distribution also helps with handling counter acting the centrifugal force your vehicle encounters when you turn sticking it to the road and making it more stable. It also insures better vehicle control, which means being able to stop, turn, and swerve, at exactly the moment you need to. And of course with more equal weight on all of your tires you’re less likely to see uneven or excessive tire wear.
Most of the time wear on your shocks and struts is so gradual that the negative effects might not be easy to detect under normal driving conditions. But as your shocks and struts begin to wear your vehicle could begin to dip, sway, and even exhibit signs of wheel bounce. This results in reduced braking ability, increases tire and component wear, and makes your vehicle harder to control. This could mean the difference between having an accident and avoiding one. So make sure to keep your vehicle handling and riding like new by replacing your shocks and struts every 50,000 miles. When replacing you shocks and struts, replace them with a proven quality part and NOT based on cheapest.
Ek Automotive – Shop Walkthrough
Hi everyone,
We just put up a 45 second video to give everyone a taste of what it’s like to come into Ek Automotive!
Watch it here!
- Ek Auto
Ask Plenty of Questions
For years the auto repair industry has had a reputation of ripping people off. It still goes on today in certain shops or franchises, and that bothers me. It bothers me because I’m passionate about what I do. I take pride in not only the work done at my shop, but in this profession also. I spend time twice a year getting together with other shop owners from all parts of the country. We discuss in detail, what’s going on in our profession along with what’s going on in each of our shops. Without fail, one of the first topics is rip off shops and public perception. It boils down to two problems.
The first is customers actually getting ripped off by shady shops or those chain quick oil change places (don’t get me started about those). In these cases, the shops should be fined, ticketed, or given some sort of penalty. That’s just an inexcusable business practice.
The second is more about the perception of getting ripped off. Let me explain in detail what I’m talking about and how to avoid it. Say you bring your car into a shop for service. The shop calls you and says you need front end work, names a bunch of parts and you have no clue what they are. Then tells you, the only thing you understand, is that it’s $500.00. WOW! You don’t know what to say so you respond with OK. They do the work, you pay the bill and drive off.
Were you ripped off? How do you know? Your buddy says he had front end work for $400.00. Uh-oh. You’re starting to think maybe you were ripped off. Sound familiar? Here’s the problem and solution. Shame on the shop for not explaining to you in detail, IN A LANGUAGE YOU CAN UNDERSTAND, what exactly your car needed, why it needed it, and the benefit of having it done. But it is not entirely the shops fault because you need to speak up. You need to ask questions, especially if you don’t understand something. Why does my car need this? What happens if I don’t fix it? What parts are you replacing and what do those parts do? Is there a warranty? How do you know that these parts are bad? Can you show me the old/worn parts when I pick up my car so that I understand better?
If I were the service adviser calling you and you asked me these questions, I’d be very pleased. I like when customers want to know what’s being done with their car and what they’re getting for their hard earned money. I never want a customer to walk away unsure of what it is that was done or what they paid for.
The only problem you’ll ever have in my shop when it comes to asking questions, is me getting excited at the chance to show you all about your car. I have a car cut in half in my lobby that I use for show and tell. Like I said earlier, I’m passionate about what I do.
Evening Car Clinic #1!
“How to change a flat tire.”
This Clinic is for those who don’t know how to change a flat tire, but would like to learn. We’ll take the time to show you the proper and safe way to change a tire. Hopefully you’ll never have to change a tire, but after leaving here you will know how. This will be a hands on clinic!
Please send an e-mail to ekauto1@gmail.com to confirm your attendance. Space is limited, once you commit to attending I’ll send you an conformation e-mail.
Of course, there will be refreshments served.
When?: Wednesday, February 10th.
What Time?: 6pm-7:30pm
Where?: 6600 N. Ogallah, Chicago, IL
Fix What you Have or Buy New
How much does a new car cost? The base MSRP of a 2010 Toyota Siena is $24,540. Fully loaded it becomes 37,865. Let’s split the difference and say $31,202.50. That’s before tax and title charges. Financed at 4% over the next 5 years the total interest amounts to a whopping $3,275.90. Worse yet, that’s $574.64 a month for the next sixty months! How much would repairs for the olds car cost for the next five years? I’d be hard pressed to say that much.
A while back I gave an estimate to a customer for the amount of service and repairs to get their car in perfect working order. The estimate was for about $900.00. So ere were their choices:
1) Ante up $31,202.50 and 10 years from now have a $1,000 “investment”.
2) $574.64 a month for the next 60 months.
3) Make less than two monthly payments and repair their car.
What do you think they did? Well guess what, that was three years ago, and their car just turned 100,000 miles in December. The mini-van looks great, you’d never believe it had that mileage. Sure they’ve had services done since then, oil changes, tire rotations, regular scheduled maintained but you’d have to maintain a new car also. They don’t stay new forever. Maintenance begins 3 months after you drive it off the lot.
Heck. For less than $1.00 a day they feel good about their mini-van. It’s dependable, while most people are worrying about if they can get by another year.
Still not convinced? Look at it this way. They put 30,000 miles on their mini-van in the last three years. That work we did for them comes out to $.03 per mile (3 cents). You can’t save that much just by watching where you buy gas. 3 cents a mile, $1.00 a day, 2 monthly payments instead of 60. Anyway you look at it – it spells fix what you already own. Personally two monthly payments instead of 48 does it for me every time.
For those of you who’ve already bought your new car, you still have a lot in common with my customer. You will both be paying back $574.64 a month for the next 60 months. Except my customer will be getting back $34,478.40 plus interest.
I know there are still a few nay-sayers out there. You’re thinking “what about more repairs, maintenance and those horrible inconvenient break downs?” For this I have a simple rule, fix it before it breaks. For those you who follow the “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it” hopefully my customer will be driving by to lend a hand when you’re on the side of the road. Seriously, think about this for a minute. Would you fly for the airline companies followed the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” rule?
Your Dealership Alternative
Car manufacturers want you to think that you have to bring your car back to the dealership for service or risk voiding your warranty. That is simply not true. You bought the car, you own the car, you have the right to bring your car where you want for service.
Repairs at a new car dealership cost an average of 34 percent more than those at independent repair shops. This results in $11.7 billion in excess costs to consumers annually, according to a new study released by the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA).
The report, “Vehicle Repair Cost Analysis: New Car Dealerships vs. Independent Repair Shops” examined the parts and labor costs for 10 common vehicle repair jobs on domestic and foreign nameplate vehicles in six cities, including Boston, Newark, Atlanta, St. Louis, Los Angeles and Seattle.
The study was commissioned by AAIA and conducted by Lang Marketing to produce evidence in support of the Motor Vehicle Owners’ Right to Repair Act, which the AAIA supports.
Car manufacturers are trying to come up with every way possible to keep you returning to their dealer networks for their over-priced, elitist attitude service. They’ve been attempting to withhold information about your car so that you would be forced to return to them for service. As a consumer, you should be downright angry about this. Can you imagine buying a board game without the rules? That wouldn’t be very much fun. As an independent repair shop owner, I’m not happy about this.
Fortunately, here at Ek Automotive, we are not experiencing a lack of information problem. We spare no expense when it comes to buying state of the art diagnostic equipment and the latest training. The U.S. Government also sees this as unfair. That is why there is The Motor Vehicle Owners’ Right to Repair Act (HR 2057) that would require car companies to make the same service information and tools capabilities available to independent repair shops that they provide to their franchised dealer networks.
Bottom line, you don’t have to pay a premium for premium service that keeps your warranty intact!
All the best,
Steve Ek
Couch for Charity (No Pun Intended!)
I’m going to build a chair like this at the shop as a project this winter. In the spring I’ll give/donate it to a charity/group so they can use it in a raffle.
Is anyone intrested in helping me on this project?
Does anyone know of a group/charity that would like this?
Send me an e-mail: ekauto1@gmail.com
Or visit the website: http://ekautomotive.com/
Support Small Business
We’ve all seen the signs that read “shop locally” on the back of the folded stop signs or hanging on a store front window. We’ve all seen them but few of us give it any thought. The magnitude of that simple message is so large it’s almost unbelievable. Let me lay this out for you. Shopping locally means to patronize the small business within your community. After all, “Small business is the backbone of our economy.”*
Here are some facts: 98% of businesses in the United States have less than 100 employees, 89% have less than 20 employees. Additionally, there are 25,000,000 small businesses in the United States, which employ 50.1% of the private workforce. During the summer of last year, large businesses have lost more than 170,000 jobs while small businesses saw over 200,000 jobs created during that same timeframe.
Enough with the facts, here is the reality. To keep your community strong and prosperous during these difficult economic times, or any time for that matter, you need to support the small businesses within it. In 2009, I hired one more person then I had in 2008. One may not seem like a lot, but remember if every small business in America hired one person Unemployment would go from almost 10% to less than 2%. It doesn’t take much for a small business to hire one more person, a slight increase in business would do it.
Small business tend to focus more on customer satisfaction when it comes to adding staff, rather then big box corporate American that only uses the bottom line to make decisions. To small businesses employees are considered assets, while big box corporate America views employees as liabilities. Small business is slower to lay off workers while big business has no problem cutting them loose.
I coach my Daughters softball team at our local park district. Each team is sponsored by a business. This is to offset the cost to the families, or it would be too expensive to have kids play sports. There are over 200 teams in our park district baseball/softball program. Each team had the name of a local small business on the back: Dan’s Pizza, DeFranco Dentistry, Dominick’s Kitchen, All on the Road Catering, etc. These are a few of the people that stepped up to support local youth sports. Sears, Walmart, K-mart, Costco, Bank of America, these are names I did NOT see on the kids backs. The owners of these small businesses took money out of their pockets for our kids to play sports.
It is true that small business can’t offer the discounts that the big chains can, so you might have to pay a little more, but if you don’t support them, you’ll be paying a lot more in the future.
Visit the website to see more of what Ek Automotive is all about.
*quoted from Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Vise Presidents Chaney, Bidden, Senators Kerry, Harkin, Cardin, Shaheen, Boxer and Casey, and Governors from 48 different states.
The $800 Something or Other
While relaxing at home one beautiful day I get a phone call from an old friend that lives out of state. The conversation went something like this:
Old Friend: “Hey Steve, I need your advice.”
Steve: “Sure, what’s up?”
Old Friend: “Remember my ’03 Honda? Well, I brought it to the dealership near my house for some service…”
Steve: “OK, let me guess. They told you that your car need something and now you need an explanation, right?”
Old Friend: “Yeah how did you know? Anyway they told me my car needs a main…rear…something or other…seal…and the engine has to come out. The whole thing is going to cost $800. What do you think? Does that sound right?”
Steve: “Hold on, let me see if I can sort this out for you. Did they tell you our car needs a rear mail oil seal?”
Old Friend: “Yeah that’s it! What should I do?”
Steve: “Why did they say your car needed the seal?”
Old Friend: “Something about it leaking and that if I didn’t fix it I could ruin the whole motor.”
Steve: “Have you noticed any oil leaking from your car in your driveway?
Old Friend: “No.”
Steve: “OK, here is my advice. Now obviously I’m 1,500 miles away, so I can’t tell you if your car needs the part or not. You’re also not at my shop so I can’t figure out if that’s a fair price or not. But I can tell you this, it sounds like you have some doubts if what they’re telling you is true. So call them back and tell them you’d like to pick up your car. After that you’re free to get a second opinion. In the meantime, through some industry trade associations, I can find a reputable shop in your area where you can take your car for that second opinion.”
Old Friend: “I never thought of that!”
Steve: “If you don’t feel comfortable with what someone is telling you, go get a second opinion. Any good, honest shop shouldn’t have a problem with this. After getting the second opinion, you can always go back to the first shop and have the work done.”
Old Friend: “Thanks! Call me back when you get the name of a shop for me.”
- Second conversation. -
Steve: “I’ve got a name, address and number of a shop for you. It also just so happens that I’ve met the owner before.”
Old Friend: “Thanks, you’re a life saver! I’ll let you know how all this ends.”
- Two days later. -
Old Friend: “Steve, I took your advice brought my car to the independent shop you recommended. They told me that I didn’t need an $800 something or other. They did see that I was do for a 60,000 miles service so they took care of that for me. I found a new shop for now on! Thanks again.”
Steve: “I’m glad it all worked out. Take care!”
The moral of this story is simple. First, if something does seem right to you, ask questions or get a second opinion. (From a professional – not your neighbor, the carpenter.) Second, Find an auto repair shop that you can trust, build a relationship with them and you’ll probably never run into the same problem as my Old Friend.
