Commercials

Television commercials are by far one of the most expensive ways for a company to advertise. That being the case it is suprising to me how many company's put out horrible commercials. Here's some examples:

Car commercials show a car driving on an excessively windy road and have some silly tag line to imply that driving that car will some how free you from the restriction of the roads you drive on everyday. Or they show a truck pulling an airplane on a balance beam over a canyon or something ridiculous like that. The only car commercial I can say I like are the VW ones, the ones where they show a car accident were pretty attention grabbing, but they also had a series of humorous ones that ran before those that I enjoyed.

Cell phone commercials are either really horrible or pretty good. They have some funny ones out but there are so many of them that as soon as I realize its a cell phone commercial I tend to tune it out.

Trade schools and various "career colleges" have some of the absolute worse commercials ever, and they are basically lying to people. They will show a girl that is a medical assistant and have her say that she loves her job and she is working her way up. I'm curious as to what a medical assistant works her way up to. It's not like she can just all of a sudden get promoted to a nurse or something.

Financial services, credit cards, and banks advertise frequently but there is always that feeling that they aren't telling you all the details and that if you do business with them you would end up getting screwed somehow. Despite this preconceived feeling they pretty much always advertise the same way.

I primarily like commercials that are funny. So now that its football season I love the coors light beer commercials where they dub some football/coors fans into press conferences with NFL coaches. I also like the Xaiser Permanente commercials because they creatively promote health and wellness. One of my all time favorites is the nextel commercial where they three guys are in an office dancing to the song "push it" by Salt n Pepa and they other guy comes in all frantic only to find out that Nextel has enabled these guys to take care of all their logistics easily, thus they can cue the music again and resume dancing.

I'm sure you all see plenty of commercials, let me know what ones you like and don't like, if you have an idea for a commercial feel free to post that here as well, I promise I won't steal your idea.

Mechanics

I can't stand having car trouble and yet it never fails that every couple of months I have it. I thought by buying a newer car I could escape this bad luck with cars but that was not the case. My extensive car troubles have given me the opportunity to be a customer of a lot of different repair shops because I really haven't found one worth returning to for future repairs. Now I know everyone hates mechanic shops because they overcharge, they try to fix things that you didn't ask for, they make you feel guilty because your car has problems, they make you feel like an idiot because you don't know everything there is to know about cars (this one is funny considering the number of times they don't know what's wrong with a car, and the number of times they fix something and yet the original problem still remains), They charge outrageous amounts for labor (the hourly fees probably rival some physicians), their shops are dirty, the workers are dirty, they take forever, and they seem to think telling us the part didn't come in is an adequate excuse for a simple repair taking a week when we know full well that parts can be delivered within 24 hrs just like anything else in the world.

My question is simply why? why are mechanic shops this way? Is it impossible to operate them differently? are all mechanics and mechanic shop managers the exact same so that no matter what the shops they work in will always perform in this manner?

Now I must give you my solution. What follows is a potential business that I believe would be a gold mine for whoever pursues it. I don't particularly want to be in this business so I am ok with you guys stealing my idea, good luck to you if you do.

Open a mechanic shop that has adequate parking, with actual parking spaces, not just open space where cars are smashed whereever they will fit. Have a very visible sign that says your name and that you do "all kinds of repairs on all kinds of cars", none of this foreign only or domestic only junk. Have a clean lobby with plenty of clean and comfortable seating. Have a clean cut person working the front counter that takes all the customer info and is able to accurately quote a wait time to have the vehicle diagnosed. Offer customers a beverage while they wait. When telling the customer the diagnosis explain thoroughly what is wrong, what likely caused it, what will be done to fix it, how much it will cost and how long it will take. Give the customer to option to watch the work being done on their vehicle, and have the mechanics explain to them what they are doing while they work. Ask the customer if they would like to be told other potential problems with their car or other things that the mechanic can do regarding maintenance. If the customer says no, then leave them alone. If they say yes, simply suggest one or two things, don't overwhelm them with $5000 worth of work. Also, if their repairs happen to be and outrageous amount, like over $2000 offer a payment plan, like bill them for half of they amount. Warranty your work, a lot of mechanics do but they don't point it out to the customer, make sure the customer knows to bring the vehicle back if there are any issues, and call the customer after a week or two to make sure the car is running properly. This is the basic format to what I think could be a great business. Customer service has been almost completely lost in the auto repair industry, whoever sets out to bring it back is likely to make millions.

If you have any great mechanic experiences please feel free to share, if you have any horror stories share those as well, I'm sure you'll find plenty of sympathy.