The old adage, "there's nothing new under the sun" is particularly apt in the independent repair business, where service advisors
and technicians are all-too-familiar with the telltale signs of poor vehicle maintenance. But nowhere are these problems more
prevalent than in the shops that do business with the college crowd — where employees are pulling double duty to provide repair
and maintenance services, as well as educate their young (and often inexperienced) customers about the importance of basic
car care.
"Many of the cars we see from this population are not brought in for maintenance — they are brought in for a large repair,"
says Larry Moore, owner of Larry's AutoWorks in Mountain View, Calif. Because of his location, Moore regularly services the
vehicles of Stanford University students. "Unfortunately, we see a proportionately higher number of non-repairable cars coming
from this group, too."
Interestingly enough, says Moore, these cars aren't the beaters you'd think they might be. Instead, he describes most of the
vehicles he sees as "former family cars, three to five years old, everything from Toyotas to Fords." Moore feels this mix
reflects the fact that parents want their children to have safe, reliable transportation while they are away at college, as
opposed to "luxury transportation."
Still, even the most basic of vehicles needs to be cared for — which is often a tricky proposition for cash-strapped 18-year-olds
far away from home, without a credit card in sight. "It's a little more difficult to deal with students," says John Morgavan, owner of Valparaiso Transmission, in Valparaiso,
Ind. Morgavan's shop is located a block from Valparaiso University, so he sees a steady stream of students, mostly undergraduates,
in his shop. "You have to handle them differently. For example, you may have to go through more channels — for example, mom
or dad, or mom and dad if they are divorced — to get permission to do the repairs. Most of the time, if the car is already
at the shop, the parents will go ahead and okay the repair."
Morgavan admits, however, that it can be difficult to deal with the parents over the phone, but says that the tension stems
mainly from them not wanting their children to get "ripped off." In such instances, communication is the key to making a sale
— and to establishing a trust with the out-of-state party so that they can be confident repairs will get done correctly.
"It's easier to communicate directly with the person who is paying the bill," Morgavan says. "In this case, it's usually
mom or dad. Otherwise, it's like a Chinese drill. If you tell a person one thing and by the time it gets to the fourth person,
it's a completely different story."
Dave Justice, the owner of Parkway Auto Care Goodyear in Berea, Ohio, agrees that communication is perhaps the one factor
that can help solve — or exacerbate — problems between a service provider and their customers. For the past seven years, his
shop has provided service for students, faculty and staff members at Baldwin-Wallace College.
"I think the biggest thing we need to do in our industry is to be able to qualify problems and then to clearly explain what
we need to do in order to repair the vehicle," he says. "As long as you can get the right information from the customer, as
long as you can ask the right questions to find out what problem the car is experiencing, you're okay."
