Main dealer servicing “technicians”

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For a lot of the work I would rather have a tech savvy technician doing it than an old school mechanic, as those are the skills more used for doing work on modern complex cars. With the oversight of master technicians for more complex work it is a good balance IMO.

Many technicians at the age of 26 would have a good number of years experience in what they do and well on their way to becoming master tech's. It is often the younger tech's who grow up with the newer technology teaching the old dogs new tricks as well, so its not a one way street and vital to the future of the business. The future master tech's have to come from somewhere and it shouldn't be age bound on what defines one.

Personally I use an Indie, who again has a staff of younger techs and himself as the master tech and again have absolutely no issue with those younger tech's doing the work under his guidance.

Different industry, but as a CTO I would be classed as a master tech, but the amount I learn from grads and their views of the world is amazing. Something to be embraced and encouraged and not looked down on.
 
To be honest I don’t really see your point.

You say you’re not being ageist but make no mention as to any founded concern to the quality of the work (in fact you say you’ve received good service and have zero complaints?) yet go on to say that you’ll take your business elsewhere? To me it reads like discrimination :-(

The master techs would have been young once. Who cares if they use Haynes manuals or rebuild engines. No-one really does that in main dealers anyway do they? It’s in for a service not an engine rebuild so I don’t see your point. Most modern cars rely heavily on computers and technology so perhaps something to consider there when choosing your indi - have they kept up to date with the latest factory courses and invested heavily in the tooling and diagnostic equipment as required?

There’s good techs out there both young and old, and bad ones too. What the younger ones may lack in years of experience they may gain in recent and up to date training and a good work ethic.

I’ve worked with young and old people, both good and bad. Judge people on the quality of their work not their age.

Sad to see rubbish like this these days :(

Perhaps like the other poster you should re-read my original post instead of skimming through it and getting your noose out ready to hang somebody for “discrimination”!

I stated it was an “observation”. Also why the hell would I carry on with dealer servicing after a plan runs out when it is literally over half the price at an Indy with far more experience which was obviously the intended tone and context of what I was saying. Again my money, my car, my choice no need to start banging your discrimination drum beat.
 
I support what the OP says. There was no discrimination in his post, nor was the tone of it critical in any way. The service plan comment was entirely separate from the observation on Technicians age. He'll be wondering why he bothered with the reception it's got from some.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about potential incompetence, I would be more concerned about techs either getting lazy or working to impossible KPIs time-wise and in either case not actually doing the work

Or - in some cases, techs taking the service parts from stores but then whisking them away to be sold privately instead of actually fitting them in the car - I heard some stories in the olden days (though these days there's CCTV everywhere, so hopefully this practice is dead now).

I support what the OP says. There was no discrimination in his post, nor was the tone of it critical in any way. The service plan comment was entirely separate from the observation on Technicians age. He'll be wondering why he bothered with the reception it's got from some.

Thank you. Although I am getting used to upsetting “the establishment” on here recently :)
 
Perhaps like the other poster you should re-read my original post instead of skimming through it and getting your noose out ready to hang somebody for “discrimination”!

I stated it was an “observation”. Also why the hell would I carry on with dealer servicing after a plan runs out when it is literally over half the price at an Indy with far more experience which was obviously the intended tone and context of what I was saying. Again my money, my car, my choice no need to start banging your discrimination drum beat.
I did read your post, thanks.

What I took away from it was you moaning about nothing other than a prejudiced opinion based upon the age of people you saw working there.

You made no mention as to cost or the quality of the work, only specifically referring to the age of those doing the work. So don’t try using that to justify your opinion.

In fact as I already mentioned you went on to say you’ve received ‘good service’ and have ‘zero complaints’ which makes your post totally bizarre when questioning their competence.

Of course it’s your choice as to where you take your car, but maybe don’t be so narrow minded as to how you measure a person’s competence. What will you do if you take your car to an indi and see a younger person working on it?

Let’s hope they also give you the same level of service as you have currently received.

The ironic thing I find in this thread is despite the content you’ve posted (and even the title of the thread, putting the title Technician in speechmarks...) it reads as a positive report for this particular dealership and younger people in general - that despite your reservations the quality has been met.

Funny old world we live in hey, where there’s so many people who don’t want to work and young people in their late teens and twenties who are employed and working to earn a living are faced with attitudes like this.

And that’s my opinion :cool:
 
What can be confusing is when you see young looking lads in their early to mid 20’s - the thing is though if they started at 16-18 some of them could have 8-10 years experience! And don’t forget, in the old fashioned sense, they’re actually fitters.

One of the other reasons why you tend not to see many 40+ technicians is that any with a bit of oomph start up on their own.
 
I did read your post, thanks.

What I took away from it was you moaning about nothing other than a prejudiced opinion based upon the age of people you saw working there.

You made no mention as to cost or the quality of the work, only specifically referring to the age of those doing the work. So don’t try using that to justify your opinion.

In fact as I already mentioned you went on to say you’ve received ‘good service’ and have ‘zero complaints’ which makes your post totally bizarre when questioning their competence.

Of course it’s your choice as to where you take your car, but maybe don’t be so narrow minded as to how you measure a person’s competence. What will you do if you take your car to an indi and see a younger person working on it?

Let’s hope they also give you the same level of service as you have currently received.

The ironic thing I find in this thread is despite the content you’ve posted (and even the title of the thread, putting the title Technician in speechmarks...) it reads as a positive report for this particular dealership and younger people in general - that despite your reservations the quality has been met.

Funny old world we live in hey, where there’s so many people who don’t want to work and young people in their late teens and twenties who are employed and working to earn a living are faced with attitudes like this.

And that’s my opinion :cool:

Well Will, you seem to have plenty of opinions on here. How about you do your usual thing and toddle onto the next thread to pontificate on.
 
What can be confusing is when you see young looking lads in their early to mid 20’s - the thing is though if they started at 16-18 some of them could have 8-10 years experience! And don’t forget, in the old fashioned sense, they’re actually fitters.

One of the other reasons why you tend not to see many 40+ technicians is that any with a bit of oomph start up on their own.

This could well be where I was mistaken, they just looked young to me, they could have well been in their mid 20’s with my age blindness.

I have always been of the opinion that to truly create a good level of workmanship in any sector/industry that you should have a solid bricks and mortar understanding of how things work. Perhaps they do already but normally these things come with experience and somebody in their very early 20’s can only be so experienced.
 
Well Will, you seem to have plenty of opinions on here. How about you do your usual thing and toddle onto the next thread to pontificate on.
Poor response.

Dismissive yet you fail to justify your (totally pointless IMO) thread.

I find it ironic how you seem to think you know how to run a dealership better than this business does, you wouldn’t get very far with your attitude towards your employees...

In fact there’s laws that would see to that :)
 
Poor response.

Dismissive yet you fail to justify your (totally pointless IMO) thread.

I find it ironic how you seem to think you know how to run a dealership better than this business does, you wouldn’t get very far with your attitude towards your employees...

In fact there’s laws that would see to that :)

Will I have to ask you, as you are a “Veteran member”, do you exist here just to sit around all day, pontificating, reading through random threads to then reply with an opposing view which then inevitably turns into some sort of personal attack on ones character.

You are not the only member guilty of this on a fairly regular basis, something which has also been picked up on by other members.
 
Take your pick...remember experience can be beaten.
 

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That’s true. I do wonder what the pay difference is between say the young technicians or apprentices and the Master Techs in their 30’s. Would be interesting to hear from somebody in the main dealer service trade to actually find out what the setup is.

In the NHS world it’s now developed into nurses fulfilling the roles of managers and health care assistants fulfilling the roles that nurses use to do as their bread n butter. For instance why pay for a GP in a surgery when an advanced nurse practioner/prescriber can arguably do the same job for half the pay. That is until something goes wrong. Seems to be just the way the business world works now with everyone wanting to avoid giving out titles such as manager, professional engineer. As soon as you use these terms you are looking at higher pay.
 
Will I have to ask you, as you are a “Veteran member”, do you exist here just to sit around all day, pontificating, reading through random threads to then reply with an opposing view which then inevitably turns into some sort of personal attack on ones character.

You are not the only member guilty of this on a fairly regular basis, something which has also been picked up on by other members.

Not at all, I couldn’t care less how long someone has been a member or their title, more the quality of their posts. I’m not attacking you personally or anyone else but I have challenged your (negative) opinion of the people who were working on your car based wholly on your perception of their age. Hence the mention of discrimination and prejudice.

Sorry if that’s not to your liking.
 
Seems to be just the way the business world works now with everyone wanting to avoid giving out titles such as manager, professional engineer. As soon as you use these terms you are looking at higher pay.

In my working world it's the opposite. People have spurious job titles and pay to match, with nothing to back that up. When you're having explain traceroute to someone with the title "Network Infrastructure Specialist", things are not going well.
 
Perhaps like the other poster you should re-read my original post instead of skimming through it and getting your noose out ready to hang somebody for “discrimination”!

I stated it was an “observation”. Also why the hell would I carry on with dealer servicing after a plan runs out when it is literally over half the price at an Indy with far more experience which was obviously the intended tone and context of what I was saying. Again my money, my car, my choice no need to start banging your discrimination drum beat.

I did read your post and was not alone in feeling it sounded like you were castigating the dealer for using younger labour.

Whilst that may not have been your intention it's how it came across. Your original post says NOTHING about price and reads as "Young workers, I'm going somewhere else."
 
From memory, MB WIS allocates 50 minutes for an A Service and 2 Hours for a B Service. That's for the tech's time i.e. excluding the admin/paperwork.

If the techs skip some of the cheks, then there's clearly a problem........

I don't know if things have changed but one of the lads I was at school with was an apprentice mechanic at a Ford dealership. They were paid by the hours allocated, but could do most jobs in half the book time.

So he was doubling his weekly pay - he was the one amongst us who was always (relatively) loaded!
 
I did read your post and was not alone in feeling it sounded like you were castigating the dealer for using younger labour.

Whilst that may not have been your intention it's how it came across. Your original post says NOTHING about price and reads as "Young workers, I'm going somewhere else."

You have literally just made this quote and interpretation up. As above toddle on!
 
Il be totally honest in that I am not surprised this forum has fallen on its **** recently. Every topic, every subject every day is people pulling apart other people’s threads in order for a game of one- upmanship whilst probably filling time at work or filling time between pension collections.

I am not sure whether it is over-moderating or under monderating or people trying to fill the gap of moderator but either way I have seen this many times before and the result is always the same. Such a shame as generally this place is a goldmine of information. I like many other contributors recently have now decided to pull out of contributing anything new to conversations. I have received many direct messages of people who feel the same and I thought it was important to highlight this now as my last contribution.
 
Il be totally honest in that I am not surprised this forum has fallen on its **** recently. Every topic, every subject every day is people pulling apart other people’s threads in order for a game of one- upmanship whilst probably filling time at work or filling time between pension collections.

I am not sure whether it is over-moderating or under monderating or people trying to fill the gap of moderator but either way I have seen this many times before and the result is always the same. Such a shame as generally this place is a goldmine of information. I like many other contributors recently have now decided to pull out of contributing anything new to conversations. I have received many direct messages of people who feel the same and I thought it was important to highlight this now as my last contribution.

As a part time contributor mostly with humour rather than Mercedes Technical Experience as I gave up doing my own Car Servicing many years ago, can I just ad that yet another interesting Post/Topic on this Forum has gone to dogsh!t mainly due to posturing and folk getting their noses apparently put out of joint by their perceived perceptions as to what other Posters are trying to say in order to get their opinions across!

Children, Please behave! Shake Hands and give it a rest! :dk:
 

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