I have a new blog.

It would seem that a shitload of people are reading this blog…way more than when I was actually maintaining it. IN TWO THOUSAND AND NINE.

Visit www.tenpercentmoreawesome.com for the hot shit.

Jason

 

Mechanics – part two.

Two weeks after putting my bike in the mechanics called to say it was ready.

It’s never a good time to pay for repairs, and this was a particularly bad time. My car broke down on a freeway just a week after the bike died, leaving me with a massive repair bill, and although I’d budgeted for it the $220 worth of bike repairs weren’t making me the happiest man alive.

The call came from titty porn man as Mark was out to lunch, no doubt eating lobster somewhere.

‘That’s great, I’ll pick it up Monday. What’s the damage?’

I knew it would be $220, it’s what I’d been quoted, but just wanted to make sure. These verbal quotes often get forgotten, and forgotten it was.

‘It comes to $440 all up.’

‘$440? I was quoted $220 and that’s exactly double.’

Titty porn man fumbled around a bit, and not only did he clearly have no idea where the extra $220 worth of costs had emerged, he was annoyed that I’d dared to ask the question. I persisted regardless.

‘Well who DID work on the bike? Could I talk to them about it?’

Shaken, he handballed the grenade.

‘John gets back from lunch around 3pm, you can call him then if you like.’

‘I will. Thanks titty porn man.’

As soon as I got off the phone I spoke with my boss, who’s one of the most motorcycle-y guys I know. He’d already gotten annoyed with me for being a sucker and taking my bike in to a shop, insisting that he could easily fix it himself, and he knew the score.

It was crap, he said, I was getting ripped off. The going rate for mechanic labour is $60 an hour, and there was no way that it took them over seven hours to service the bike and put in a new clutch. It took HIM two hours to put a new clutch in his CBX, and he’s not even a mechanic.

His pep talk got me riled up, and I dialed for John fuelled with consumer rage.

I got titty porn man again. When I told him it was the guy with the CT110 looking John there was a long pause, which I assume was spent briefing John on the party line. Finally, John picked up the phone.

‘Hello?’ he said, as if he had no idea who it was.

‘Hi. It’s Jason, you fixed up my CT110 recently. I’m just calling to query the bill, as it’s double what you quoted me over the phone.’

‘Oh, right. Well I was just quoting for the clutch over the phone, that didn’t include the service.’

‘Oh ok. That’s a bit weird, seeing as the service was the whole reason I put the bike in, to get it going again. The clutch came in later.’

‘Right.’

‘And I provided the parts, remember? How long did you spend working on the bike?’

He was on the backfoot, and decided to adopt the bamboozle approach.

The bamboozle approach is something I’m quite familiar with. As a broke uni student I took my car into a Kmart mechanic a few times for some major repairs, and every time I asked the guy how much it was going to cost he would deliberately delay the answer.

Instead of giving me a number, he’d would pull out this colourful plastic model engine and start winding it slowly. He’d then gesture to it, explaining in convoluted and meticulous terms exactly which bits were faulty and why. He’d wait until the moment my eyes glazed over, and then slap the bill on the table. When I went in the next time and saw him reaching for the plastic engine again I knew I was fucked.

And so John started off reeling off things they did to the bike in classic bamboozle fashion, but little did he know I was equipped with my notepad and ‘A game’.

‘Aaah some oil, $16. We had to replace some screws on the something – something, and had to get them off another bike.’

‘Was there a charge for the screws?’

‘No, the screws were free.’

‘Did it take a long time to replace the screws?’

‘Not really.’

This went on for a bit, and I was sure it was going nowhere. I knew in the end that John had me by my lady lumps and I was going to lose out, so I tried one last tactic – silence. He kept talking about the man hours for a little while but then tapered off, put off by my lack of agreeing/argument. I smelt a falter, and he was starting to feel a bit unnerved. The game was shifting.

‘Look, how about we do it for $350?’ he conceded.

Sold.

I think I had a bit of a win, but I’m not sure. Was this haggling out of the ordinary or was it just part of some kind of motorcycling ritual? Did I walk away with more man points?

Have you ever been screwed by a mechanic? Do you haggle?

Mechanics – part one.

I just got off the phone to the motorcycle mechanic, whose had my bike since it broke down the other week from lack of oil, and I’ve got to tell you those guys are crafty.

My car mechanic is great, AP Motors on Keele street Collingwood. Phil comes from a long line of ancestors who’ve run the shop, he’s always straight up about what’s possible and what’s a waste of money, and he often ignores me when I walk past his shop which keeps me keen in a ‘treat them mean’ kind of a way.

But Phil doesn’t know bikes. Not many mechanics do. The ones that do specialize in bikes are very aware of their rockstar automotive niche, and they’re not afraid to exploit it.

My latest mechanical misadventure has been interesting as the motorcycle guys I’ve been dealing with aren’t sure how much I know about bikes – and how much they can get away with.

Truth is, I know next to nothing, but I have hung around other motorcyclists enough to regurgitate some vaguely informed sounding statements every now and then, which has really thrown them off.

When I initially walked in the store I made sure to hide any trace of iPod or sunglasses, but it’s always been hard to do anything about my lack of manly physique and my bogan accent is ‘mildly put on’ at best.

There was two guys sitting at a desk down the back and the first thing they did was ignore me for about five minutes, like some kind of test. I’m not sure what a manly man would do in this situation, probably yell out something blokey and obscene in a gruff voice, but whatever it is I clearly didn’t do it because their disdain was glaring from word go.

It was pretty clear they had me pegged as a skinny white guy with no idea, and on a scale of motorcycle manliness I’m sure they would have rated me a 2 out of 10 (1 out of 10 being a girl).

One of them reluctantly rose from their titty porn strewn desk and flopped himself into the receptionist chair. Let’s call him John, not for any privacy reasons, just because I can’t remember.

‘What bike is it?’ he asked.

‘A CT110. The tow truck guy’s bringing it round the back.’

I deliberately avoided the words ‘Honda’ or ‘Postie bike’ as they’ve become mainstream as of late, and I believe that if I could have read John’s mind at this point his rating of me would have shimmied up from a 2 to a 3.

For me to ride such a utility type bike I was either some sort of extreme bush guy or an idiot with no savings, and considering I used the manly name I was probably the former.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘I forgot to put oil in it and it died.’

Back down to 2.

Both John and the guy still sitting at the titty porn clucked in unison, they knew they’d caught themselves a fat one. Titty porn guy was so confident that he jumped in with some honesty/cold hard facts talk.

‘If I were you I’d start calling round the wreckers now for a new engine. That thing will be seized up and no good to anyone.’

‘How much do you think an engine would cost from the wreckers?’ I asked.

‘Dunno. Bout $600 – $800? They’re hard to get as CT110′s rarely break. Unless you forget to put oil in them.’

‘But the whole bike only cost me $1250!’

‘Yep. We’ll do our best.’

I walked out of there feeling pretty down. I wasn’t sure how bad the engine damage would be, and I knew that they were setting me up with the initial $800 quote so that anything they charged later on that was less than that would feel like a bargain. I was powerless and everyone knew it.

Less than an hour later John called my mobile. I happened to be shopping in a perfume store at the time (searching for the perfect gift for my stepmum) and was in the process of sniffing some delightful scents, but I didn’t tell him that. Instead, I summoned my deepest occer voice from within the Gucci aisle.

‘Good news Jason, you’re a very luck man. The bike didn’t seize up, it just needs a service.’

Wow, things were looking up.

‘But…the clutch is pretty worn out. We’ll need to replace that. All up it should come to about $220, plus parts.’

Bang. The happy train had left the station and was heading express to Money Town. While $220 was manageable he made a point of not giving me a price on parts, and I knew for a fact that motorcycle dealerships make most of their money from parts.

But then I hit him with a game shifting blindsider, and he could barely hide his surprise.

‘Do you use genuine Honda parts? Because I don’t want any Chinese copy parts in there.’

SHAZAM. 4 out of 10, that’s right, I know about copy parts. That was a TWO point markup in the manly stakes.

‘We do use Chinese parts, but I can get a quote on some genuine parts.’

I’m lucky as I can get hold of such parts myself, and when I told him so he knew the terrain was getting rocky.

A page had been ripped out of John’s conning playbook, and I was sitting on 5 out of 10 man points with only $220 worth of labour to worry about. Things were looking up.

Stay tuned for the next installment of the saga, and for the love of god leave a comment.