Trust and Transparency

Trust and Transparency.

It's difficult to have one without the other.

Six months ago, my car had an interesting problem: it wouldn't turn off when I wanted it to.

When I'd complete a drive, put my car into Park, and hit the Start/Stop button, the engine would turn off, but the ignition and electrical components of the car (like the radio) wouldn't.

When I told my local mechanic about the problem, he explained it was a known issue with the automatic transmission shifter switch for my vehicle's make and model: the shifter switch contained a piece prone to wear down. Once that happened, the car wouldn't recognize when it was in park, and since the car knows not to shut off the ignition unless it's in park, the ignition wouldn't turn off.

My mechanic assured me this was a minor problem, not a safety issue, and that I could get the vehicle to recognize it was in park by jiggling the shifter switch.

I trusted my mechanic's advice because I trusted my mechanic.

He had started to earn my trust almost a decade earlier, when I first brought my car into his shop to address a funny noise. He examined the vehicle, realized a loose screw was making the noise, and fixed it... at no charge.

I know very little about cars, so he could have told me the flux-capacitor had overloaded and that a repair would cost me $500... and I'd have no way to dispute that evaluation. But he was transparent about the situation, and that transparency, combined with a little bit of goodwill, earned my trust. Over the years, he continued to be transparent about what was (and wasn't) needed for my car, so my trust in my mechanic continued to grow.

In that spirit, I asked him how much it would cost to repair this annoying issue.

To which he replied, "about a thousand bucks".

I had no reason to doubt his estimate: he had always been transparent with me in the past. But spending a thousand dollars on a 13-year-old car to address an annoyance wasn't something I really wanted to do, so I declined the repair and learned how to jiggle the shifter at the end of each drive until the ignition shut off.

This worked for a while. But over time, a light jiggle wasn't sufficient, and I'd have to jiggle the shifter for longer periods, with increasing amounts of force, before my ignition would turn off. And after one instance when I had to sit in my car jiggling the shifter for a full five minutes before being able to exit my vehicle, I decided to do some internet research.

That's when I discovered several YouTube videos that would walk me through how to complete this repair myself (like this one) were readily available online, and that the part I needed to replace was available on Amazon for about $33.

I'm not "a car guy" at all, but I'm usually good at figuring out how things work... so I thought I might be able to complete this repair myself.

As it turns out, I was right: I completed the repair in less than an hour.

When I finished the repair, I was delighted: I had the dual satisfaction of learning something new and fixing something myself. Plus, I had saved myself $1,000!

But when the delight subsided, the disappointment set in.

My highly skilled mechanic charges $165 per hour for labour.

It's unlikely it would have taken my mechanic the same amount of time to make this repair as it took me, because he knows what he's doing and I most certainly did not. But even if he took his time and spent a full hour, and then charged me three times the cost of the part because he's running a business (and has to make money, a fact I can appreciate)...

... that would have been a $265 repair.

But he had provided me with an estimate for $1,000, a figure that could only be justified by three hours of labour and a markup on the part of 1,000%.

With that realization, my trust in my mechanic began to fade.

The next time I had to bring my car in for a repair, I told my mechanic how I had replaced the shifter switch myself by ordering the part from Amazon and watching a YouTube video. He acted surprised and said, "Oh, really? It was just the one part. You didn't have to replace the entire gearbox?"

My mechanic has demonstrated time and time again that he's quite skilled with cars, but it's a safe bet he'll never win an Academy Award: he clearly realized he was "busted" and that I knew the estimate he gave me had been wildly inflated.

Funny enough, had my mechanic said, "If it's just the shifter switch, I could replace it for $300", I would have NEVER attempted a car repair myself. I would have been happy to pay that cost (because I never would have explored doing it myself, and thus wouldn't know how easy the repair was to complete). He would have made a fair profit, and using that phrasing, he would have left himself room to charge more if the problem was anything more serious.

But, for whatever reason, my mechanic decided not to be transparent in this instance and instead chose to quote me an unreasonably high cost for my repair, counting on the fact that I would accept the quoted amount without question, as I had done so many other times.

It took almost a decade of transparency for my mechanic to earn my trust.

And a single unjustifiably inflated quote for him to lose it.

Trust and Transparency.

It's difficult to have one without the other.