What are diagnostic fees and why do repair shops charge them?
Diagnostic time expenses are an equally unwanted expense for both the consumer and the repair shop.
For our customers, they are often buying the unseen and untouchable. They spend a few hundred dollars to find out exactly what is wrong with their car but don’t get to see it, touch it, hear it, or anything. Then they still have to pay for the recommended repair once diagnosed properly.
On the flip side, if the proper diagnostic time is not spent and you take an educated guess of what is wrong based off the most common things found on Google, YouTube, parts store and such sources, you run the likely chance of replacing an expensive part that does not fix the problem. With the rising parts costs, it is no longer a good financial decision to skip the proper diagnostic testing and replace the most common part. Back when you could get the most common parts for less than $100.00, it made sense to save some time and go straight to replacing the most likely part rather than performing extensive tests to determine what part was bad. Now the costs of parts are so high, it is not worth the risk of guessing wrong. The other thing to keep in mind as a consumer is there are often times more than one issue with a vehicle. A big part of the diagnostic process is to first determine what failed and then to determine what caused it to fail. That way you don’t just simply replace a failed component without fixing a potential problem that will cause a repeat failure. Contact Shadetree Automotive in Layton, UT for more about diagnostic fees and other vehicle repairs today!
