Should mechanics give quotes over the phone?

Why most shops will not quote a repair on the phone

The belief on the customer's side is that a shop which will not quote is hiding something. The belief on the shop's side is that a quote wins the job. Both are wrong, and the shop's one is the more expensive mistake.

Experienced owners on AutoShopOwner put the policy bluntly. One: "We won't quote a price on the phone - period." Another, in the same thread: "A good doctor will never diagnose over the phone, we shouldn't either."

The reason is not secrecy. A noise, a light or a smell can be three different repairs at three different prices, and the number given for one of them on the phone is the number the customer remembers at the counter when it turns out to be another. A diesel shop owner on r/smallbusiness described the other cost: "If I gave quotes to everyone that wanted them on a daily basis, I would literally not have time for anything else. And guess what? Maybe one might actually schedule."

What the caller is really asking

A multi-shop operator who has mystery-shopped repair shops for decades told Ratchet+Wrench what the phone call is about: "Ninety-five percent of the time, when a customer calls, they want to know one of two things: 'What is it?' and 'How much?'"

Underneath both questions is a third one the caller does not say out loud: are you the place I should bring this car to? They are trying to decide, with no way to judge a shop from the outside, and a price is the only yardstick they can think of.

That is the question you can answer. Not with a number, but with how you handle the call: whether you pick up, whether you ask about the car, whether you explain what happens next and when. A caller who hangs up from that call knowing the diagnostic fee, the earliest slot and that someone listened has been answered.

What a shop can say on the phone

• The diagnostic or inspection fee, and what it includes.
• Whether it is credited against the repair if they go ahead.
• The hourly labor rate, if you publish one.
• A range for a genuinely routine job with no unknowns, such as a set of tires or an oil service, with the make and model in hand.
• Whether you work on that make, that engine, that kind of problem at all.
• How soon the car can come in, and how long the look takes.

What a shop should not say is a repair price for a symptom. If the caller pushes, the honest line is that a number given now would be a guess, and that you would rather give them the real one after the look.

A phone script that books the inspection

Whoever answers, an advisor, a service, or an assistant, needs the same three things from the call. Get them in this order and the caller is booked before the price question comes back around.

1. Vehicle: year, make, model, and roughly the mileage.
2. Concern: what it is doing, when it started, whether a light is on, whether it is drivable.
3. Drop-off time: the earliest slot that works, and how they will get home.

In practice it sounds like this:

"Thanks for calling Northgate Auto, this is Jen. What's the car doing? ... Okay, a grinding noise on braking, front. What are we looking at, year and make? ... The honest answer on price is I'd be guessing until we've seen it. The inspection is a fixed fee, it comes off the repair if you go ahead, and we can look at it tomorrow at 8 or 1. Which works?"

The caller asked "how much" and got a time, a fee, and the feeling that the shop knew what it was doing. That is the call that books.

Catching those calls when the bays are full

All of the above assumes someone answered. A shop owner on r/AskMechanics described the usual day: "one thing that drives me crazy is how many calls we miss when the guys are slammed in the bays and I'm tied up with a customer. Most customers don't leave a voicemail and they don't pick up if I call back."

So the script needs something to run it when the advisor is at the counter. A text back within seconds of a missed call, asking what the car is doing, starts the conversation; that is missed-call text-back. An AI receptionist answers, takes the vehicle, the concern and the drop-off time, and books the inspection through booking automation. It is set up never to quote a repair price, for exactly the reasons on this page, and to hand the caller to a person when they want one.

What those missed calls are costing you is worked out on our pillar on what missed calls cost a service business, and the trades version of the same problem, the call that comes in while you are under the car, is on how to answer business calls when you're busy on a job. The texts themselves are in our missed call text back examples.