How to handle bad mechanics?

[Sabremech]

23 minutes ago, natdm said:

@EricJ I just left a bad review on google, told any of my local friends about it, and that's about all I'll do. I also told Savvy which got them blacklisted. Sent pictures and all. Guess that's about the norm, sounds like. 

Too bad we mechanics can’t leave a bad review for cheap owners and pilots. 

Edited July 13, 2023 by Sabremech

[natdm]

4 minutes ago, Sabremech said:

Too bad we mechanics can’t leave a bad review for cheap owners and pilots. Plenty of those around! 

Mechanics have it worse than pilots, I'm sure. 

I personally do my best to not stretch scope, get estimates beforehand, relax on timelines, not pester too much, etc. I didn't get an estimate on this work beforehand but I did ask 3-4 times if he had an estimate once he opened the panel and he never responded. 

[hubcap]

1 hour ago, EricJ said:

People have left bad reviews here for a variety of mechanics and shops, so it is definitely not taboo to do so.   It may burn a bridge, and it may get responses from those who feel that the maligned party, regardless of the situation, should be revered. 

So I think the reluctance to post bad reviews is just the usual social thing that there could be pushback.

Shoddy work abounds.

I don't typically make my personal business public, but if I thought someone had done work that left my airplane in an unsafe or unairworthy, I would probably make a public service announcement...after the appropriate amount of attempting to get a remedy. 

Otherwise, I try not to criticize others too much online.

Conversely, if someone does a great job...I will let everyone know.

[Danb]

The administration should consider setting up a section for comments both good and bad regarding our planes. Obviously it becomes a safety issue in deciding who/where to bring our planes for maintenance. Clarence is our best source for information and keeping us informed on many factors.

Posts should be taken down when they appear to be overly nasty. There should be a good way to provide us with valuable information.

[hubcap]

6 minutes ago, Danb said:

The administration should consider setting up a section for comments both good and bad regarding our planes. Obviously it becomes a safety issue in deciding who/where to bring our planes for maintenance. Clarence is our best source for information and keeping us informed on many factors.

Posts should be taken down when they appear to be overly nasty. There should be a good way to provide us with valuable information.

The problem with a venue such as that, is there are two sides to every story. Sometimes even when both parties are trying to work things out they may come to an impasse at some point. It's not always clear cut who is wrong. Many of the issues we deal with are nuanced and subject to interpretation which is difficult to work out in an online scenario.

[Danb]

Just now, hubcap said:

The problem with a venue such as that, is there are two sides to every story. Sometimes even when both parties are trying to work things out they may come to an impasse at some point. It's not always clear cut who is wrong. Many of the issues we deal with are nuanced and subject to interpretation which is difficult to work out in an online scenario.

True. But 

[Hank]

21 minutes ago, Danb said:

The administration should consider setting up a section for comments both good and bad regarding our planes. Obviously it becomes a safety issue in deciding who/where to bring our planes for maintenance. Clarence is our best source for information and keeping us informed on many factors.

Posts should be taken down when they appear to be overly nasty. There should be a good way to provide us with valuable information.

Are you volunteering to be the moderator who reads all Pirep posts and decides which are "overly nasty" and "should be taken down"? Right now, there is NO MODERATOR at all, although sometimes Craig can be convinced to step in.

[Danb]

28 minutes ago, Hank said:

Are you volunteering to be the moderator who reads all Pirep posts and decides which are "overly nasty" and "should be taken down"? Right now, there is NO MODERATOR at all, although sometimes Craig can be convinced to step in.

Not me Hank, I’d be to critical. It seems lately we’ve had more reports of poor workmanship than usual. I get a critique of Doctors prior to making a decision check there vitai there schooling reviews generally put in a fair amount of time before choosing a new physician. It’d be great to have information on shops mechanics etc prior to making an appointment. I get it won’t with the biases out there.DB 

[Justin Schmidt]

1 hour ago, Hank said:

Are you volunteering to be the moderator who reads all Pirep posts and decides which are "overly nasty" and "should be taken down"? Right now, there is NO MODERATOR at all, although sometimes Craig can be convinced to step in.

Let's not FB(I) this

[MikeOH]

3 hours ago, Sabremech said:

Too bad we mechanics can’t leave a bad review for cheap owners and pilots. 

Why not?

[Danb]

3 hours ago, Sabremech said:

Too bad we mechanics can’t leave a bad review for cheap owners and pilots. 

So if we have bad experience infringing on negligence we should do?

[Sabremech]

5 hours ago, Danb said:

The administration should consider setting up a section for comments both good and bad regarding our planes. Obviously it becomes a safety issue in deciding who/where to bring our planes for maintenance. Clarence is our best source for information and keeping us informed on many factors.

Posts should be taken down when they appear to be overly nasty. There should be a good way to provide us with valuable information.

This can only be considered if you can get both sides of the story. In many cases, we only hear one side and because this is primarily a pilot/owner populated forum,  we get mostly this side. Hearing only one side can damage a mechanics business without them even knowing it. Also, some pilots have that champagne want list but only willing to pay for beer level unless it’s their Porsche or Mercedes, then the wallet is open without question. 

[ilovecornfields]

While I appreciate the mechanics point of view it’s not that all uncommon to have sites where you only get one side of the story. In some fields it’s even worse. If a patient posts a bad review of me online, because of HIPAA I can’t even respond to the specific complaint even if what they say is completely false (or even a secondhand account that’s totally inaccurate).

It’s not a perfect system but I feel anyone should be able to post their experiences. If it’s completely false, then the shop can come after them for libel. One side of the story is more informative than no side of the story. How people use this information is up to then.

I think this just shows how important it is to be choosy about who you pick to work on your airplane and who you pick as a client. My IA “retired” a couple of years ago but he’s kept a handful of us “low maintenance” customers as clients. 
Happy clients don’t post bad reviews and while I’ve had plenty of shops mess things up, the only one I’ve publicly criticized was the one that messed things up then basically told me to f-off when I tried to talk to them to make it right. If they’d acknowledged their mistakes and made even a token effort to fix it I probably wouldn’t have have said a word.

 

[201Steve]

12 hours ago, natdm said:

Aviation is different, as it's community-centric and none of the above are. There are absolutely different aspects. I didn't know if people stay hush about bad mechanics (which it seems like it), or if they get a bit more loud about it, or what.

If you have 15 minutes of your attention to spare, I wrote a long and descriptive bad PIREP for an overhaul shop. I touch on this topic quite a bit. The short of it is, I waited about a year, let the emotions settle, got several second opinions, and gave the shop beyond ample time to do ANYTHING to correct some stuff they even admitted, in writing, was very poorly done. My stance was, had they made even the slightest effort, I’d have just let it go, never used them again, and kept my mouth shut. But, since no such effort was made, I had no second thoughts about making my experience widely known and heavily documented. That is sort of my calculus. If you’re too big of a baby to hash it out with your customers, good riddance. 

[Fly Boomer]

On 7/12/2023 at 7:00 PM, M20Doc said:

Why should the revered shops get a free pass when the lowly A&P may not get named but still gets lambasted?

They should not.  I'm just passing on what I have observed here.