Mozart’s Garage - Our Policies and Advice Welcome and thank you… We appreciate your business… Our shop rate is $98.75/hr. This is par in Santa Fe for European imports. Our payment options are: personal or business check, cashier’s check, money order, cash, or bank transfer. Credit and debit cards can also be processed thru PayPal. When making your appointment, please advise us ahead of time about any special payment or transportation arrangements which you may require. If you have special requests, they may be difficult to accommodate on short notice. * If you trust us with your vehicle, we trust you for the bill. We would just as soon avoid credit card companies and the associated fees, deposit delays, red tape, data mining, and middlemen. We like direct and personal. * Mozart’s Garage provides comprehensive Service & Safety Inspections and Second Opinions at a nominal cost on any of the car lines that we service. This includes computer diagnostics and fault code retrieval and inspection of all known weak points. This insures that your vehicle needs are prioritized wisely and that possibly critical issues are not ignored. These services are also included for free along with tire pressure adjustments, etc., as a normal part of any in-shop repair job. * Except for in-office conversations, cursory inspections, and the like, all actual in-shop work will involve a minimum 1-hour charge. This covers office overhead and start-up & cleanup time and labor. In the case of larger jobs, you may expect charges for intensive problem-solving diagnoses, disassembly inspection, shop supplies, waste disposal fees, etc., as applicable. PLEASE NOTE: In the case of vehicles more than 12 years old, ALL repair estimates are provisional, regardless of any verbal or written “estimate”. Expect unanticipated charges. A whole new world of things to go wrong happens with older cars which were not designed to last that long without serious overhaul. The same thing goes for any grey-market cars, all of * In the case of returned checks or excessively delayed payment, we
Please stay out of the work area. If our focus is distracted while we work, it becomes an unreliable, even dangerous situation – for us, for you, and for your vehicle. INSURANCE WORK Your warranty coverage or insurance policy may pay for the work that you request. We will discuss your policy provisions with you, provide you and your provider with all the documentation necessary for processing your claim, and other wise assist you to the greatest extent possible. HOWEVER: Ultimately it is up to you to determine if you are willing to pay for the work you request. We do not bill insurance companies on your behalf; you may get reimbursed by them for your expenses with us. However, please understand that, regardless, you the owner are ultimately responsible for the bill. Warranties Mozart’s Garage stands behind its work. After your vehicle is returned to you, you are more than welcome to talk to us at any time on a priority basis, or drop by without appointment to inquire about any issues that you might have, old or new. We want to hear from you first, no matter what it is – and not just complaints! Many people call or come by to tell us how much they appreciate our work. If this is the case, please let us know. We attempt to be diligent in making follow-up calls, but all too often it’s “No news is good news” and we have to assume all is OK if we don’t hear from you after we deliver your car back to you. If we know you’re happy, that makes us happy. In most cases there is a formal warranty from the parts manufacturer or through our parts distributors, and usually that is honored by going directly through us. The net to you is that we cover parts and labor for 12 mos. /12,000 miles, unless we specifically agree on an exemption (e.g.: application of used parts, etc.), in which case, our guarantee will vary, depending.
PARTS We use only top-grade manufacturers’ parts unless you decide otherwise – quite possibly, on occasion, for good reason. We save all replaced parts for you to inspect or retain, if you care to. If you don’t ask about them or for them, this will be your declaration that you do not want them and they will be disposed of promptly upon your leaving. If so, when you go, they are gone. In the case of difficult or problematical jobs, we will retain the related replaced parts until confirmation that the problem is actually and reliably fixed. This is a retail establishment. We buy parts at variable wholesale and sell at list retail, with perhaps some upward adjustment for shipping charges, inventory maintenance, hassle factor for doing business in Santa Fe, or downward if the markup is excessive, etc. “List price”, even “Dealer list” is also a “fuzzy” figure which will vary depending on source, date, and variable dealer discretion. The bottom line is that we guarantee applicability and quality of the parts we install and we charge accordingly. We cover core and returns costs, warranty charges, and many other incidentals. Therefore we do not try and compete on parts pricing with sources that sell cheap parts directly to the customer. Cheap is usually exactly that: cheap. We do not do “cheap.” You will get what you pay for from us. Only in very rare cases do we allow you, the client, to supply your own parts for us to install. Possibilities of misapplication, delay, and part failure are too great and we would not be able to warranty our work, much less the parts themselves. Of course we are more than glad to obtain parts for you to install, new or used, as you wish. Oil change intervals in this environment can easily be as often as 3,000 – 4,000 miles, regardless of manufacturer’s official policies. The bottom line is: Check your oil, and if it is dark and opaque (i.e.: you can’t see through a drop placed on a reflective surface), it’s dirty enough and needs to be changed. Period. Under controlled laboratory conditions, the default oil-lamp-indication of a ~15,000 interval might be OK, but on the road in New Mexico, it’s definitely going to be a lot less. Oil molecules are basically eternal, but the oil additives do get used up and it will get dirty from all the dust in the air here – even with the best of air filters, which are also frequent replacement items. Expect your air filter to need replacement as often as your oil and its filter. To be on the safe side, plan on changing your fuel filter every couple of years and using a high-grade fuel injector cleaner every now and then (we have several varieties in stock). Fuel frequently comes dirty and your fuel system must be surgically clean in order to function properly. With a cleaned-up fuel system, your mileage, overall response, reliability, and ease of diagnosis for any other fuel-injection related problems will improve! As previously mentioned, time permitting, whatever other specific requests you might have, we will do a complete service and safety inspection on your vehicle, checking your brakes, battery, steering, belts, hoses, tire condition and air, external lights functions, accessible fluids, wiper/washer function, etc. at no charge. TIRES Tires are like shoes – there’s a world of options out there. Similarly, you no longer ask for a “shoe” or a “beer” (a recent New Yorker magazine has a cartoon showing a bewildered citizen looking at an extensive rack of shoes. One section is shoes for blogging.) You can and must choose. The variation in performance characteristics and the balance between different brands and styles under different conditions is vast. We can advise you on this. Ask about how it might be possible to finesse your car above and beyond normally scheduled maintenance and service standards as well as better than its originally manufactured condition; extra attention to the fuel injection, suspension and tires can frequently make a remarkable difference for the better. Let us advise you on how good your vehicle can get!!! Noises There are many different kinds of noises: “rattle”, “clunk”, “squeal”, “knock”, etc. These are items in a precise technical vocabulary; a lexicon developed over long ages of craft work, from the first wheel to the Space Shuttle. Try and be precise, please, but casual slang is frequently much better than a pointelss attempt to be technical. J Happy Trails, and /Vaya con Dios/ Stephen Clarke - owner Mozart’s Garage, Inc. PS - the Fine Print: if we need to expend time and effort to collect on any overdue payment, all associated costs will be yours to bear, including legal fees. Your signature on our Repair Order signifies that you have read this Policies and Advice packet and agree to this final provision.
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