united-states, business-plan, customer-service, family-businessI’m debating a start up in my local metro area.
The business is based on recent experiences in automotive repair. It seems that the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM’s) are reluctant to support vehicle repairs to engine computers and related anti-theft devices more than ten years after the vehicle is manufactured.
The business model is a mobile repair business focusing on vehicle keys (replacement and recoding) as well as Powertrain Control Module coding. The business provides a necessary service helping folks keep their vehicles running and on the road! In the scheme of life, a mobile business has pretty low investment costs. You need a service vehicle, mechanical tools and software tools.
I’m a retired automotive OEM engineer (no longer in Detroit), my son will be the one primarily running the business. I will be on call for difficult technical issues. It’s clear there is a market for the service. And when the car you need to get to work isn’t running, customers can get pretty desperate to get it fixed. That’s a good and bad thing. Key values we want to maintain in our business are high integrity work and honesty with customers. The fact that it’s a mobile business gives us more flexibility… if we’re busy we don’t take jobs, period. Jobs generally tend to be done one at a time (subject to replacement parts availability…)
But here’s my issue. I’m guessing the majority of customers in this range are those where money is tight, really tight. My fears:
We do the job, fix the car on site, and the owner refuses to pay. Unlike a brick and mortar repair shop we have zero leverage in this case. (A brick and mortar won’t release the car to the owner until the bill is paid.) Car is running and we’re out of luck. We could disable the car, but that’s sleazy, not in our ethics. Disabling the car might mean removing the engine computer, or adding lock on boot to vehicle wheel, etc…
We do the job, get paid via credit card, and two days later charges are reversed (without any cause other than money is too tight…)
I’m not worried at all about the repair side of the business… I’m way concerned about the money, and safety side of things. Concerned enough that this issue stops our high tech mobile business repair model dead on the tracks.
One thought is to just make this a cash business, using an armored lock box on the truck for cash deposits. Customers show cash to us first before we start any repair.
Are there alternatives? How would you folks manage the finances here?
To get good real advice, call a business which does what you want to do in a city far from you and ask. Many times business owners take it as a compliment when someone asks them for advice. I would get more than one set of answers. Since all the companies you would call have the same issues, you should get good answers.
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