Dealerships made money on the parts sales mark up as well as the labor. Of course a dealership tech would prefer to sell new parts rather than fix or recondition old ones. I think many techs got paid flat rate for a task, no matter how long it took them to finish the job, and it took less time to replace points than make the ones installed work like new. Certainly a dealership wouldn't teach their techs how to recondition points to work as new for customer vehicles, even if the tech was hourly.
most techs at the bigger dealerships get paid commission. You get paid X amount of hours for each job....so if the book says you get 2 hours for said job...and you are good at what you do....you can do it in as little as half the time yet still get paid for the 2 hours. Customer pays for the two hours.
Most technicians will replace with new parts rather than service old parts because of
A) a % of commission on newly sold parts
B) if old parts fail after service you don't get paid to do them the second time
Basically if the tech can't guarantee the repairs 110% out the door they don't want to do the work. Just cleaning and re calibrating the points on your personal bike is great, it saves you money and you're back on the road. However from a technicians stand point what IF your condenser fails down the road in 10 or 100 miles. Then the customer thinks whatever you did was wrong and you end up doing a job for free since most technicians don't get an hourly wadge, only a commission.
So the consumer does pay a little more going to the stealership BUT he knows that the work gone into it was done in a manner where the technician doesn't want your bike/car/whatever to come back for the same symptoms anytime soon!!! So you may have spent a little more but the chances of a returning issue will be slim to none.
My mark up margin on briggs and stratton OEM parts is only about 30-40 %
my mark up margin on Honda parts is 50%
The difference is everyone is a briggs dealer...but with honda we don't have much competition.
I attend service schools every year. Honda, Kohler, Briggs, etc....I've been doing this since 99...we don't even mention points at our service schools and i'm a Briggs Master service technician. I probably see more engines with points each year than most motorcycle service shops. Last year I alone at my shop had over 80K in billable labor hours...and the average shop tickets is maybe 75 bucks (we are talking mostly weedeaters and push mower that sell new for less than 200 bucks)
Unless you find an oldschool technician I'm not sure that many techs under the age of 35 are comfortable servicing points rather than replacing anymore. At least not in my area. The points systems were taken out of production in bikes/cars/power equipment not too long after i began walking back in the early 80s.
