LK,
I was in the auto industry before. Some places didn't charge to "look at things". They would pull the car in. Figure out sometimes shortly what the problem is. Price it out. Then the customer says that's what it needs and does it him self. Shop makes $0. The mechanic did not want to spend much time to conferm the suspect part is the cause so the wrong things got repaired. So then they went to a dignostic fee to look at it which included the first hour of dignosis and customers were told most things are descovered in the hour. It it took 2 hours they were never charge more. But if was a big mystery then the customer is called and told something like "There is a problem with this system. It could be a bad this, this, or a bad connection. We need more dignostic time and $200 to find the cause and get you a repair estomate." The customer allways went for it cause they were allready $80 into it. After that they still fix it for more $ cause they got $280 into it.
I sould do that with my customers.
