Price shopping versus loyalty

Had a regular customer in the other day. She brought us a modern Infinity that needed some serious brake work. After inspection and some discussion of options the customer got a final estimate of $930 for her brake repairs. She decided to call the local dealership to get a competitive estimate. She was quoted $210.00 less. This is a significant amount of money. We told her that, while we were far from cheap and never compete on price, nobody could use quality parts and do quality work for within that estimate. She said that due to the economic times she had to choose the lesser price. Hard to argue with her feelings. And she said the dealer would do just as good a job and do it far cheaper.
Well she took it to the dealer and guess what? They had made a mistake on the phone. The price was actually within $15 of the price we had quoted. So there went another wasted day for no gain whatsoever. On top of the fact that, despite many people’s misconceptions, dealers do not do better work that independents. In fact most dealers do a lesser brake job than what is performed here at Orinda Motors.
Goes to some previous topics like “Is cheaper ever better”, “Is the Dealer better”, “Value versus Price” and others.
Moral is stick with who you know and trust. Price is far from the top of the importance list when repairing vehicles.