Well it's funny that you would bring up the mechanic, actually i am a mechanic and let me tell you that if I was charging 200 hun an hour for really something you could get for free with a little bit of work I would definatley give a 30 min job for free. Not to mention that in reality the time I spend with my customers before and after the job explaining everything to them is called customer service that I don't charge for so get your head out of your ass tounge and come back to earth and try taking in a bit of reality. It's all about making your customers happy so they will come back, I believe in giving something to get something bigger in the end, and I'm sure glad your not one of my staff, if you were I'd be out of business.
Ok, so you're not charging $200/hr for something I could get for free with a little extra work, you're charging ______ for something I could get for free with a little extra work. Feel free to fill in the blank with however much mechanics make these days. I honestly have no clue because I've never had to pay to have someone work on my car. If you really want to go into that argument, the same could be said for any service. If you're skilled enough in social networking and have great bonding & negotiating skills, or even just plain manipulative, you'd never have to pay for anything, but I'll skip out on the rest of the cultural anthropology lecture here. Everyone has their reasons that they ended up on here looking for "companionship".
So if I were to send a few of my friends over to you to get their cars worked on, would you mind throwing in a free blow job with it? Come on, they're nice clean guys and they'll bring you more business, promise. I'll even ask them not to come in your mouth. It's about customer service, right?
Adding the time you spend explaining the work to be done before and after the actual work on the car as "extra time" that you're giving them, would be akin to me saying the time I spend on the phone and answering emails for clients is part of the appt time. I am sure not too many guys would be happy about that.
I'm glad you're not one of my staff, because you'd be too sore from giving away free extra time to actually be doing any paid work. There's only so much we can do in a day, and its nowhere near an 8 hour shift. Unlike most other jobs (unless you're a boxer or something) we can't work the next day if we worked too much or too hard the day before. Making sure one customer is happy because he got an extra 30 minutes isn't worth losing the rest of the day of appts or even the whole following day or days work. Its not worth the next guy getting a substandard experience because the last guy was extra hard on us either. I say this because it's usually the guys that expect non-stop, wall to wall, hardcore pound fucking that get so choked up on getting a few extra minutes of time. I am sure that could be a great niche market to some, but I am not fond of appts that make me feel like a glorified blow-up doll. I don't have an air valve. I am a living breathing human female. While I would like each and every one of my appts to be a transcendental experience for all of those that choose to see me, I do have to keep in mind the limitations of the flesh.
An hour has 60 minutes and that's exactly what you should get, though I think micro-managing 5 minutes to either side is ridiculous. A lot of my appts run over time by maybe 15 minutes or so, but it's because most choose to have a shower before they leave, or chat for a few minutes. If they stayed over longer than that, it'd domino my appts for the rest of the day, leaving me running late. I can't speak for other ladies, but I only have a certain number of days per month I can work. If I mess one up, it's gone. I can't replace a lost day.
Keeping things fair and on an even perspective so that both sides are happy, keeps a provider from getting jaded, and that seems to be the true key to consistantly providing good service. You should get all the time you paid for, and we should be able to go home at the end of the day without feeling we've been taken advantage of.