Straight up lets be clear. When you request a mechanic to fit your part, you are effectively taking a steak you purchased at Woolworths into a restaurant and asking the chef to cook it for you, oh and you want the pay less for the privilege.
You would never do it. its outrageously rude and entitled, and yet it seems to be ok for people to request this of their mechanic.
There are a number of factors at play here which we unpack here.
Liability:
Regardless of what ever the paperwork says what ever you sign there is still a chance that if a major incident occurred and the mechanic in question ended up in a legal battle. even though he did not supply the part he can still be found liable. He is the expert and should be able to determine the quality of a product simply by looking at it. this of course is radicicols. However is the mechanic supplies the part he can fall back on his supplier for warranty and subsequent legal fall out. if its a customer supplied part, he can not. For this reason many simply refuse.
Profit:
Parts sales make up a percentage of any mechanical workshops operations and the profit made on these parts are required for the business to stay afloat and function. Any workshop from a dealership through to a sole operator mobile mechanic will have a margin on his parts and when these businesses do their forecasting and planning and working out their hourly charge rate they are taking into account an assumed percentage of profit made on parts. By removing this you damage the workshops bottom line and if done often enough can result in small businesses going belly up.
The Customer:
Stereotyping here but the type of customer who sources there own parts fits the profile of a problem client from the get go. Not all meet this criteria but workshops across the country will simply refuse customer supplied parts because of this profile. Its not discriminatory is the result of hundreds of years across thousands of workshop experiences. The workshop owner simply is not willing to take the risk. Politely move that person on and focus on a job that has guaranteed margin and low risk of problems.
