Brake guy talking

Brakes may not be new or as exciting as e-commerce and dot.com start ups, but if hydraulic lines, rotors, calipers, drums and friction material could speak, they might complain of being taken for granted.

Technician Steve Bosynak is a brake expert with 15 years working experience. He shares his considerable technical knowledge by teaching apprentices at night school, which he started doing while he himself was an apprentice and a teacher noticed his affinity with students in his class who needed help.

Bosynak, 38, has also achieved certification as a transmission and front end specialist as well as Class A general certification.

He continues to work in the service bays, where there are plenty of challenges, but life there is relatively straightforward compared to the front office, dealing with customers who have certain expectations and company management with their own set of business objectives.

What Bosynak has learned in dealing with these sometimes contradictory forces is as follows:

To technicians, he cannot emphasize enough the importance of the skill and care with which they perform their assignments in terms of the overall outcome of the job.

To customers, he lays out the scenario and the options, if any, so the customer can make an informed decision. After all it’s their money and their vehicle. After that, he lets the chips fall where they may.

That’s not to say the relative quality of parts have no bearing on the service equation. On the contrary.

With the benefit of experience, Bosnyak, like so many other technicians across Canada, is convinced that (taking the labour element out of the equation), customer satisfaction is also dependant on the parts quality or lack thereof.

Cheap pads and shoes will generate more complains than premium linings, he has found.

Pads that cost less because they are cheaper in quality may initially appeal to the customers. But, if brake noise, premature lining wear and poor pedal sensitivity lead to increased comebacks, which they invariably will, relative to higher quality product, where is the benefit? SSGM