After watching Fox29 news on 5/31/2008 and seeing the story on auto repair centers I wanted to let people know the other side of the story.
I have personally been a automotive technician for the last 25 years. 85% of my time working on vehicles has been spent as a General Motors technician. During this time I have spent thousands of hours personally and professionally training in order to work on the latest vehicles that GM makes. I find that is laughable that aftermarket service repair shops now want a federal law passed in order to have access to the manufacturers information.
First let me say that I have worked in local repair shops in the past but never for very long due to the fact that you cannot get up to the minute information about new cars. That is the exact reason why I work for a automotive dealership. In order to repair todays highly technical vehicles you have to be trained and well trained to do it. The days of backyard repairs is long gone. Most service repair shops can due the basics but beyond that they are lost. Some of the reasons that they are lost is lack of information but the rest of it is due to lack of training. You could give the info to all repair shops but it would not due any good do to the fact that they wouldn't know what to do with it. For these repair shops to have access to manufacturer owned information would basically do nothing for them and also hurt the manufacturers wellbeing due to the fact that once this info is common knowledge the manufacturer's would have no control over the repair of vehicles that are under warranty.
If aftermarket service repair shops were forced to repair customers vehicles under warranty times controlled by the manufacturer and labor charges at manufacturers controlled payment I think they might change their minds about wanting access to highly proprietary information. On behalf of all automotive customers I hope that this law is never brought to light . I have nothing against shops making a living but in the same respect I have seen alot of vehicles repaired or should I say not repaired by these shops. I have personally worked on customers vehicles brought into the dealer from an aftermarket shop to get it fixed and fixed correctly. Most of the time it isn't a lack of information issue for these shops it's a lack of understanding these vehicle's and the trained ability to diagnose it properly.
