49 karma · joined August 12, 2015
We try to maximize the number of bookings inside a garage, and they're all equipped with both heated jackets and portable heaters.
When it gets way too cold, we prioritize mechanic happiness and reschedule all the jobs for the day.
A few reasons why leakage doesn't happen:
- Unlike cleaning, this isn't a weekly service, so the incentive is less.
- When our mechanics communicate with customers it gets routed through a Fiix phone number and/or 'business cards' with direct links to re-book them
- Mechanics have also expressed that they don't want customers having their personal phone numbers because it actually takes long to quote out a customer (we've built software to do this instantly).
- Because we do a high volume of repairs, we can get better parts costs than mechanics could on their own
- By going through Fiix, the mechanic gets 'de-risked' as even if the customer complains, or things go wrong, they still get paid
When we were running TireSwap we did on rim tire changes and rotations only (summer to winters and vice versa), so no mounting / balancing was needed.
We have a few partner shops across the city that we'll get the car towed to in the case that we can't complete the work at their home. That being said, we've completed thousands of repairs and less than 1% have needed the tow service.
Off rim tire changes and wheel balancing are the only services we offer that are non-mobile. These are 'experiments' for now, but we have them on the site because we have other mobile partners that will bring a large truck with the balancing machine and complete the repair.
When there's nothing left to optimize, the way to become profitable is to either pay drivers less or charge customers more, and customers are not down to pay more.
The founder Salima has applied to YC in the past, so I'm sure she'll be here answering questions