baloochow82

I do 100+ dealer cars  plus 25 to 30 retail cars a month, year round and at most have 1 window a month that needs redone. It's not hard to put out quality work if you have a clean work bay and do the same steps on every window. I'm training a helper right now and after a month of just prepping the way I taught him, he has only been laying film for 2 weeks and he is putting out cleaner work then a tinter that I didn't train that has been tinting for almost 2 years. IMO anyone can cut a pattern and can lay the film, the magic is all in how you prep, I learned this when I first started and was just a prepper for 6 months, I hated it but I hung in there it paid off once I started installing and I wasn't having to fight with dirt and dust.

You know I have yet to meet a tinter that doesn't have a bad tint day every once in a while, when you do 4 plus cars a day your going to run into a car every so often that you have a problem with, now if you only do 1 or 2 a day I can see going months without a problem.

If you tint and run the shop you can relate to this, I can't tell you how many times I'll just pull the liner and have a customer either call or walk into the shop, then you have a choice, do you finish the window 100% and risk losing the customer or do you just squeegee out the water, help your customer and then go back to your window? it's amazing how many times those windows will have a finger or a water bubble in them that you have to go finish and as we all know both of those can invite in some contamination. I'd love to be in the shop only to tint but because I work at a small shop I don't have that luxury, I even have to run dealer cars and don't even get paid for that.

Me to devil there's just to many things that can go wrong and anyone who says they did a perfect tint job I'd love to see it, bet I could find something wrong with it. in vegas when you do 6-8 a day there is a standard you have to meet. used to have 1 boss that would walk the car after you were through with it and mark any mistakes in a yellow grease marker and you would have to fix them before customer got the car back.

Grampa I also tinted at DC west in 1989 and worked at the tint lady for a couple of years 1987 and 1990 {Steve Cutters Shop} ,a couple other places I worked at in vegas was Ambers on Nellis and Dealers Service center {bo's custom and las vegas window tint and one other company all joined together to make this business}. Like you I also worked in San Diego, North County Area for many years, most strictly Auto shops but then worked at Stop the sun which only did flat glass all over San Diego.

I honestly feel like if your doing more then 6 cars a day {hand cutting} your quality will fall off and working that fast just invites things to go wrong. I would much rather be the tinter who's customer says great job, best tint job I have ever got over wow that was quick.

True. Most shops I've worked at over the years have no use for a tinter that can't crank-out 5-7 quality tint jobs per day. The average tinter here in Colorado Springs would have a very tough time finding a job in places like Vegas or Phoenix. Most here can only do 3 quality installs per day. Which is fine here, but in cities where new car dealers tint just about everything, time is of the essence. Ya gotta tint 'em or they get sold without tint and shop loses money.

I'm getting old, like you grampa I've been tinting since 1980 and I tinted in Vegas for 3 plus years, there it is all about speed at most shops except at the best shops in town, for example I can do a complete honda civic, 9 windows including ports in less then an hour hand cutting it but I can't do more then 6 complete cars a day, just to old and wear out quick but to get to the question of how long it should take on every car I tell the customer that it takes 2 hours to do but I like to have the car for 4 to make sure the curing process starts good. never get complaints about that and if you get bombarded with calls or customers it buys you some time or if you overbooked yourself your still good. doing mobile is a little different as you have to leave right away and if you run into problems it can take a little longer plus your environment is a lot harder to control. IMO you can't put a time limit on Quality work.