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There's an age-old public secret within not only the automotive world, but within the communities surrounding any technical skill, that there's 3 types of people for any given specific technology: users of the technology, users who perform routine maintenance, and users who troubleshoot and repair said technology.
1. End Users - It's fair to say that the majority of people are simply end uers. This means they commission their maintenance and repair alike to another source. Lets say these people make up 60% of consumers of any given product.
2. Maintenance Performers - This part of any given user group performs maintenance outlined by the manufacturer through documentation. All though the manufacturer has built the device and crafted instructions for the end user to perform this work, lets say only 35% of people will take the initiative to do so.
3. Technicians - This part of a given user group likely already has skills analogous to the task at hand and will use repair documentation to fix problems on their own. Do to the vicarious nature of said learning curve, lets say this group makes up 5% of users, if that.
My point? Whenever troubleshooting discussions arise, only those who may have an idea of how to address the problem will respond, skewing conversation heavily in favor of that small minority. Why is this significant? Because there becomes the misconception that "everyone knows how to work on it, and if you don't, you don't have any business using it" and this notion is completely absurd. Dealer technicians are not employed simply because "the general population is too stupid/scared/lazy to do the work themselves", they're employed because that's their specialty and end users have specialties that are different from that. Case in point; that's like me saying because I'm a web developer and could program a forum just like this one if I wanted to (which is indeed true, btw) that anyone who can't do so shouldn't be using the internet. That's ridiculous, and there's nothing about my programming skills that validate my use of the internet, just like there's nothing about a mechanic's skills that validate their operation of a motorcycle.
1. End Users - It's fair to say that the majority of people are simply end uers. This means they commission their maintenance and repair alike to another source. Lets say these people make up 60% of consumers of any given product.
2. Maintenance Performers - This part of any given user group performs maintenance outlined by the manufacturer through documentation. All though the manufacturer has built the device and crafted instructions for the end user to perform this work, lets say only 35% of people will take the initiative to do so.
3. Technicians - This part of a given user group likely already has skills analogous to the task at hand and will use repair documentation to fix problems on their own. Do to the vicarious nature of said learning curve, lets say this group makes up 5% of users, if that.
My point? Whenever troubleshooting discussions arise, only those who may have an idea of how to address the problem will respond, skewing conversation heavily in favor of that small minority. Why is this significant? Because there becomes the misconception that "everyone knows how to work on it, and if you don't, you don't have any business using it" and this notion is completely absurd. Dealer technicians are not employed simply because "the general population is too stupid/scared/lazy to do the work themselves", they're employed because that's their specialty and end users have specialties that are different from that. Case in point; that's like me saying because I'm a web developer and could program a forum just like this one if I wanted to (which is indeed true, btw) that anyone who can't do so shouldn't be using the internet. That's ridiculous, and there's nothing about my programming skills that validate my use of the internet, just like there's nothing about a mechanic's skills that validate their operation of a motorcycle.
