How to play
Name your technician, pick a region, and take the first broken machine on the board. Everything after that is trade-offs.
A job, start to finish
- Intake. The customer describes the symptom. Spend half an hour opening the machine up and you get clues — each one rules something out.
- Diagnose. Pick the fault code. Wrong answers are drawn from the same kind of machine as the real fault, so reading the display alone won't carry you.
- Parts & tech. Economy, aftermarket or OEM, and who does the work. Both feed the odds of it coming back.
- Quote. Straight, padded, or a discount.
- Finish. Cash, reputation, and a roll on whether you see that machine again.
The things that will catch you out
| Bay hours | The real currency. Every job eats them. Benches and crew buy you more. |
|---|---|
| Parts lead time | You pay the distributor on order, the customer pays on completion. Economy parts are three days out — the cheap part's real cost is time. |
| Bay capacity | Only so many machines can sit waiting on parts. Fill it and you can't take work that needs ordering. |
| Callbacks | Misdiagnose it or fit a cheap part and the machine returns as warranty work. You eat the parts and the hours. |
| Saturday | Rent, payroll and subscriptions settle whether the week went well or not. |
Reputation, and the people behind it
Reputation gates the size of work you're offered. Underneath it, individual customers remember exactly what you charged them and whether the machine stayed fixed — and they call about the same machine. Look after people and they crowd out strangers on your board. Burn them and they stop calling, which quietly shrinks your own business.
Certifications
Your title is earned. Sit a certification exam at the shop — eight questions, 75% to pass — and each one you hold cuts callback risk and earns reputation in that specialty. Eight of the nine makes you a Master Technician.
The market
You're ranked against real Arizona shops in whichever region you chose. Every one above you is taking work you'd otherwise get, so climbing the table is how the phone starts ringing.