This mechanic is sadly part
This mechanic is sadly part of the real problem. As a recently retired Service Consultant, he is atypical. NO dealership is going to turn you away if you're willing to pay for diagnosis time. And NO trained technician will turn down looking at a vehicle if there is diag time ($$) on a repair order. The real problems lay with customers that believe everything can be diagnosed by plugging in a scanner and don't want to pay for an actual diagnosis. OR the technicians that want 5hrs of diag time up front for a something that they already have a pretty good idea what it is. I've seen it 100s of times that a customer agrees to 4hrs of diag time then vehicle sits outside the mechanic then walks out and installs a part, flags 4+ 1hr install and says it's fixed.