I have to say props to the car shop for customer service. We have used them for years, and in general have had a good experience. And when things have been a problem, they work to make it right.
Tuesday
9:00am- drop the car off. They will call us once they check it over.
12:00pm- car diagnosed. $564. Will be ready in a few hours.
5:00pm- no word. I convince G-man that if we don't hear from them by 7pm, we need to call.
7:00pm - we call. Car will be ready in 1.5 hrs (8:30pm). We decide that we will pick it up in the morning....kids needed showers and to go to bed.
8:00pm- they call. Uh, the car won't be ready until 11am Wednesday.
Great. That mucks up the morning. I called a friend to see if she could pick up G-man from day job at noon and I would drive him in (at 7:30am, while trying to get the kids ready for school). I guess we will go by later....
Wednesday
11am - car still not ready. The parts supplier keeps sending the wrong part. They apologize that this is happening and lower the price to $491 (basically, they hugely discounted the labor).
5pm - shop calls and says it will be ready in 45 minutes.
7:45pm- we finished at a kids' activity, and went to get the car without calling first. Hey, they called almost 3 hours ago and said it would be ready.
8:00pm - we get there and my car is still on the lift. They didn't bother to call us and tell us that now some other connection to the metalic hose is leaking. So we drove out there with 2 tired and cranky kids for nothing.
Thursday
10:45am- haven't heard from them, so G-man called. They were road testing the car, and there would be NO CHARGE!!!
Holy cow! We went from $564 to ZERO. I was prepared to go in with guns blazing, and they totally came through!! They obviously realized what a pain this was for us, and in order to keep us happy and coming back, they went above and beyond to make things right.
We got there about 12:10pm, and at first the service tech just said "you are all set." But we wanted to talk to the manager. I guess they thought we were going to be all angry and cause a scene, because they all had this worried look on their faces.
The manager largely ignored me, and apologized to G-man for the problems and inconvenience. I looked at the manager, put my arm around him, and said "excuse me, you need to apologize to ME. This is MY car, and it was MY world that got turned upside down." He just said "yeah, I am sorry...." I guess some things are still a man's world. *rolling my eyes*
So my car is back,with absolutely no charge for the repair and oil change. Mark this day on your calendar people....I doubt something like this will ever happen again!
Now I have to crunch numbers again and decide if I still want to take some money out to undo the Christmas damage!
OMG you got very lucky. I would use some of that money to pay for the Christmas damage you are referring to. Just my $.02 anyway.
ReplyDeleteUghh, I hate the "man's world" thing.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in very gender unbiased household, women could do anything a man could do and vice versa. Then I married a military man, which really uses this idea that the spouse takes care of a lot of things, because the military person isn't always there to make the decisions. It wasn't until I moved to "redneckville" did I get this weird I have to talk to your husband attitude. I maybe naively wasn't aware that this type of sexism was still around, where I live it is rampant. OOhh it burns me too. We have stopped using some contractors and mechanics for this reason. I will not be treated like an idiot and my husband does not speak for me. Sorry a little bit of a rant, but good for you to speak up and not let him ignore you.
I can't stand it when men do that! but, it's fantastic that you didn't have to pay for it and can allocate the money to something else.
ReplyDelete@L- lucky isn't a word I typically use to describe us. So LUCKY, is a vast understatement! I will let everyone know about the E-fund money and what we decide.
ReplyDelete@Niki - rant away girl! I find it amazing how much I deal with and how 99% of the time, my hubby will just say "you need to talk to my wife, she handles that." But "cars" are still one area where men just seem to be....sexist.
@Louise - We are soooo fortunate that they did this for us. Maybe this is the start of something good.