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What is the most interesting or silliest thing you have seen a customer do? Things that just make you shake your head and want to smack someone or slam their fingers in their tool box.
In over 20 years I have trouble picking a favorite but one frome lately would be a customer that couldn’t open the hood because of a broken cable and knowing it eats alot of oil he cut a hole with a oxy torch in the hood to fill the oil.
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I had a girl come in who freaked out when I opened her trunk. She told me to go away and come back when she had a chance to clean her stuff out and was really worried that I would see in there. Kinda like she was hiding her giant dildo collection back there, or maybe her boyfriends dead body 😛
LMAO, thats a good one, I heard one from a friend so I trust it is true, woman came in for an oil change, turns out she was a drug mule, stashed a bunch of pounds of weed under the hood and didn’t know you need to be under there to change oil, she got busted, lol
One of my buddy’s told me about a guy who brought his car to the shop he was working at some odd years ago because his seat wouldn’t move. Come to find out, it was his weed bag jammed up under the seat. My buddy brought out the bag, set it on the counter, and told the customer what was wrong. There happened to be a cop in the shop at the time, so when he was told it would be $300 to have his seat fixed, he didnt want to cause a scene, so he threw the money on the counter and ran out.
I had a Colbalt come in with a horrible engine clank. The customer insisted that there pistons were just loose and needed tightening. After finding metal fragments in the oil we quoted out an engine but the customer still wanted the pistons checked for looseness. We quoted $500 tear-down fee and after dropping the oil pan I found the main bearings to be almost non-existent. Well the customer was dumbfounded and later I think was more trusting of the professionals.
We have customers that want everything cheap. So they just get the basic oil change. A known customer walks to the front desk to get an oil change. We take his car in and drain the oil then lower the vehicle down. The customer came over to the technician to ask some questions. While the tech was getting the oil, the customer goes in to his car and starts the car without any oil inside the engine. The tech runs over to the customer and yells STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? The customer immediatly turns off the engine and gets out of the car. Then my manager walks over and says, “Can you please wait inside the waiting room while the tech finishes your oil change.”
Luckily there weren’t any obvious damages to the engine.We once had a customer who drove in complaining her muffler was dragging. I looked under the car at the exhaust and saw nothing. As my eyes scanned the under carriage I noticed something hanging down up front. The right front tie rod was hanging down dragging the pavement. How she managed to drive it there I’ll never understand. It was even funnier because the car was one of those pink Mary Kay cars they gave away for selling lots of cosmetics. The lady driving was about 45, had a pound of make up and at least one bottle of perfume on. She wanted the tie rod fixed, but thought she would pass on that expensive alignment. Nice priorities lady.
One time our used car department had traded for an Impala and had it in the shop to be inspected before they put it out on the sales lot. During the used vehicle inspection I noticed that the passenger front power window was not working. A few minutes later the used car manager came strolling through the shop and wanted to find out if I had seen any problems with the vehicle yet. I told him the window didn’t work and he instantly started claiming he had checked the window when he traded for it and accusing me of somehow breaking it. So I take the door panel off to get a look at whats going on and surprise surprise the power window motor was gone!
A lady was complaining that there was a grinding noise coming from her driverside rear wheel area but couldn’t tell what it was. I took the tire off and saw a giant clothing hanger hanging from the spring wedged against the rotor hahaha the previous tech didn’t take it off when he was finished doing the brake job.
Today a guy comes seeing if we can diagnose a problem. He said to the service writer “My car steering wheel is shimmy-ing but I just want to find out the problem. Im not going to buy anything.” The service writer gives the work order to me and I look at the paperwork. I said, shouldn’t there be a half hour diag? Do you think I get paid just doing courtesy inspections? Even though the customer is not going to buy anything. Later, I test drive the car, pull it into the shop. lift the vehicle up and found out what was wrong. Apparently, the belt shifted on the tire. Also, the inner tie rod was wasted. Ohh well the service writer writes and estimate and wastes his and my time.
This isn’t one I saw
An older shop guy told me that when he was working at a dealer years earlier, he had a customer come in complaining of a noise in the rear of their car whenever they turned. He took it for a drive and sure enough it made a thump whenever he turned. He left a note when the customer came back to pick up their car it read (take bowling ball out of trunk).
A customer brought in a car one time for a clutch job and he was going to sit it out in the waiting room. When I went out back to get the car I saw a thumb sized hole in the middle of the driver’s door and it went clean through the inner door panel but not the center console.
After completing the job I had a chance to ask the car owner if someone had shot at the car and he said yes. He had gotten a friend (the guy who was accompanying him that day) to do a drive-by shooting on him one night with the intent of collecting a bunch of insurance money.
Apparently they were not on the same page about the caliber. The guy was thinking .22 and the friend used a .45 with the slug catching part of the guy’s left knee; with both laying it off to the cops as an anonymous shooter.
This left him with a permanent limp and having to use a walking cane.I was surprised he ‘fessed up to me about this. Maybe it was due to answering a couple of non-clutch related questions about his car.
[quote=”Bluesnut” post=52383]A customer brought in a car one time for a clutch job and he was going to sit it out in the waiting room. When I went out back to get the car I saw a thumb sized hole in the middle of the driver’s door and it went clean through the inner door panel but not the center console.
After completing the job I had a chance to ask the car owner if someone had shot at the car and he said yes. He had gotten a friend (the guy who was accompanying him that day) to do a drive-by shooting on him one night with the intent of collecting a bunch of insurance money.
Apparently they were not on the same page about the caliber. The guy was thinking .22 and the friend used a .45 with the slug catching part of the guy’s left knee; with both laying it off to the cops as an anonymous shooter.
This left him with a permanent limp and having to use a walking cane.I was surprised he ‘fessed up to me about this. Maybe it was due to answering a couple of non-clutch related questions about his car.[/quote]
Wow, what a friend… Sounds like an honorable mention for a Darwin Award to me.
They were apparently still friends but I would think if someone wanted to falsely claim some insurance money they should just go out and fake a whiplash thing.
Having someone shoot you without being crystal clear on the type of gun being used is a bit careless…The slug didn’t go into the center console and the only reason I can think of as to why it did not remove his knee would be if it was fired from a distance and got slowed down a lot by hitting the window regulator. A .45 has a low muzzle velocity and that’s just my theory anyway.
Both morons in my opinion. I have no idea how much he collected but it would have to be a ton of money to offset being hobbled for life with a bum knee.
Then again, if he collected a ton of money he wouldn’t be driving a Subaru with a bullet hole in the door…When I was at the dealer a customer had a civic from new for a couple years, came in for a small regular service. after the service it was parked in the lot, customer payed and went to the car, came right back in angry that we broke his steering wheel. the tech that did the service was told to bring it back in to find out what he was talking about, everything seemed fine, brought it back outside to the waiting customer and when the tech got out he flipped the column tilt up and the customer yelled,
“that right there, what did you just do?” turns out the guy didn’t know he had tilt steering
I was constantly amazed at how many hondas got traded in after 3 years with the owners manual still in factory wrapping.
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