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Holidays are stressful. And I can proudly say the dealership I work at seems to keep it’s integrity intact. I’ve never seen something sold to a customer they honestly didn’t need. And rarely do I see my advisers push a customer on something they actually really need.
Just yesterday a woman came in for an oil change and we checked her tranny fluid. It was very dark and barely on the dipstick. My service adviser told her she was in need of a tranny flush.
Come to find out she just lost her job. She was 3 months over due for an oil change and scraped the money to get it. My service adviser told me she can’t do it and she wondered if she could make it 3 more months. Next thing I know the other lube tech pushes his cart up next to me. “We have 9 quarts of tranny fluid” he says “I’ve never done a tranny flush, I really want to learn one”.
We did the tranny flush for free, and begged her not to tell our boss. She cried and hugged us.
I felt bad because I was covered in oil and brake cleaner LOL.
On a negative side we had an old woman come in and ask us to look over her brakes. Her son did her brake job and she paid him $500. We looked at the brakes and he didn’t do anything. Her brakes were seriously a 3. She was furious her son ripped her off. She left our service garage, emotionally upset and hit the gas a little to hard. She ended up hitting a side walk that curves to the left as you pull out. Doing a lot of damage to her car and the front passenger side tie rod, rotor, and caliper. Somehow the rim was ok, tire popped though.
Very shaken and even more upset our service writer ran out and checked on her. We managed to get her car out behind our service bay and told her we will give her a ride home. My buddy that got hired as the used car reconditioning tech said to her he will get an estimate on parts, and he will do the labor for free. We will write up a service ticket for an oil change so the car won’t be towed.
She understands it is our last priority, translation=when me, the other lube tech and my buddy are sweeping floors we will work on it until our hands go numb outside. Today we got all the work done. Even did an alignment real quick.
She hugged all of us for about ten minutes each. We also begged her not to tell our boss we did this.
In stark contrast a woman dropped off her car for an oil change. Came back 4 hours after we closed to pick it up. Brings her boyfriend and he demands the service be free because she didn’t get the message. My service adviser says to her, in front of the boyfriend, “we called and left a message for you and your husband”. Judging by the look on the boyfriends face he wasn’t the husband. So my service adviser told him nothing is free, here’s the bill.
It’s probably honestly a matter of time before we all get fired for this.
On a side note it’s so slow at work right now half our techs literally go home before noon everyday for the last three weeks.
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I was in a hurry when I posted that and forgot to mention the reason I brought all that up is lately we’ve been getting customers that drive their cars for 9 months without changing the oil, then flip on us when we tell them they have damaged something.
Seems like every third customer we get seriously accuses us of trying to rip them off. Then we take them out and show them the things that are wrong and we are told they want to go somewhere else and get a second opinion.
And for some reason it is crippling how slow it is right now.
Does it typically get slow during the winter season?We seriously have techs going home half days because no one brings in their cars for work right now.
Around November till the middle of January is always slow. This is due to the holidays and gift giving, traveling, etc. People don’t have the money to spend. Wait till right after tax season you will be floating in work. It is part of how that works. Only it is worse for truck mechanics because companies are trying to close the year end on a high note. So from mid November on its pretty much dead then middle of January the first quarter opens up their books and we are slammed again.
Some of the guys told me it picks up again around Feb, and tax season we are slammed. I told my boss if I’m not flat rate at tax time I’m going to another dealership hahahaha
They’ve told me at work I’m pretty squared away, I just need more time on the GDS system. Which is our code tablet we use to diagnose code issues. I am treading lightly though, not pushing to swim in the ocean straight out of the pool.
Your actions to help those ladies out is very commendable and hats off to you for not only the kind heartedness but risking your employment to help someone out.
Regarding that brake situation, I ran into something like that about 6 or 7 years ago. A lady with a Lincoln LS wanted some preventative maintenance done at about 80k miles. I found the car still had the original filthy air and fuel filters on it, the original spark plugs which were garbage, worn brake pads, etc, etc.
The sad part here is that she had been giving money to her husband to keep this car up and it was discovered that he was spending the money on his Fox body Mustang. That explained the new intake manifold, cross-drilled brake rotors, and so on………
Pretty stinking low when a son or husband screws over the person who means the most to them. 🙁
About 60% of the reason I got into auto repair is to help people. I grew up incredibly poor and we fixed our own cars. Sometimes my pops would call a buddy on something he was over his head on. Many of his auto buddies saved us tons of money. Even as a kid I saw how much it means to help just a little. Our field has gotten a black eye because of dishonesty. Which is sad because the world would literally stop if our people stopped fixing cars, trucks, machines.
This is something I hate about working in a large main dealership We are not allowed to help regardless of the situation One i’ll remember for awhile was a women had broken down about 100ft from our garage saw her as i was leaving from a saturday shift I pulled over and checked the car for her and it was just a coolant hose blowing off maybe 15-20 min repair, We’d been pretty dead that day and i was feeling nice so attached the hose by hand and filled it with water from my car and got her to drive it back to the garage so i could fix it about 10 mins in boss decided to stay late and came to see what i was doing instead of saying well done for giving the company a good image he decides that I have to stop at once push the car outside and make the lady call a breakdown truck or book it in with the garage and leave it there till the next Wednesday (our first day free)
In the end i got bored of arguing with him pushed the car onto the road and just did the work on the side of the road using coolant from my bench and bleeding it the long way dont know why people have to be so money hungry we only want to help 🙂
That’s why we begged the two people not to tell our boss or anyone outside the guys agreeing to help lol. Thankfully everything has worked out so far.
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