Well, we DID have A Plan...
Yesterday morning we took the wife's car in for service. Seems the A/C clutch keeps clicking (on and off), which tells me from past experience that the refrigerant charge is low. Considering her car is 12 years old (and still runs fantastic), last Friday she called for an appointment. How I miss the days when you could just drive it in and get things fixed.
Anyway, the man on the line says to come in Monday at 10AM, and that we can WAIT for it.
(cool!)
Sounds good to me. All it probably needs is a quick recharge, and we're back on the road.
Now I USUALLY follow her in MY car to drive her home, but when the man said we could wait for her car, I thought I'd meander about the neighborhood while waiting (yeah, you can still DO that where the car repair place is in Waynedale).
We drive over to the shop, and when the man behind the counter asks to help us, I tell him our name and the TIME we were told to be here. He checks in his appointment book (actually a COMPOSITION BOOK), and we're NOT in there.
Uh, oh...this is going to get nasty.
SO we told him we HAD an appointment for 10AM.
Seems no one wrote us down.
I told him what we were there for and that the man told us Friday we could WAIT for the car. HE looked up like a deer in the headlights saying: "Who told you that?" We have to "leave" the car. I said: "Well, that's not going to work - we both came over in the SAME car".
My wife said let's go back and yo can follow me back HERE...and we left.
I was steaming all the way home, and I advised to just RESCHEDULE the damn repair for WEDNESDAY (early).
Which is what we did, so TOMORROW, we get to ATTEMPT this clusterf$ck all over again, and had I my own VACUUM PUMP, I'd just buy some R134, hook up my gauges, pump the system down and recharge it MYSELF!!!
But no can do, so we're at the "mercy" of the people that pretend to call themselves mechanics.
Aren't we ALL?
Now I've been going to Engle Road Auto Care (yes, that's the name of the repair shop) ever since I MOVED here, and they know me by name, yet over these ten years, the service hasn't been what I came to know and love in Philly.
Hell, the last time I went there for a WATER PUMP swap out, they wound up tearing my dashboard out, replacing it in poor order, and my fan ducts STILL don't channel the air properly at the various speeds. I also had screws missing from the reassemble. Luckily I bought some replacement screws and set it back to rights, but without knowing HOW it was disassembled, I had no blueprint on how to get it back where it once was. But I got damn close.
I didn't want to press the issue with them (although I told them about it, and that I was dissatisfied), for fear of having something ELSE screwed the hell up that didn't have to be. Plus, I've got more stress than I know what to do with JUST by living WHERE I do...I don't need anymore, thank you, especially when it comes to my car.
It has become a crapshoot, and with a 25 year old car, I think I need someone who is OLDER THAN THE CAR in order to work on it, and understand HOW it's supposed to works!
To this day, I can't recall the boss's name, and with the good mechanics I never for got them. It also seemed like the mechanics rotated out like the troops in Iraq at Engle Road. Every time I showed up, there were new faces. And mechanics make pretty good scratch.
Of course, they DO have cars FOR SALE there (that's something new to me). I guess that makes them MORE money than FIXING cars and taking care of customers that have come there for a decade, so guess which aspect is placed on the back burner?
It might be time to look for another facility...and that will be a chore, trust me.
Going to a Pontiac dealership is OUT. They overcharge the HELL out of you (except in Williamsport, PA), and take their damn time. They're too busy doing warranty work to bother with your "classic".
The nearby repair shops are a no-go too. I don;t want MY car sitting on a lot in MY neighborhood where I can't see it. These people will look at my car and say "easy pickings", and I don't want to get a call saying it was stolen or vandalized. I went through the vandalizing already back in Columbus, OH, and THAT cost me a day's work and close to $400!
Yes, there are those people that don't want YOU to have anything that comes close to "nice".
I live near Yeoman's on Hanna Street, but they're not people that I would "write home" about. Although they perform decent work, they are slower than molasses in January! SO if you've got ALL DAY to kill waiting for a bloody oil change, they might be OK for YOU. Not for me. And if I have to leave the car...forget it! I know the area, and if I don't see a code 40 "alarm" call at their place once a week, the aborigines must be out of town on a vacation (or probably in jail from the last burglary).
And in my area, the OLDER the car, the better, when it comes to the boomcars of choice. That's why I see (once) nice old Buicks, Oldsmobiles, and Pontiacs turned into real pieces of $hit with the rims, paint jobs and stereos.
Don't want my car to wind up THAT way. No sir!
So we might just have to start over again. And building a relationship like this isn't easy.
It's based on trust, first and foremost. You trust that mechanics will find the problem and repair it properly and not cost you an arm and a leg in the process (that's reserved for the gas pumps anyway).
In ANY service business, you don't just meet the customer's expectations, you EXCEED them. That is the way to EARN respect AND trust...not to mention, it keeps that customer coming back.
If you don't have that trust, then forget about the rest.
Then again, isn't it the same with everyone in life?
We'll see how the "rubber meets the road" tomorrow, won't we?