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If You Are This Angry With Your Dealership, Find A New One, Or Learn To Work On Your Own Junk!


If You Are This Angry With Your Dealership, Find A New One, Or Learn To Work On Your Own Junk!

Back in the day, the neighborhood mechanic was someone people in town trusted and needed and treated well. Of course nobody wants to spend money for no reason, but if you were not mechanically inclined enough to repair your own ride then you took it to someone with the knowledge and expertise that instilled trust in you. Well those days are apparently gone and it is sad as hell. WTF happened to people? I was reading a Facebook post yesterday and a guy posted this up on his page all proud saying this was him. Now I don’t think he was the guy who printed this and taped it to his dash, I think he was using the photo as an example of what kind of customer he is, but I have to tell you he wouldn’t be a customer of mine for more than about 2 minutes if a normal conversation didn’t change this tune quite a bit. And why would you want to take your car to someone that you truly believed didn’t have your best interests at heart? If you have to have this kind of adversarial relationship with your dealership, service department, or local auto shop then you better invest in some lessons on how to repair your own shit.

Seriously, who would want to go to the dealer and have to put this on the dash?

I’m not kidding when I tell you that if I was the service advisor, mechanic, or shop owner who was assisting this customer I would sit him or her down and apologize for whatever wrong some other automotive repair professional did to them and ask how I can help to change their opinion on mechanics, technicians, and service staff. If there wasn’t some real hope of being able to make a positive impact on this person’s attitude and experience then I’d simply tell them that I don’t think it is in their best interest our mine to do business together. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely know horror stories that have come out of dealerships. In fact, I know some I can’t legally speak of, but when you consider the number of cars, trucks, SUVs, etc that are maintained or repaired each month at dealerships, national chains, and local repair shops, the number of unhappy customers with horrible stories has got to be a very very small percentage. To be fair, I grew up in a family where my grandpa owned a service station and auto shop, my uncle owned a very large auto shop, my dad worked in the repair and service side at dealerships for decades, and I worked in auto repair back in the day as well. So I know the business. I know the bad and the good. But I can tell you that most of the time people left with cars that worked better than when they arrived, with smiles on their faces, knowing that we did everything we could to make sure their car was safe and comfortable and would get them where they were going and back.

But at some point in time we have, as a society, gotten so defensive and angry whenever we have to have something done, because we believe that people are going to rip us off. And it goes for any service. Plumbers, electricians, contractors, etc. They are all under the same scrutiny. If you can’t walk in the door and trust someone, then find someone else. And if it is the first time dealing with someone, follow your gut. If your gut says run away, then run away. If not, then shut up and give someone the chance to prove themselves one way or the other.


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12 thoughts on “If You Are This Angry With Your Dealership, Find A New One, Or Learn To Work On Your Own Junk!

  1. Danno

    Oh, and if I had been the mechanic and/or shop I would pushed (I wouldn’t even start it) the car outside and told the owner to come get it and take it somewhere else. I wouldn’t touch a car owned by a person like this with a 20’ pole.

  2. Joe Jolly

    I wonder if he would know if the parts returned to him were actually off his car?
    Would be fun to test his knowledge of auto parts..

  3. Joel Hemi

    Out of about a dozen stealerships and their service departments that I’ve worked with over the years, I’ve only found 2 that didn’t try to hose me. The only time I go there is to buy a new vehicle, or to get service that I can’t do myself and can’t get elsewhere. So I understand this guys plight.

  4. Alan

    Once saw a mechanic pull an air filter cartridge from a car he was servicing. The cartridge had a black texta X on the underside, obviously put there by the owner as a check to see if stuff got changed.
    Mechanic got a Sharpie and put an X on the new cartridge before installing it. Sure enough, customer came back waving the new cartridge around and barking about being ripped off etc. Mechanic pulled old cartridge out of bin and said “don’t they all have an X on them?”.
    Look on customer’s face – priceless.

  5. bob

    I wasn’t going to comment on this one but after reading those that seem to agree with you I will. I have worked in the trade and worked in parts stores since the mid seventies and I completely understand the letter. It is VERY common. I even left employment at a few locations because of it. Take off the rose colored glasses.

  6. 71C10SWB

    I work on my own stuff…when I can. Unfortunately, on newer cars there a re a few things that need a dealership or a mechanic with the right tools. While I don’t agree with this guys tactics, I have been on the receiving end of dealerships who see you as just another job and not as a returning customer…I guess they are right…I won’t return.
    I had a situation a few years ago when we moved to a new town. I don’t know the locals and my new shop wasn’t built yet, in the middle of winter…”perfect storm” situation. The local dealership managed to change parts that I had already changed and misdiagnose problems for three trips while still managing to charge me out the rear. After they finally figured out the problem, did they try to correct it, nope. They actually treated me like they had done me a favor…I have not been back. BTW, these were supposed to be the best dealership in town.

  7. Joel Hemi

    When I worked at a garage back in the late 70s, there was an investigative news report about garages ripping people off by not replacing parts that they were supposed to. The news team recommended always getting your old parts back. So we had a bunch of people asking for their old parts because of that. This one lady came in for a ball joint. She insisted that the used part be returned to her, just like they said to do on the news. She acted a little goofy and one of the mechanics started calling her “the dingbat.” Of course not to her face, only when she wasn’t around.

    When her part came in the kid who was sorting out the parts wrote dingbat on the box. Later when the job was done, she was in the office with her husband insisting that we produce the old part. One of the kids runs out to the shop and grabs the part which had been thrown back into the box that the new ball joint had arrived in. I was horrified to see the word dingbat on the box, but it was too late to do anything.
    The lady pulls the old ball joint out out of the box and holds it up for her husband to see, proclaiming “See Harvey, my car has a new left upper dingbat, and here’s the old one to prove it!” It was difficult to keep a straight face until she left.

  8. I guess I'll just not say

    At the small garage I worked at as a kid for a while before I decided I didn’t want to be a mechanic, there was a bin that the worst thrashed or damaged used parts went into. If a customer asked to see their old parts and you weren’t expecting that, or had by orders of the service manager otherwise replaced good parts (a frequent thing), you’d go back and pick something random out of the bin to show them. They generally then would not ask to take the part with them, whereapon you’d make a big demonstration out of throwing it in the trash, and afterwards it would get picked out and go back into the bin. Who all thinks they’re so smart? The customers did, and then we did. If there weren’t so many people trying to rip US off I’d have felt worse about it. Still was glad to get out of that mess.

  9. Andy

    In my opinion, the reason this is happening is due to the expense/complexity of our current consumer goods & lack of well trained technicians to service them.

    It is difficult to get a tech that is well versed in every brand/model available today and repeated repair attempts are very frustrating.

    Also many parts are extremely expensive by themselves. Most people can’t understand that a current F150 tail light can cost over $700.

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