I told you the
story of our epic efforts to get our television repaired, back in the summer. It
took about 45 days for it to happen. I thought, as bizarre as that experience
was, it had to have been a fluke. Customer service wasn’t truly a thing of the
past. And that’s what I believed, right up until the day, about a month after
the Television caper, I went to the car dealership to have my back brakes done.
To preface, I
knew both sets of brakes needed to be replaced. We did the front brakes first.
When I picked the car up, I noticed the ABS and Traction lights were on. I
figured they’d go off as soon as I started driving. They didn’t. But since I had
an appointment for about a week later, and it was summer, and believing they had
just not pushed some reset button or other, I didn’t worry about it.
Then came the
day I brought the car in for the back brakes. I told them about the lights. It
turned out, that when they fixed the front brakes, they somehow managed to break
the do-hickey that encased the ABS controls. It needed to be replaced, and,
since it was partially their fault (the part had been badly rusted they said,
but they shouldn’t have broken it) they would give me a discount. The part had
to be special-ordered. So they replaced my back brakes, and gave me an
appointment for the following week to have this part installed.
Did I mention
this was happening in the midst of their learning a new computer system and at a
time when they were dealing with some of the massive recalls that GM had last
year? I love my Buick, but like most car companies, apparently GM had been
forced to issue a lot of recalls in 2014.
I arrived on
the appointed day, and went to the service desk only to discover that....the
service rep I had dealt with the week before had forgotten to enter my
appointment into the computer. They were too busy to work on my car, I was told.
I was annoyed. They apologized and made another appointment for me to come in
the following week.
I went in, they
had me listed this time, and I settled into their waiting area, to wait. Twenty
minutes later, the service rep came to me to inform me, that they couldn’t find
the part they’d special-ordered for my car. Which meant another wasted trip into
the city. Rather than have me wait a week, they gave me an appointment for
Saturday. They only do special jobs on Saturday, the rep said. I accepted the
appointment without feeling particularly special at all.
Saturday came,
I arrived on time. But after about fifteen minutes of waiting in the nicely
appointed waiting area, the service rep came to me and said that while I had
arrived on time, the part had not.
He promised me
that it would be there on Tuesday, and that they would do this repair on
Tuesday, and at a considerable discount to me. The fourth time was the
charm, and my car was fixed.
On January
29th, just a couple of weeks ago, I approached my car, as I had a
doctor’s appointment, and discovered that overnight, somebody had side swiped my
Buick—the only thing damaged was the driver’s side mirror. I jerry rigged the
darn thing with elastics since the plastic casing was broken, but the mirror was
not, and was still attached to its wires.
I got home,
called the dealership, and arranged to bring the car in to them February
4th at 1 p.m. Having learned from my previous experience, on the
morning of the appointment I called, and asked, was everything a go? Good call
on my part. The good news was the part had arrived; the bad news was it hadn’t
been sent out to be painted to match the car.
My friends, I
can’t make this stuff up. My editors would shoot it back to me, with an edit
note stating it exceeded the believability factor.
The
receptionist transferred me over to a service rep who promised to see it was
done, and he told me to come in on Monday, the 9th. Again, that
morning dawned, and I called to check on the part, only to learn that I had no
appointment in their system [and yes, sadly, it was the same rep]. So I made one
for yesterday.
I called them
yesterday morning to make sure they had my appointment showing and that the part
was in. Yes to the first and they wanted to call me back once they found out
just exactly where that part was.
Friday
morning—two days from today—I’ll be going in to the dealership, maybe, to get my
new mirror put on, I hope. Of course, I will call them first. And yes, I would
go to another GM dealership, if there was one in the area for me to go to. But
at least I haven’t made any unnecessary treks out into the cold and snow this
time.
The telephone
really is my friend.
Love,
Morgan
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