| Friday, July 1, 2005 |
18:23 - Endgame... Part II
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The Jetta sitchy-ation may be at last coming to a close.
For those of you just tuning in, here's the history so far:
- At the Mercy of the High Priests (the 80,000 mile service back in March, for background)
- Service sucks (Monday, June 13—following the clutch repair and Midas' breaking of my stereo)
- Out of my way! I'm a motorist! (Thursday, after Bob Lewis responded to the dead stereo and illuminated engine light by replacing the MAF sensor, replacing the ignition coil pack, and breaking my alternator so the battery died that evening)
- Car Update (Monday—cogitations on an allegedly bad battery that Bob Lewis wanted to replace, not realizing that the alternator was what was broken)
- Get my car out of my dreams (interlude)
- Endgame (Tuesday—confirmation that Midas was to blame for my stereo being destroyed, but dishearteningly that Bob Lewis had also failed to fix anything by replacing the battery for $250)
- Car Wars: The Phantom Idle Problem (Thursday—me doing experiments to determine that the idle problem, which eventually turned out to be the engine trying to tell me the alternator was crapped-out, was electronically governed and not mechanical in nature)
- Some large men to see you, sir (Tuesday—my drama-queenish reactions to finding out Bob Lewis now understands that the alternator is at fault and wants to charge me $1000 to fix it)
Now that we're all up to speed here...
On Wednesday I called up Mr. Director Man at Bob Lewis, as planned, and gave him both barrels of my rant. I explained to him my rationale for asking Bob Lewis for $500 in refund: I broke it down to the $250 for the battery (unnecessary parts and worthless labor), plus $150 for their labor that missed or caused the bad alternator, and $100 for my labor helping Bob Lewis figure out that the alternator was what underlay the idle problem and the battery drain. My trump card (actually the first trump card I had, of several) was that I felt I could quite easily convince a small claims court judge that Bob Lewis had caused what they themselves had quoted as $1000 of damage to my car, in the form of the busted alternator which exhibited its first symptoms (high idle) the moment I drove it off Bob Lewis' lot. Hell, I could probably have pushed it further and got an additional $250 tacked onto the award for the superfluous battery replacement surgery. Compared to $1250, the $500 I was asking for surely seemed like an attractive alternative for Mr. Director Man. Especially since I would still have to turn around and take most of that money, buy a new alternator and battery cables from AutoZone, and install them myself, something I've never done.
(If things had come to it, I was prepared to issue further threats, by the way. For one, I could have threatened to go to VW's Zone Representative, which would have been able to turn the screws down on Bob Lewis' service department and get me my satisfaction, to say nothing of knocking down Bob Lewis' rating with the corporate mothership a few precious notches. Failing that, I could have brought up such things as other Bob Lewis customers' horror stories of bad service; the guy in the linked story seems to have given up after being batted around from rep to rep without any refund, but you know, the marvelous thing about the Internet is that all these people are contactable. How much money does Bob Lewis think a class-action lawsuit might cost? Surely more than $1250, and a lot more than $500.)
It never came to that, though. Things have gone a lot better than I more or less expected they would.
After listening to my tirade for fifteen minutes or so, Mr. Director Man withdrew to the protective cloak of my case files so he could review them and prepare his counterstrike. I gave him twenty-four hours to call back. But by the end of Thursday, he still hadn't done so, and Friday (today) I had off from work. So I called him this morning from home.
And he was immediately conciliatory. He said that in the intervening time, he'd reviewed all my service records, and—wonder of wonders—found that indeed yes, that $250 battery repair seemed quite unfair. Not only that, he found that the initial repair (where my MAF sensor and ignition coil were addressed) did in fact turn up readings indicating that the alternator was faulty, but the tech hadn't followed up on it, which was squarely on his shoulders. He said that he, Matt (the service advisor), and especially the tech had sat down and had some long talks—the tech wouldn't be losing his job over this, he said, but he'd received a pretty thorough dressing-down.
So what of my compensation, you ask?
Mr. Director Man said that instead of giving me $500 in cash and having me tinkering in my driveway over the holiday weekend, he was prepared to have Bob Lewis replace the alternator and battery cables for free. The way he broke that down was by saying that the $250 battery repair shouldn't have been charged me, and he'd consider that as paid toward the alternator repair; and the rest ($750 of what they had quoted as a $1000 repair) would be absorbed by the shop. By their estimation, then, this is a more valuable deal to me than what I'd been asking for—especially since it would mean I wouldn't have to go buying any $250 alternators and $50 cables and trusting the Alaska road trip to my thus-far-untested skills with a wrench.
Now, of course, by some estimations they're still not going to be eating as much cost as Mr. Director Man said they will; he said the alternator would cost the shop like $450, and I told him right away that I knew that wasn't much of a deal, considering I could get a brand-new 120-amp Bosch alternator (higher grade than the factory one) from AutoZone for less than $300, and get the $90 core charge back when I gave them my old unit. I hoped, I said, that the part they're going to put into my car is worth three times as much as one I could get third-party, particularly as Bob Lewis has never offered any rebates on the core charges for parts they've replaced and not given me the old parts back—they get to charge me the full price of the new part, get reimbursed by the distributor for the old part for remanufacturing, and pocket the core charge (which is often a lot). Mr. Director Man mumbled a bit about how the genuine VW part comes with Bob Lewis' service warranty, which I wouldn't have had if I'd done it myself, so if anything went wrong on the Alaska Highway I could get reimbursed for the repair when I got home—blah blah blah. I gave that one to him. It's not like I would have gained anything by proposing that I buy a third-party alternator and have them install that and refund me the difference—this is all free to me, so it'll be fine the way they're planning to handle it. But I think he understood that I understood that by not mentioning core charges to customers and charging them well more than what the free market bears, they're sorta shafting people on a lot of part replacements. So he knows I'm not dazzled by his offer—I know they're still getting away with giving me less value than they're promising me, in the long run. But ah well. Maybe at least his shop will be a little less blithe about assuming their customers don't know about core charges in the future. If so, I've done my good deed for the week. (Wait, no, I already did that on Wednesday when I noticed three $20 bills and a receipt being repeatedly ejected and sucked back in by the ATM next to me at the bank, and I took them inside and handed them over to a startled teller. And no, not because people were watching.)
So, this being a long holiday weekend, I'll take the car in on Tuesday morning and have them make everything all good. I'll find out in advance whether the same tech will be working on the car as worked on it before—just out of curiosity, of course, just so I know whether any problems that arise from this repair can be chalked up to incompetence or malicious retaliation. But I don't think there'll be a problem. The whole point of this exercise is goodwill—reestablishing goodwill between myself and the dealership—and Mr. Director Man knows that if Bob Lewis gives me any reason to be dissatisfied after this service is over with, whether it's incompetence or malice won't matter—it's their reputation on the line. He seemed to place great stock in my not spreading the word of Bob Lewis' intransigence. And the only way that will happen is if they do an impeccable job this time.
I'll still be thinking twice before taking the car back to Bob Lewis for future services. I'll still be attempting to do basic repairs on my own from now on, particularly where I know they're in the habit of shafting customers on part prices (just check the core charge and see if it's significant—remember that they're keeping that money as clear profit, because it's not figured into the price of the part they get from the distributor). But at the very least they seem sincere about making it right with me on this incident. Mr. Director Man gets high marks for me for not fighting me at all—he came up with a truly equitable counteroffer, one that will be better for me anyway, and he didn't try to explain away or defend his employees, and instead said simply that I had them dead to rights: they'd dropped the ball and it was theirs to make it up to me. That's exactly the right answer.
Which is good, because I can't help but like Bob Lewis—they're conveniently close to my house, their showroom is gorgeous, and indeed it doesn't feel like a car dealership at all. My recent peregrinations around Ford dealerships reminded me what the traditional experience feels like: tall greasy gray-haired men stalking around the place rubbing their hands at people and making lurid comments about the conquests of mind and body you'll surely make driving a Mustang, and by amazing coincidence they always seem to have a son working at Apple and a daughter who lives in Alaska and personal experience with everything else I mention of my life. None of that at Bob Lewis: just young guys who leave you alone to find out for yourself what's cool about the cars on the floor. Volkswagens do have that going for them: their interior features really do speak for themselves, and so a car dealership that feels like an Apple Store—which is what Bob Lewis resembles in many ways —is a welcome change and a genuinely enjoyable experience.
I'll reserve final judgment for Tuesday evening (or, more likely, Wednesday midday, depending on how long it takes to do the final service). But I have a strong feeling that we're about to shut the book on this one, and in a way that's amicable and fair all around. And that's the way it should be.
I'd say my first genuine experience with plumage-showing and chest-puffing (while keeping the real talons sheathed until and unless absolutely necessary) has paid off quite well.
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Brian Tiemann
