Day +70: Mechanics are Full of Crap!

Dear Kmart Auto,

Today, you lost yourself a customer, who will be sure to tell everyone about her horrendous experience with you and recommend they all steer clear of you.

What started off as a good experience on Sunday has now turned very sour. Firstly, I never received a promised phone call from your staff yesterday to provide me with a quote for the servicing. Then, when I arrived this morning at the pre-arranged time, the car was not booked in for all the things that needed to be done.

And then, this afternoon, when I went to collect my car, your incompetent staff came up with the biggest pile of garbage and excuses and tried to pull the wool over my eyes. All your staff had to do was own up to a stupid thing that his underling shouldn't have done, remonstrate the idiot that did the stupid thing that was clearly seen by the customer, and apologise profusely with a promise to never do it again. But no, your staff felt the need to try and explain away the stupid action with the dumbest lies I'd ever been fed. Good one.

On Sunday, your Castle Hill service centre manager Glenn did the hard sell on me and my husband to try and convince us to have our brand new (just over 12 months old) Volvo serviced by Kmart Auto Castle Hill. Since Glenn did such a great job patching our punctured tyre and saved us a bucket of money, we decided to go ahead and book the car in. Glenn did the booking, which was to include the service, wheel rotation and realignment. We arranged for the car to be dropped off at 10am today, and Glenn promised it would be ready by midday.

Glenn was to call me yesterday to give me a quote on how much the total cost would be. I never received a phone call. Today, however, I was told the reason for the lack of notification - things got busy and Glenn forgot to call me. Yes, those were his exact words. He was too busy to call me. Way to make a new customer feel welcome and highly valued and well regarded.

I arrived at 10am this morning to be greeted by the assistant manager Wayne, who took the car keys and promised me the car would be ready by midday. Unfortunately, he was not able to provide me with a quote on the spot, but promised to call me once he had a better idea. After several requests from me, he finally provided me with a rough estimate for the works to be done to my car today. The estimate seemed a bit low, so I asked him to confirm that the price was for everything, assuming he knew the car was booked in for a service, wheel rotation and realignment. Well, you know what they say when one assumes? I was made an ass of, because the estimate did not include the wheel rotation and realignment. As a matter of fact, for some reason, the car wasn't booked in for those works.

That's right. When Wayne called me to give me the quote, he was surprised the car was booked in for works on the wheels. The car would now not be ready by midday after all. It would be closer to 1pm before the car would be ready. He was lucky I had an hour to spare.

Around 1pm, I decided to go to the service centre lounge to wait for the car. Upon approach, I saw my car in the workshop, which I hoped to mean it was nearly ready. Wayne greeted me and confirmed the car was almost ready for collection. Then something happened. I saw my car being carefully reversed out of the workshop, before it flew like a shot along the road next to the workshop into the next car park. The mechanic moving my car dropped the accelerator and the car took off with a squeal down the road.

I was quite dismayed to see my car being driven like that. Neither my husband nor I drove the car like that, and I did not see the point of the mechanic dumping his foot on the accelerator, causing the tyres to squeal as the car shot forward 50m to the next parking lot. I mentioned this to Wayne, and here's the part that left the sourest taste in my mouth. Wayne said it was "standard practice" to drive a car out of the workshop like that - tyres screeching and all - as they "needed to test drive the car in all conditions to make sure the car worked perfectly". I mentioned that our car would never be driven like that, ever, and Wayne continued with "well, we do this kind of testing because we wouldn't want to miss how the car handled every driving situation once it was driven away from the service centre".

I was dumbstruck. He had the log book in his hand, so he should have known the car was brand new. It was purchased just over 12 months ago, as a brand new car. To date, there had been nothing wrong with the car. It had travelled just over 13,000km in 12 months. There was no need to "frang it" like the mechanic did, for 50m only, on a dry road, in a covered parking lot. Burning rubber on 50m of dry road in a covered parking lot was not what I would consider "every driving situation". But here I was, being fed bullshit by your staff member, who hoped I would swallow it and not question him any further. That was disgusting.

To finish up my now extremely disappointing and sour experience, when I did get in the car to drive away, the reminder message to have my car serviced was still flashing on my dashboard. I brought this to Glenn's attention, and he seemed surprised because he swore the message wasn't there when he drove the car earlier. He tried to get me to drive away, but I stood my ground and showed him the message was indeed still very much present. Somehow, your staff managed to reset the clock, but not the reminder message.

Glenn wanted me to return to the service centre later in the week to have it fixed, but I again stood my ground. I brought the car to your service centre in good faith that everything I booked in for would be completed today, as was promised, so I was not willing to come back another day to have the message reset. Glenn went to talk to someone in the workshop, to be told that the machine that could have reset the message was broken, so I would have to return another day to get it done.

The only saving grace in all of this was Glenn offering to come to my house with a new machine to reset the message, once he got his hands on a new machine. It may not happen until Friday this week, but he would come to my house to finish the job. As Glenn won't be working tomorrow, he promised to call me on Thursday to arrange a time for Friday. I won't hold my breath waiting for that call.

The total cost may have been a fair bit lower than that charged by Volvo, and made even cheaper by a minute discount that Wayne managed to find (for which I suspect he also expected to see me jump over the moon with joy, as he made a point of tell me TWICE that he managed to save me $40), but in all seriousness, the cost saving was not worth the awful taste that lingers in my mouth.

Is your Castle Hill service centre run by clowns? Because this whole thing was farcical.

I will be sure to tell all of my friends about my experience with your Castle Hill service centre, and warn them against using you to service their vehicles. In the meantime, I sincerely hope Glenn will be along to my house to complete the job by the end of the week. The sooner he is able to finalise the job, the sooner I can be rid of my association with your organisation.

Regards,
Gloria