Ramblin' With Roxy © ™

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Issue Number 0501

Annie is relentless in the observation of her car ... or ... er ... her
truck. She's always poking it and looking under it for some hint of
trouble. She's convinced that this is an attitude that saves her
money in the long-run, and I'm pretty sure she's right.

When she does find a drip or an errant sound, Annie gets the truck
to a mechanic as quickly as possible. Often her mechanic visits are
more exciting than they need to be.

When I drop off MY vehicle, I spend some time casually hinting to the
person doing the 'intake' that, basically, I know the difference
between a carburetor and a kneuter valve. In doing this, I generally
get what I need without much trouble. Annie, however, is someone
that the Malevolent-World-O-Mechanics can't resist screwing
around with.

A week ago, Annie found a drip under her car, and she traced it back
to her transmission area without much trouble. Off we went to the
local "We Do Anything (almost) Shop”. I’d had a couple of good
experiences over the previous few years with those guys, so we
dropped Annie's truck off there. Then we went home expecting to
receive the news confirming the leak, and their recommendations of
what to do next.

The next day when the call came, I was in another room, but I heard
Annie repeating the 5 or so 'emergency repairs' Luis wanted to ‘take
care of’’ as she wrote them down. Annie never said “transmission”,
and when she got to a "rear ball joint" I dashed over and made the
'time-out' sign, which prevented her from okaying the work list over
the phone. I thought we should go there in person.

When we went in to speak with Louis, he first had bad news about the
'rear ball joint', so I asked if that part was mounted on the rear wheel
control arm (control arms help you steer your car. The 'ball joint'
allows your control arm , or steering, to remain fairly stable while the
wheel moves to accommodate road conditions. There IS no 'rear ball
joint' ... at least not on Annie's truck). Luis didn't catch on, and he
continued on to say that the tires needed rotating (Annie said she'd
done that chore herself 5 months earlier… Luis didn't get THAT hint
either). On Luis doggedly plodded, listing more emergency maladies,
undaunted.

When I'd about had enough, Luis presented the bill to Annie. Although
they'd found a transmission leak which he helpfully said he couldn’t
deal with, the invoice read "Checked For Oil Leak". I thought about
that and remembered that when Annie had said happily "I know it's
not an oil leak because I tracked it down", Luis had looked at her and,
basically, said "YOU couldn’t have any idea what's wrong, so we're
going to do the Oil Test thing". At that point I'd intervened and Luis
had changed the story to " We'll start with the oil tracer dye, then
move to the power steering, brakes and transmission". "Great" I'd
said.

Looking at an invoice for an "Oil Trace" made me very unhappy,
especially since Luis had invented this very clever diagnostic
progression the previous day. Not a word about the transmission
test was on the form. So, because there is always a world of possible
solutions, I asked Luis to list the procedure he'd described the
evening before. In long hand. On the form… Luis lost his mind.

As near as I can figure, Luis hasn't anybody in his life who likes him
well enough to occasionally say "No" to him in some way. Aside from
the fact that Luis had made a fib that would have made Pinocchio
groan with the whole 'Progression Procedure', he clearly couldn't
REMEMBER what he'd said the day before. Luis made the big
mistake of becoming aggressive and asking "why I didn't LIKE him",
probably to buy some time to figure out which line he'd thrown at me.
I kept with a demand for a written description, and Luis did
something that was nearly suicidal: he just walked away. No "excuse
me", no I'll get the manager, he just walked away.

I counted to about 10 and looked into the main showroom to see Luis
calmly chatting with two other guys. I started booming, and most of
what I said was "give me the key and let me get out of here!." Luis
went running past Annie and I and out another door, yelling back over
his shoulder "I'm not gonna give you the key!” This left us standing
there wondering if we needed to tell Luis he was swell just to get
home. We weren't going to have that shop do any work, but Luis did
quickly mention that the tranny fluid was really low, although Annie
had just checked it before she'd dropped the truck off and it was
fine. Luis also said the transmission fluid had “bubbles in it” which
also wasn’t the case before we'd dropped off the truck at this shop.

All we wanted, since we had the invoice, was to pay it and get outta
there.

Finally, a guy showed up without a nametag OR a name, and he
hinted that he was the assistant manager. Luis was in hiding. I
asked this new person to describe the procedure they would have
used to diagnose the leak we'd found. His story in no way matched
Luis' version, and I told him so. Everything seemed to stop. THIS was
a guy who knew when to get out of Dodge. I'd caught 'em. From then
on he was very agreeable, we paid for the 'service', and away Annie
and I went.

Annie and I were most bothered, frankly, that Luis displayed such a
lack of attention to his craft. It's one thing for a scammer to try to
scam you: it's simply who they are. But they should at least respect
you enough to either pay attention to what they've said to keep it
going later. At the very least, they should read the signs that
they're not getting anywhere and know to give the scam up. Trade-Craft still counts for something with us, and I guess it's a perversity of the American Work Ethic that we simply like to see people do
whatever they do for a living well.

Rox