• Don’t misspeak when giving the customer an estimate of the work to be done to his car leaving him to speculate if the estimate was even for the correct vehicle or price.
• Don’t continue to give estimates of when the work will be done when it becomes clear that you will be wrong.
• Don’t get “too busy” to call the customer and tell him why his car isn’t ready.
• Don’t believe you shouldn’t call the customer to tell him about his car because if he wants a status update he will call and ask.
• Don’t run around all over the city for a day and half looking for a part that no one carries and not tell your customer it’s a big cause of the delay.
• Don’t tell your customer it is OK for him to be angry if you don’t mean it.
• Don’t imply that you don’t care if your customer is angry because your shop is already busier than it can handle. You’re not helping your case.
• Don’t assume your customer will be satisfied when the total price tag comes in under the estimate when you have given him absolutely no details along the way about why the work is taking so long.
• And for God’s sake, DON’T get angry and start cussing when the customer still isn’t happy just because you came in under the estimate (which was already in question) and then start a debate about what is considered cussing. (For the record, I would not consider “going to hell and back” to be cussing, however dropping the F-Bomb in front of a customer is never appropriate no matter how angry you or he may be.)

I’d like to clarify a few things without getting too lengthy. All of these guidelines were broken by McDermott’s Service and Repair when I took my car to them to replace my head gasket and fix an oil leak. Once I was finally able to talk to the mechanic actually doing the work (Troy), I was given most of the answers I was looking for and I felt mildly better. He told me that once he opened up my engine he found a lot of little oddities from previous work that required a lot of tweaking and extra parts to fix. One rubber fitting was mashed back into place and horribly deformed, etc. While unfortunate, those things are not unreasonable. I understand that these things happen. I realize it takes time to get parts from other vendors. These things are all acceptable to me.

However, the lack of information from Debbie who answers the phones and makes the estimates was maddening. I finally went to pick up my car this evening. When I started to convey my dissatisfaction to Paul, another guy who works there, he was mildly sympathetic, but tones quickly changed and he proceeded to piss me off even more. I was told that they had been spending a lot of time looking for a part that no one seemed to carry. They were finally able to find one and got the work done fairly quickly from there. Still, Paul didn’t seem to mind that I was pissed off and even got angry with me when I wasn’t overjoyed when the price was less than the estimate.

It’s probably too early to tell, but I believe they probably did some very fine work. Troy seemed very knowledgeable in the 10 minutes or so that I talked to him and this place was recommended by someone at Epic. I’m not even mad about the price, I think it was probably very fair for all the extra work they had to do but weren’t expecting. However, the complete lack of customer service gives me a great reason to never go back. You can get quality automotive work done at lots of places; the things that set one apart from others are the customer service and a fair deal. Paul getting angry enough to cuss in front of me is just ridiculous and Debbie’s apologies and assurances that she really does know what she’s doing are not enough to salvage this experience for me. I believe it was an honest mistake on her part, but her apologies just weren’t worth much when stacked up with all the rest. I won’t be back, and I assured them I would be sharing my story (both good parts and bad) with the rest of Epic (at 2,000+ strong with lots of friends and family) before the week is over.