Belated Thanks

I've lost track of what day it is, and didn't remember that yesterday was Thursday until about 11:30 p.m.

So, my "Thankful Thursday" post is a day late.

Yesterday, I was most thankful for good customer service.  Let me elaborate.

My car has been...temperamental (to put it mildly) over the last couple of years.  It's only 6 years old, has less than 75,000 miles on it, but for some reason, every few months something goes wrong.

Last Saturday, as we were driving back from the Ohio State game, the "check engine" light came on.  Shortly after, my car somehow lost the ability to accelerate from a dead stop to about 30 mph without me completely flooring it. 

Now, it's done this before, and when we took it in they couldn't figure out what was wrong, because the transmission had somehow magically corrected itself, and there wasn't anything to fix.

Being that it was a holiday weekend, we knew that we'd have to make due until at least Tuesday when the repair shops opened.

Long story short (too late), I took my car into a local auto repair shop yesterday morning, they had it for about an hour, and called to tell me that it needed to be taken to a transmission shop for further analysis.

The man I dealt with was incredibly nice, and didn't end up charging me for the testing that they'd done (though he would have been well within his rights and my expectations to do so).  I was also absolutely delighted when he didn't talk to me like I was a slow 6 year old, as I'm sure other women have experienced in auto shops.

So, when I arrived at the transmission shop, I was once again pleasantly surprised at the way I was dealt with.  The woman behind the counter was friendly, efficient, and gave a clear timetable for what they would do for me. 

A few hours later, as promised, one of the repair guys called, gave me a breakdown (which I actually understood) of what they had done, what the situation was, and what else they were going to do. 

Basically, as before, my car had magically fixed itself so they couldn't pinpoint exactly what the malfunction had been.

When I went to pick up my car, it was ready to go upon my arrival, the repair guy came out and chatted with me, basically saying "I could throw a new sensor on it for ya, but if it was my car, I'd just drive it for a while before putting money into it.  Here's your keys - no charge for the testing." 

SCORE!!!  Since when do repair shops encourage you to walk out without making a repair, changing out a whatchamacallit, or replacing the most expensive part they can think of?

HALLELUIAH!!!! 

This is what I love - folks who are good at what they do, who understand that we don't all have bottomless pockets filled with cash, and who are aware that some of us genuinely appreciate (and expect) good customer service (and who don't act like they're doing us a favor by doing their jobs). 

Needless to say, both auto shops have made a loyal customer out of me!!!!