So in the past week I have had two crazy examples of customer service or the lack there of in the islands. This is a common complaint that the culture here just doesn't get it. I have to say most of the time I love the islands but this just gets to you some days.
First example was last Friday. We bought the new car from Caribbean Auto Mart at their Dodge store last year.
So on Friday I took it in for a "scheduled" service appointment. I had actually stopped in on Monday to try to get the oil changed and the tires rotated but that actually required an appointment you know like to see a doctor. So on Friday I let work know I would be late. I was scheduled to drop the car off at 7:30 am and the dealership was to give me a ride to work. So I showed up at 7:15am and waited around at about 7:35 or so the service writer showed up and a good ten minutes later she set her desk and computer up and started writing service tickets.
There were about six or seven cars waiting. She did have my paperwork for my appointment so that was good. Then she informed me that the guy that was to give rides wasn't in yet but I could wait in the show room with the other person that needed a ride to work. After several I am sorry comments followed by he should be here soon he finally showed up at 8:35 he was actually scheduled to come to work at 8:30 so they scheduled the customers at 7:30 and the driver at 8:30. The fact that I showed up at the appointed time and had to wait an hour for my ride here is the first issue I have for the day but I would have let that pass as island time if it hadn't been for the later part of the day.
So about 3:30 I call the service department to verify that the service has been done. Yes Mr Pennington your car is ready. They were supposed to call me but of course that didn't happen. So I arranged to have a friend take me to dealer to pick the car up, had to leave work a half hour early to get there before they closed. So at this point I have missed almost two hours of work for the day so that I could pay over a hundred dollars for an oil change and tire rotation service. I get there and they send me upstairs to the cashier, nice enough girl, a pay her and she gives me the car keys and head out to pick up the car. It is about five minutes before five now and as soon as I look at the car I can tell the tires haven't been rotated so now I am pissed.
The little things I likely would have let slide but one of the primary reasons I took it to the dealer for service is that I don't have the tools to rotate the tires and the front ones are looking very bad after 5000 miles and the rear ones look practically new. So I go back to the service writer and tell her that they didn't rotate the tires. The first words out of her mouth, I am not making this up, "is you will have to bring it back to have that done as we close at 5:00". OK I stopped her mid sentence before she can finish with a simple statement, this is unacceptable. She was taken aback and simply did not know what to say. I quickly re caped my days events in getting the car there and we walked upstairs to talk to the techs in the shop. She finds an older west Indian mechanic who promptly states that we don't have the tool to recalibrate the electronic tire inflation sensor so we don't rotate tires on cars with those. By the way any US car built after 2008 is required by law to have these. So that means they don't rotate tires according to him.
Again I repeat my previous statement "this is unacceptable" he had a similar reaction to my statement. So I simply asked to speak to the service manager. Well if you thought these too looked confused before you should have seen the look on their faces at this comment. By the way I didn't wait for them to come up with an additional excuse I walked back into the service office and repeated my request in a firm tone to speak to the manager. A fairly pleasant lady who was obviously from the mainland came out immediately I repeated my comments about my day and the fact that I was told by a tech that they couldn't rotate tires. Well she wasn't pleasant anymore. She gave my keys to another technician reminded him how to reprogram the wheel sensor then stormed out into the shop to find the other tech. They did get the tires rotated, I got an apology and that was that.
Alright so the second one was today but since this rant went so long I will write another one about Mi Banco Popular experience today.
Jay
1 comment:
See, that's the type of stuff that I think would drive me nuts. If I lived there I'd have to take a pill every day to keep me. calm. Maybe I better stick to the great white north!
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