Posted by Tom Williams on November 5, 2004, 10:18 pm
Hi all,
Yet another mystery shopping exercise and more disgruntled garage owners. Yes, there are bad customers, but there are also some shocking garages. This will be my 34th year in the business and like everyone else I've had my share of Mr Awkward and even Mr Dishonest. However, many times I've seen people receive very poor treatment from garages. Staying in a hotel near Oulton Park a couple of months back, my wife and I (and everyone else in the dining room) had to listen while a guy regaled all his mates with the attitude to the customers at the VW dealer where he worked. It would seem, to meet incentive bonus targets, all service customers would get new brake discs & pads (amongst other things) whether they needed them or not. You can nitpick about certain items, but if basic stuff is overlooked and repairs are recommended that aren't needed, and every time mystery shopping is carried out it seems to happen, there is no real excuse for it. How difficult is it to check lights and spare tyres? Yet every time these surveys are carried out they get consistently overlooked. The places that carry out slipshod work, and there are too many, drag us all down and make it much harder to gain the trust of the public who we depend on to keep us in business.