A4 abused by the dealer!

[ejfluhr@austin.ibm.com (Fluhr)]

For those of you in the Orlando area, this will certainly come to no
surprise.  Some of you (Christian and Dave, I'll bet) even warned my
family.

My father took his '97 A4 to Bill Brown VW/Audi in Orlando to have the
30K mile service performed (he tried to get it to Champion Porsche/Audi,
but they had a scheduling problem).  My dad prefers to do all his own
work, but is doing the "Audi Advantage" thing in case the car has any
serious problems that require a good service history (shoot, he brings
his own Mobil-1 to the dealer for the oil changes, so he isn't saving
any money).

Well after waiting around for 3+ hours (he didn't realize it was more 
than just an oil change), he is more than a little tired.  Finally they
finish and hand him the keys, telling him he is all set to go.  Being
anal-retentive, he goes outside and walks around the car to make sure it
is ok.

Of course, it is not OK, or else there would be no point to this story.
He finds huge gash several inches long and 3-4 inches wide on the side
of the bumper.  It looks like they hit a post with the car or something,
and much of the paint is scraped off, showing black plastic underneath.

Well, he went livid and accosted the service manager, who went into the
service bay.  He came out a few minutes later and rather casually
noted that yep, they had scraped his front bumper.  He said that they
would pay to have the bumper repainted (and we all know how good
resprayed bumpers are...NOT!!!).

That they damaged the car was enough to anger my father, but the
fact that they were going to let him drive the car off the lot without
telling him absolutely infuriated him.  Had they come to him in the
waiting room and told him about it, he would not have been nearly as
upset...accidents do happen, after all (although it certainly implies
that Bill Brown is not particularly careful about the cars in its care).

So, the moral to this story:  don't have your car serviced at the dealer.
If you do, CHECK THE CAR OVER BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE LOT!!

Moral #2:  If you have the car serviced at Bill Brown VW/Audi, don't
let it leave your sights!

Later,
Eric
'85 Coupe GT
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Eric J. Fluhr                                Email:  ejfluhr@austin.ibm.com
630FP Logic/Circuit Design                   Phone:  (512) 838-7589
IBM Server Group                             Austin, TX