RE: Dealer dis-service award- Valley Motors

[Steve Mills <smills@lineage.com>]

Paul-

	OK, maybe I overcooked it a bit with the "top ten" list, but if you have
an Audi dealer that does acceptable work, you would seem to be a lucky man.
A friend owns three dealerships- they have terrific service (open till 8 PM
so you can work _and_ pick up your car), Saturday service hours, etc. They
just don't deal Audis.

	I have had somewhere between horrible and borderline criminal experiences
with both of the reasonably local dealers, and bad experiences with two
others in NJ that I tried rather than _ever_ use the local boys again. In
an amazing coincidence, whenever my wife takes a car in, the estimates
skyrocket. What really kills me about this particular experience is:

1) Simplest procedure known to man- still somehow went wrong.
2) You have _no_ alternative to a dealer for this particular type of service.
3) They tried to hustle my wife ~$165 worth of goods and services that were
blatantly unneccessary, after charging her $25 for mostly wasting her time.

	On the use of "monkey lad"- I generally reserve this for the "I used my
biggest hammer AND the big vise grips- it still don't work!" subset of
mechanics that shouldn't be allowed anywhere near any vehicle at any time,
let alone an enthusiast's (read- picky b*stard's) car. I didn't expect the
battery replacement guy to have a PhD- he rates the moniker because I went
way out of my way to ask him to _please_ be careful because I didn't have
the code, and he assured me "no problem- do these all the time". Yeah
right. My primary mechanic is also a friend- I don't tip him because he's
never tipped me after I fixed one of his computers, and I used to do
bicycle and motorcycle repair myself before I got this "clean shirt" job.

	Steve
		
At 09:38 AM 11/16/98 -0500, you wrote:
>>What about a
>>"hall of
>>****shame", "monkey-lad awards", or "top ten reasons dealers s*ck" on the
>>new
>
>If you want to alert us to a poor dealer. great, but "top ten reasons
>dealers s*ck" doesn't cut it.  I am not in the business, but there are
some >decent ones out there.
>
>I gotta tell you, the whole "monkey-lad" thing kinda bothers me too.  Not
>all of us
>are graced with nice clean white shirts from day one.  Lots of these guys
>work hard for low pay.  When's the last time you tipped one for taking
really >good care of you?
>
>Paul Royal
>'90 90Q20v