@VDCdriver, I can easily see that at school.
“How DARE you accuse little Jr. of (fill in the blank).”
Sad to say, that was true of my youngest sister when she was in school. In all honesty she is a royal PITA and a born troublemaker for whom there is no cure. Ever. She is still that way as a long grown adult and I haven’t even seen her in 15 years. It’s best that way. Everyone else avoids her to this day also.
She would get in trouble at school (constantly) and my mother would head for the school to ream them out over why they’re picking on Little Precious.
You mean like Car Talk: The Greatest Stories Ever Told: Once Upon a Car Fire by Tom and Ray Magliozzi? It’s not a book, but other than that, it fits the description.
I’m not quite a professional writer, but I do pretty well aside from the occasional typo, and a project like this would interest me.
Not to hijack the post but the part about checking the alignment specs got me thinking. I have move to LA area 6 yrs ago and every tire shop here offers “free alignment check” and you are guaranteed to have a misaligned car even if you had the alignment done 3 weeks ago at the same shop. So I have learned to just politely decline them and if I ever feel I have issues, would go to a dedicated alignment shop. But would be nice to compare this numbers to see if they ever make sense.
Now, I will also tell you a “crazy customer” story. My wife had a flat in her car, so I went to the tire store I usually go to. I got the service writer that I don’t like much (too much multi-tasking and never paying attention to the guy standing right in front of him). So he gets all the info and tells me it is going to take an hour. Being it is 5 PM, I didn’t have much choice. He insisted I get a ride and I insisted on waiting there (back and forth to my place would had been 50 minutes). After an hour, I watch my car still sitting there. 40 minutes prior to that another car, identical to mine, was done and they parked it outside. Now a young girl shows up with a flat and I see they start working on her car right away. So I go out to check with the guys. My service writer has left and they guy tell me my car (THE HYUNDAI) is done and want to hand me the keys. I had to swear up and down that my car has not moved an inch and nobody has touched it and the tire is still low. They finally get it and scramble to fix my flat.
I brought my mom’s car to the local Honda dealer for a glove box repair, because the car still had warranty
Anyways, they recently installed one of those Hunter machines . . . on the service drive, naturally . . . where you just roll the car in a certain spot, the porters put these contraptions on the front wheels, and “measure” your alignment
Naturally, I was told it was all out of whack, and I was asked if I wanted to also get an alignment done. I politely declined
But I’m sure that machine has been quite the profit generator
I was the only one waiting for my car in a small dealership’s service department. The service guy answered the phone and this is the gist of what I heard: “Yes ma’am…we’re working on it…well, I told you it would…sorry ma’am…we’ll try to…sorry…we’re tr…OK, bye.” The guy hung up, turned to me and said, “See if that b***h ever gets her car.”
Wonder if her name was Pam. The one that used to harass the mail delivery guy so bad every day that he made sure her mail was always screwed up. Kind of a self fulfilling prophesy. You believe you are being taken advantage of and need to assert yourself which then ticks people off to make sure you are taken advantage of. Be nice out there.
+1
One of the behaviors that always mystifies me is the phenomenon of hospital patients who begin their stay by essentially threatening their nurses.
What’s that you say?
It doesn’t happen?
If you had a few weeks, I could relate the tales told by my friends who work in the healthcare field.
Why would I want to start out by alienating the people who–literally–have my life in their hands?
That’s not the way it worked at my house. When the school sent home a note or called my mother, I’d get some extra whippings for the things I did wrong that they hadn’t found out about yet!
I suppose there’s a little truth to both sides. I’ve been at a new job for about 5 months now, it’s a complete auto service facility, but for years previously it was an alignment shop and has a reputation as the shop in town that can and will align anything. We get custom rods, circle track cars, 4-bys with 10 inch lift, anything.
Anyway, I would estimate that of all the cars that come on the rack (either customer request or upsell) maybe 1 in 10–maybe–don’t need any adjustment. Why? Because our alignment guy is brilliant. It doesn’t matter if the readings are “in the green”, when he has a car every adjustable angle is dead nuts on when he is finished and anything not adjustable that needs service gets a detailed estimate on how to make it right.
I’ve found that alignments sell themselves and never found any need to aggressively push them.
I agree with you in the sense that alignments sell themselves and most of the cars on the road are probably out of adjustment
That said, my mom’s car wears tires evenly, isn’t pulling and the steering wheel is straight
So that’s good enough for her, I decided.
One of my own cars from several years ago, the steering wheel had always been slightly off-center, from day one. Yet it wore tires evenly, no pulling, no squealing. I easily got 80K out of the tires. The only reason I got new tires is because they were a few years old, and were starting to dry rot. They still had an acceptable amount of tread left, IMO. An alignment wouldn’t have gained me much, but I was advised to do it. I politely declined
But I have had cars that did clearly need an alignment, because the tires were wearing unevenly, and there was a pull. I happily paid for an alignment . . . no parts needed, BTW . . . and the problem was resolved. Naturally I also put on new tires and that new set did wear evenly.
I’m not comfortable with doing my own tires at work, because I’m worried that some self-righteous POS might be convinced I’m stealing tires from our warehouse and mounting them on my own car, never mind we don’t even have my size in stock . . . !
Our fleet doesn’t do in-house alignments, not that I’m aware of, FWIW. We farm it out to a local shop that only does front end work, tires, rims, alignments, etc. They seem to do acceptable work, but nowhere near the skill level of your guy
Rather than unfairly tarnish asemaster as a crook, I might suggest you go back and re-read his post on that repair.
She did NOT complain about a steering problem but DID complain (with a towed in vehicle) about a transmission shift interlock problem which locked the trans in park AND which required a steering column repair.
Last year, when I accompanied my friend to the Toyota dealership’s service department, I noticed that they had installed similar equipment in the service drive.
To their credit, they didn’t tell him at that time that he needed alignment, and in his subsequent visits they also haven’t claimed that he needed alignment.
So, while I can understand the skepticism, this is probably yet another case of some establishments being more honest than others.
You have a great book idea just sitting in your pocket OP, what with all those funny stories! Folks who work with the public on a day to day basis I guess just ignore it all, but there must be a lot of these stories out there which never get told. People have unusual priorities I guess.
Reminds me of the other day I was waiting in line at the grocery store, two customers in front of me, the one immediately in front had a big cart full and was moving around ront to back to get all the stuff out of the car and on the conveyer belt. So I was back behind him a little more than normal, giving him some extra space . Then the guy behind me yells out in a really loud complaint to me “PLEASE MOVE YOUR CART FORWARD!” Well, at least he said please I guess … lol .
Being a curious sort, I asked him why this was important to him. I mean he’s not getting through the line any faster just b/c I move forward, right? He said it was b/c he wanted to get one of the magazines in the rack. I asked him which one he wanted, and I’d be happy to hand it to him so he could look at it as he waited. He said “No! I want to be able to see them all! MOVE FORWARD!!”.
So I say “Ok, why don’t you go in front of me then.” And allow him to pass. He didn’t have much stuff to check out, so no worries, and this magazine thing seemed really critical to his happiness. So I move out of the way and he passes me by, then moves forward up pushing his cart right next against the customer, who grimaces. And you know what? The guy never even looked at the magazine rack! … lol …
