I get lots of word of mouth business which is good. I hear the same thing around here. People are dishonest or simply DO NOT SHOW UP! It seems half the challenge is simply showing up for the customer. Getting the job done correctly is another. Some service people refuse to work on something they don’t understand. Others are always learning and looking for ways to offer additional services for their customers.
For some reason none of the mechanics around here have a bad rap. Any I have had dealings with have been good.
The other issue is that Ft. Leonard Wood is just west of me. Military bases always seem to have crooks around them as the population is so transient. You have to be real careful finding a service business near any big base from what I understand. I don’t have experience with others but have been told it is this way around most of them.
In a broad sense, that is reminiscent of one of my favorite Yogi Berra sayings.
Somebody asked him for his opinion of a certain restaurant, and Yogi said… Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded!
I live in a small outlying town and did a few repairs on a Fox body Mustang at my home for a local guy. During the repairs I noticed a few needs. One of them was a severely rotted fuel line under the hood. He refused the repair and also my suggestion about towing it home to keep me off the hook.
When he arrived with his buddy to get the car I was standing there with a fire extinguisher. That bad he says? Yes, that bad. He again ignored all warnings. He started the car and commented on how great it sounded. After standing around talking for a few minutes with the hood up the fuel line gave up the ghost and the top of the engine went up in flames.
Since I had fire extinguisher in hand the damage was minor but could have been a lot worse. NOW he decides to have me fix it…
The local KMart manager did the same thing. I was looking for JB Weld epoxy and found the main store manager nearby. She was like “That stuff sells out too quick because everyone wants it. We decided to stop carrying it.” That KMart is out of business of course as most are. The building is home to a Harbor Freight and Hobby Lobby.
As for the car with the rotted fuel line, I no longer give customers the option of declining repairs similar to this scenario because they will want to save money and not fix it, then come back complaining to me and wanting it fixed for free because it wasn’t done right the first time. They forget that I told them there was some issue that needed attention but they declined. You have to love how people do that.
This recently popped up as an ad on Facebook. None of us needed to be told but mechanics deal with this no matter where they are at. Some of these are pretty funny.
And that KMart is out of business! That part makes sense based on what the manager said. I used to try to use them as much as I could vs. Wal-Mart but them constantly being out of stock on certain items or not carrying things they should have made this hard. Then there is the fact that their super duper sales brought the price down but not to the normal prices at other store.
Reading through these and the dumbest reasons article I must say there is the occasional slap forehead doh dumb situation anyone has now and then versus rudely obtuse dumb and/or oblivious dumb.
Personal example. One time I couldn’t get the lawn mower started no matter how much I yanked on the cord. Finally I stomped into the house in disgusted defeat. My mom looked thoughtful, went outside and started the mower on one try. She pointed out that the on/off switch had to be turned to the on position. One of those doh dumb moments. My thank you was said through gritted teeth although I later saw the humor of the situation.
@Marnet. Your story of trying to start the lawnmower with the ignition switch off reminded me of the time I worked in the audio visual department of the college I attended. A 1955 Ford that had been a university vehicle was deemed too old for highway travel and was sent to the AV department for hauling equipment around campus. The rear seat had been removed and a wooden platform was built in its place to accommodate equipment.
We had a know-it-all that could not get the car to start. He came in complaining that the Ford needed a tune-up. I thought for a second and bet him a dollar that I could start the car. I got in the car and started it on the first try, and I never opened the hood or did anything out of the ordinary.
What I did was pull out the choke knob. The 1955 Ford had a hand choke. By the 1950s, most manufacturers had gone to automatic chokes. Ford was one of the few manufacturers that retained the hand choke. Our know-it-all employee was not familiar with Fords and manual chokes.
We have seen a few posts of new owners of an old car with starting problems, and did not know you had to press the gas pedal to the floor to set the choke. A neice gave her critter a paper book, and the kid kept trying to swipe, and expand the image.
Yep, the cars I learned to drive, a '73 Corolla and ‘65 Olds, both with carburetor engines required setting the choke by pressing the gas pedal to the floor, not too fast and not too slow, as did my parents’ carbureted '83 Olds. I had to unlearn the habit when I got my first fuel injected car.
A friend’s “tween” aged daughter was totally baffled by our rotary dial wall phone twenty-five years ago even though she was familiar with push button land line phones. Today there are funny You Tube videos of teens being challenged to make a call with a rotary dial phone.
I was recently doing a bunch of computer work at a big lawn mower shop so got to watch the customers roll in with broken equipment. I kept seeing trucks with generators or snow blowers in the back that wouldn’t start. The owner of the shop was like “Oh, another generator.” He went out and you could hear it running in the back of the truck. He came back in and told me that equipment that gets used intermittently like generators and snow blowers often has carb issues from sitting so much with rotten gas. The owner gives up and brings it to him if it doesn’t start on the first pull. Yes, he says that sometimes bad gas has caused problems but usually the owner forgets to turn on the ignition switch or activate the choke. The engine won’t start so they just give up and bring it in. He goes out and has it running in seconds and the owner is all embarrassed. He says it happens all the time.
I saw something similar happen at a local city park. A city mowing crew showed up to mow and there was a guy with a trimmer or blower (I forgot). Anyway, it just stopped running while he was using it and he stood there pulling the start for about 10 minutes with no luck. Someone else from the crew showed up with a gas can and told him it probably needed gas. I figured it couldn’t have been that simple but watched them add gas to the thing and then it started right back up and ran for the remainder of the time I was there.
I see a lot of this with computers as well. I tell the person to restart the computer over the phone for some of the odd problems and that usually fixes them.
The mower guy and I had a discussion about my zero turn that randomly likes to die and let out a backfire like a cannon! It sounds like there is some electronic module that controls all the safety interlocks. It is sealed in resin so not serviceable of course and costs several hundred dollars. It likes to fail and does so by sensing a safety fault when there isn’t one such as getting off the seat while mowing, not having it properly parked, etc. It shuts down the spark but not the fuel so the muffler fills with unburned fuel, then when it decides to kick the ignition back on, you get quite the blast! Sometimes it is a mild poof but the norm seems to be a boom like a shotgun or a sharp crack like a high powered rifle. The first time it did this I was sitting on top of dirt with leaves and it was starting to get dark. There was quite the flash and the blast kicked up a cloud of dust and leaves.
Of course it isn’t something cheap and I don’t know why they put these electronic modules on outdoor equipment. He said they rarely completely fail but the problem will become more annoying until I decide to replace it. There are good days and bad days, depending on its mood. At least it is just a plug and play part although an expensive one. It usually only does it a few times on startup and on shut down but you can mow for hours without trouble so I don’t care at this point.
It got sucked into one of those timeshare promos a couple years ago. They had a nice conference room with the presentation they were trying to sell the things with. There was a computer/video screen where you could tab through all the properties they had and take a virtual tour. I fully expected it to be a touch screen and was trying to tab through it. The presenter had to show me how it was controlled by an old time looking joystick type controller. I guess we are all guilty of this but that is funny about someone trying to zoom on a paper book.
That’s also one of my favorites!
