Crazy Customer Automotive Concerns, You Can Not Make This Up
Hey folks!
So, we get into some technical stuff sometimes, and we also get deep into customer service. I am in an awesome mood today so I want to talk about some funny stuff. As you can imagine, we get some really strange customer concerns. Almost too good to believe.
At the end of each day, I look through the appointments we have. It gives me a chance to see what issues might come up for the next day. On Tuesday, I checked all our appointments and found this customer concern.
“Customer states that their puppy chewed through some wires under the seat. Customer attempted to repair, but airbag light is on.”
If I would have been drinking something, I would have spit it out. How does a puppy get under a seat? How does he stay there long enough to chew wires? Fast forward to Wednesday. I get the car and pull it in the shop. Here is what I find.
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- This is what the harness looked like when I found it. Not too bad right?
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- All taped up. You can just make out some orange and blue.
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- Ah ha! That is the harness for an airbag.
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- As you might guess, home wiring connectors are NOT good for automotive application.
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- Check out all the teeth marks on the wires. Oh puppies!
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- The customer made a good effort in the repair. I do not recommend doing this!
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- Here is the final product. I wish I would have trimmed the cover a little more. The problem is, it’s pretty ripped..
Too funny! I just wish he would have brought the puppy with him. I LOVE dogs. In fact, I have little Jettison laying across my lap while I type this post. Oh well, maybe next time.
Last night I also checked the appointments for today. Sometimes there are concerns that make NO sense. Take this one for example.
Customer states, You replaced the tire pressure board.
That is all is said. What the heck does that mean? I don’t even know what a tire pressure board is. Something with the tire pressure monitor? Did replace it already? Do we need to replace it? I was totally cracking up. I guess I will find out what that means at some point today. I will post what happened in the comments. Even now I am giggling about it.. 🙂 This is where having a really good service advisor comes into play. They should be able to get the proper information from the customer and help me fix the car.
It goes with out saying that we get some off the wall concerns. It is not just mechanics, any service industry gets crazy things like this happen. I just wish I would have started documenting them years ago.. Imagine how funny!
If you know what a tire pressure board is, please share this post. You can impress ALL your friends.
more comments on this particular one would be great from you Charles, but I could see this being a weekly feature as well if you collected submissions from the other guys who work in shops that read the blog. us designers have blogs like clients from hell ( http://clientsfromhell.net/ ) and clientcopia ( http://clientcopia.com/ )… we can spend hours reading these things. one or two a week from other professions would be fun. gather them up and do a couple at a time so you always have a standby post too if something else goes wrong and a full post isn’t possible!
@Jeremy, I totally agree. Maybe it can be the “Customer of the week” or something. I just noticed that all the captions for the pictures got deleted. I will fix that ASAP.
BTW, The customer complaining about her “tire pressure board”, It turns out that her tire pressure light was on.. Not sure where the loss of communication was, but it was funny.
I half expected something I said to be up on this page. 😉
@Daniel there is still time!
I can translate this…
“You replaced the tire pressure board.”
“You replaced” is a command or request. People now days don’t bother with punctuation or proper tense. They communicate in text-speak lol. (if you understood the last thing in that sentence, you’re probably fluent in text-speak)
“The tire pressure” is the subject of the message. The problem has something to do with tire pressure.
“Board” is the reason for action. They are bored with looking at the warning light. (you can forget about spelling too) ;D
They thought filling out the sheet was like twitter, 140 characters or less!
bwahhhh!!! That is freaking awesome!
The best part is, the customer meant, “My tire pressure light is on” HAHAHAH!
Oh you would not believe the comments that can be on medical notes, if it were not for HIPPA and the wrath that could be brought on me for violating it I would start a blog also. 🙂 Awesome post!
@Kristin,
Thank you 🙂
SO, with HIPPA, you can’t say anything? What if you wrote a fictional blog about cupcakes needing medical treatment?
Yea i would say the mis-communication came from a cell phone lol either text talk like what was said or just straight crap service an the advisor only heard every other few words haha
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