Waiting Until The Last Minute For Car Service or Repairs
Happy Monday everyone. I hope that you all had a great weekend. I am not really a fan of the weekend after Thanksgiving. Now that many stores open on Thursday, I guess I need to add Thanksgiving day to that list. I spent years working retail. This time of year was awful. Seeing people fighting over junk. Best wishes to all of you that work retail.
Moving on 😉 Today I want to give you all some advice to avoid some big time frustrations with your car. For me, the 3 days before Thanksgiving are insane. I made more hours Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, than I did 2 weeks ago. The dealer could have had 5 more techs and we still would have not been able to help everyone.
As someone that has been in the car business for a while, it is beyond me why so many people wait until the last minute to get their car serviced. I guess it is because the average driver considers their car an after thought. But waiting until the last minute for service can result in frustrations.
Here is how a conversation goes between a customer and a service advisor
Customer: (Calling on Monday before Thanksgiving) “Hi I need to get my car in for service”
Service writer: “Hi, we are taking appointments for Saturday, or for next week”Customer: ” But I need to get my car serviced tomorrow. We are going out of town”
Service writer: “I would love to help you, but lots of folks are traveling as well”
Customer: “Well I need to get my car serviced. Why don’t you have time to help me”
Service writer: “I would love to help you. I just can not bump other customers appointments”
Customer: “That’s BS. I can’t believe you wont help me.”
Service writer: “We can get you in Saturday”
Customer: “No, it needs to be before Thanksgiving”.
By now you get the point. As the conversation goes on, the customer and service writer both get tense. The customer is mad, the writer is mad, and the dealer doesn’t get the work. As a customer, there is little you can do to force a service dept. to get your car in for service. What can we do as customers? I am glad you asked.
DON’T WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE!
Simple right? Call to make an appointment a week before the holiday, or your road trip. That way if your car has an issue, you have time to get it fixed. Last year my wife and I took a road trip to Illinois. It was a trip of about 2000 miles total. While I was getting ready for the trip, I wrote 3 posts about getting your car ready for road trips. We talk about starting to get the car ready 2-3 weeks before the road trip.
BE FLEXIBLE
You are trying to get your car serviced at one of the busiest times of the year. If you do wait, leave some extra time to get your car serviced. Please don’t leave a 20 minute window to get service. If your service department is booked at that time, you are stuck.
You might be thinking that service departments should be doing more to accommodate customers this time of year. I would 100% agree. Service departments should have all hands on deck so to say. But like I said, we can’t do anything to make them do that. So we have to take the initiative.
I hope you all really did have a great holiday weekend. For the first time in the 15 or so years I have known my wife, we both had the weekend off. That was pretty cool. I will have an update about the Cabby tomorrow, and hopefully have some Shop Shots for you on Wednesday. I didn’t realize how long it had been since the last round of Shop Shots.
Here are the 3 posts about prepping your car for a road trip:
But if it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would get done. Although some people take it more than a little too far.
I can relate 100% . I also like when the customer says :”I just need an oil change”.Upon arrival they have a grocery list of concerns and expect them also to be addressed!
It’s the famous “oh yeah, one other thing I forgot” 😉
this is particularly important this time of year, in the winter months, some people will literally keep on driving until their car simply stops! madness.
Exactly, it’s reality about the customers. They call for car servicing and repairs while I have other bookings already.
Thanks for the info about auto services. My car is having several problems. I’ll take my car to an auto service.
Thanks for sharing the article. It happens. Lots of customers are in rush to book for car servicing and repairs but sometimes it’s hard to book them.
Thanks so much for the advice to be flexible when it comes to car repair. I need to take my car in and I’m not entirely sure what to expect. Knowing that car repair places are busy and need flexible time is a great thing to keep in mind.
Thanks for providing all the details for newbies. Mostly customers create the same scenarios. As we are working on car services in specific areas of US. Thanks for sharing the guidance about customers dealing. For more insights about car services must visit our site.
Great comments, I like to suggest that you do regular maintenance on your car. This will prevent unexpected breakdowns, it does make a huge difference and your car will last longer. Thank you