You have to love service writers...

Beer Baron wrote:

Curmudgeon wrote: You also learn QUICK you cannot judge people by their outward appearance or dress, the worst attempted shaftings I have experience with involved pretty young girls (True story: to get out of paying her bill, one girl claimed I made sexual advances. ) or the well dressed and groomed three piece suit high powered lawyer/banker types.

See, I would expect people like that to be the shiftiest. They are used to having everything go their way with minimum effort and are masters at manipulating people in order to make it happen. I would expect the easiest to deal with people are the ones who are reasonably clean, groomed, and talk educated but dressed in simple, functional work-a-day attire. Not wealthy, but used to handling their E36 M3.

And you are correct. Here's the thing: a lot of people dress a certain way (three piece suit, etc) because it projects the IMAGE of professionalism and trustworthiness. There's a whole industry that's grown up around exactly that.

But as I noted, in many cases these are the worst of the crooks. They have learned to manipulate and lie etc, when it comes time to sit in an office with the GM or other higher up their 'aura' (for lack of a better word) puts the service advisor schmuck at a disadvantage. There's been many times I've listened to some well dressed shiny happy person lie through his teeth.

There's one other type we see: they'll approve X amount then when they show up they immediately bypas the S/A and the cashier, go directly to the service manager and say 'I only have Y amount, take it or leave it'. (Yeah, this is a form of theft and it works only in this business. Try this at, say, Outback sometime.) The service manager I work for now will, if it's not an outrageous amount, discount it but in such a way that it doesn't hit the tech or the S/A in the wallet. But, his criteria is we better document what was covered!

just a thought ... and don't be shy to tell me I'm wrong

how much balls would it take for a service manager to tell the thief ... fine ... I'll take that much and put a lien on the car for the rest ... we'll consider that a down payment and release the car when the outstanding balance is satisfied ... oh and by the way there is X amount of $$$ per day for storage ?

In the interest of self protection, shouldn't there be a paper or electronic trail? Require the approval to proceed with the work confirmed via fax, e-mail, or text (texts can be forwaarded as e-mail)? My company hasn't accepted verbal purchase order numbers for years, and will hold a shipment until we get the written p.o. And the credit card purchase transaction takes 0-3 days to be processed first too.

Wow, I have the other side I guess. I'm the GM of a service shop; all of my guys (and gals) are hourly except three shift managers who kind of overlap. The managers and myself work in the shop along with the cashiers; service writers; tire guys etc... Our set up would never work on a % or book basis. We have 18 total people including myself; I actually work as service writer or cashier a few times a week to run interference between the customer and the techs. Two of our managers started as part of the hourly team; one as a cashier and one as a tire tech so I guess that helps a bit.

Our service writer is either a long term cashier, one of the managers or a tech who I designate. They know their crap and can and will do the work themselves if necessary.

What I am reading in here us why so many people distrust dealerships to service their cars, trucks and semis. If I tell my customer that its got about 45 minutes left I'm going to go make sure we (I) have it done in 45 minutes or less. If I get approval for extra work IM going to document that and make sure we get paid. If not I call the cops; theft is theft and a verbal contract is still a contract; sounds like some places have trained their customers to take advantage of them!

When I use the term 'GM' I'm referring to the general manager of the dealership. Typically these guys have come up through the sales ranks and have ~no~ idea what goes on in service. They will give away the store so they don't have to listen to a bitching service customer, many people know this and will take full advantage of it.

I had this service writer who would send me Repair Orders with Customer names like "Carly Buttram" and "Linda Sackmaster." But those would actually be their real last names.

I got one repair order where the adviser wrote "Customer states interior has funny odor." Take keys go to get car, there is trash packed into the footwell of the passenger seat and making its way up to almost the window line of this Pilot. Hmm I wonder what it is.

Or "Power windows aren't working." My response to the repair order "Tell customer to start working out forearms, biceps, and shoulders then power windows should be fully operational."

But most of the time I would simply disregard any kind of stupid repair order and have the porter send it back to the service writer.