George Witt Service Inc

"[Member name removed], thank you for the wonderful words. You've become a very good friend of our business and we always look forward to seeing you when you bring your car in for service. I love coming to work and cherish the relationships that have been formed and nurtured over the years. I'm so happy to have you as a friend and customer. People like yourself make it easy to hire and retain top notch staff. Too many people working in the auto service business complain about having to deal with rude or unhappy customers every day. I get to tell new hires how nice all our customers are and how enjoyable it is to talk to them all day. You're one of the best. Thanks again for helping me and my staff do the things we love to do all day--take care of nice people like yourself and work on well-maintained cars. We all win."

"Your 1990 Accord, with over 200,000 miles on it is not considered a “late model car”. Older cars with a lot of miles on them can often need more repairs than first meet the eye due to age and rust. When you called to make the initial appointment, I asked you to pay a very modest fee ($20) to inspect the car to see what all it needed for exhaust work. Just because the muffler fell off doesn’t mean the rest of the system is good, as you’ve found out. You felt it unjustified for me to charge for it and were quite insistent that it wasn’t reasonable for me to do so. You said it only needed a muffler and were adamant about that. So, I agreed to waive the fee if you bought the muffler, which is what we both agreed on at the time of appointment. It needed the muffler and the pipe in front of it and you agreed to buy those and not pay for the inspection. We ordered the parts and later replaced them. A final bill that’s within 10% of the initial estimate is the legally accepted standard for an estimate in the automotive Industry. You picked up the car and we heard not a word from you for over a month. About 500 miles was put on the odometer in that time. At that point, you called and told us it had another noise, which is a crack in the front pipe of the car. You were very vocal with my staff in insisting that we pay part of the repairs for you and they agreed to do so. I found out about this later and didn’t feel that it was reasonable of you to refuse to pay an inspection fee, maintain that it didn’t need an inspection and then take the position that we should “be accountable” for an inspection that you previously stated you didn’t want. It’s my belief that reasonable people can reach reasonable compromises on disagreements if they both talk to each other, with the idea that they can readily reach a solution acceptable to both. You can’t prove it was noisy when you picked it up and I can’t prove it wasn’t. Even if it was, a car with no muffler makes so much noise that it can be nearly impossible to easily hear a lesser noise over it. It’s not uncommon to find smaller noises on cars after louder noises have been fixed. It’s also possible that the pipe cracked after we performed repairs. This is a normal part of auto repair and a person with a 20-year-old car should understand this. I work on a great many cars with far more miles than this and own several in this category, so I have no bias against working on older cars. So, I called to talk this out and reach some sort of compromise. When I dialed the phone, I intended to tell you what I wouldn’t do (put the pipe in for free labor) and also to tell you that I’d thought of another solution involving repairing the pipe, which would be less than you’d pay for the cost of a new pipe without labor. This was my intended agenda. As soon as I’d told you I didn’t feel it was reasonable for us to perform free labor, you interrupted me and talked at length, including telling me off several different ways and stating that you intended to harm my business by “posting this all over the Internet”. I never got a chance to have a “reasonable conversation with a reasonable person”. In fact, I never tried to interrupt, but listened patiently. When you were done, I was so taken aback that I remained silent. You even asked if I was still on the line. It’s unfortunate that our shop is not able to meet your needs. Becky Witt"