Oil Change Fiasco and Resolution

A few weeks ago, I found a coupon in my snail mail mailbox offering discounts for car services. One of them was an oil change for $14.95 plus a free tire rotation, which was a very good deal. Other coupons I’ve seen were offering it for $29.99. A few days later, I went to the shop and requested the oil change while I presented the coupon. The service advisor proceeded to tell me that I needed to fill out an application form for a new credit card and membership to Goodyear. I told him, I didn’t need any more credit cards so I walked out of the deal.

I went for a run and when I returned home, I decided to call the phone number listed on the coupon. The person who answered said she was new so she didn’t know the answer, and that someone who knew will call me back. A few minutes later, a gentleman who identified himself as the regional manager informed me that the service advisor was mistaken and that I wasn’t required to fill out an application. He said he would be happy to set up an appointment for me because they wanted to retain me as a customer. I told him I was no longer available that day and that I might return in a few days.

A few days later, I went back at 7:30 a.m. because the store’s website said that they were open at that time. It took another 30 minutes before somebody showed up to open the shop even though another guy who was apparently one of their mechanics was also waiting for the guy who had the keys. That was another strike against them.

After a few minutes of getting set up, they were finally ready to help me. The service advisor whom I talked with a few days earlier was the same person I talked with that day and I told him about my communication with the regional manager. He said he remembered me and that he was aware of it and he apologized for his mistake. I thought I heard him say that the oil change and tire rotation were going to be done for free, but being hard of hearing at times, I thought I just misheard him.

So I went for a run while the service was being done and near the end of the run, my cell phone rang and the call was from the shop. Unfortunately, I was not in a good signal area so call couldn’t connect. When I finished my run and went back to the shop, the advisor met me and talked about a list of repair recommendations. I pointed out to me what needed to be done, because apparently, they also did a complete inspection of the car.

Certified Tire Mechanic Recommendations:
Leaking cooling system hoses. Parts 69 + 8 + labor 70 = 147
Fuel filter = 94
Fuel system tune up = 150
Rear brakes = 60 + 110 = 170
Trailing arm bush broken. Parts 94 x2 = 188 + 420 (for what?) = 608
Grand Total = $1169

I declined their offer to have the repairs done then and there. They finished the paperwork, had me sign it, and I was soon out of there. But not before I learned that there really was no charge! It was their way of making up for the mistake they made a few days before. In customer service parlance, this is called a “service recovery”. So for that, good job Certified Tire Center! Incidentally, I had an oil change done there 2 years ago and I gave them 5 stars on their website for not giving any recommendations and just did the oil change I requested. This time though there was a little bit of gentle pressure to have the repairs done, which I of course declined. Because of their service recovery, I again gave them 5 stars on their website with a more detailed explanation on why. In the meantime, I shall be taking their recommendations to my own mechanic for him to check out to see if they were really warranted. If so, my mechanic charges lesser than the chain stores. But thanks for the free oil change, tire rotation, and overall inspection.

Two weeks hence, I opened up my car hood (I had to open the manual to find out, LOL!), inspected the fluid levels, which seemed ok, checked the hoses and belts, also ok, but of course with an untrained eye. I also looked up on the internet what a trailing arm bush is and how to repair it. The parts were much lesser than what the mechanic quoted and I’m sure my mechanic doesn’t charge $420 for the labor. I may wait until after I return from my vacation in June to have that done, and in the meantime, I hope my car doesn’t fall apart. Considering it is 19 years old, it hasn’t given me any major problems and I’ve been lucky so far.

I just finished pricing the car on the Kelly Blue Book website and it said that if I sell to a private party, I may be able to get $1633 for it because it’s in good condition. If I trade it in for a new car, I may get from $769 to $1164 for it. Oh my, those amounts are pretty close to what my repair costs would have been! However I cannot afford to buy a new car so repairs it is, and hopefully my mechanic doesn’t charge an arm and a leg.

 Follow up: I looked up the symptoms of a failing trailing arm bushing at this website and I have not detected any of them in my car, so it may be another upsell from the service advisor: https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/symptoms-of-bad-or-failing-trailing-arm-bushings

The Boulder, The Thigh Injury, The Oil Change Walk, and the Pregnant Dream

So there was this rock that rolled into town two weeks ago and I was planning on seeing it on my way home from work. I even made a note of it on a post it pad. Well I totally forgot about it until was at a grocery checkstand and I overheard a cashier mention it to a coworker. I drove less than a mile from the store and found the rock where it was supposed to stay all day. They only moved it at nighttime to minimize traffic problems. The rock was parked in the center median and occupied the inner lanes of both sides of the streets leaving the outer lanes for the vehicles to travel through. I took a picture of course but it’s not anything you haven’t already seen in the newspapers or the internet. Truthfully, I was slightly underwhelmed because I thought it would be bigger than the monstrosity that it already was. Maybe because it was shrink-wrapped in white plastic. Nevertheless, it was nice to experience the unusual event so close to home.

You would think that I had enough problems with my ankles when I do one of my infrequent attempts at running. A couple of weeks ago, the plan was to run a little and walk a lot for about an hour just like I’ve been doing in Signal Hill. It went pretty well at the start because I was able to do my full stride on the running portions no matter how short in duration they were. About half an hour into it, my plan was spoiled when I began having some pain in my left thigh. Oh my, another tribulation. It was not a new type of injury though because it was something I’ve had three times before. The last I can remember was about 4 years ago. The difference was that in the past, I would have kept on running regardless of the pain. This time, I stopped and walked the rest of the way and just extended the workout to an hour and a half. I haven’t tried running since.

On a related note, there was finally a Q&A on the Runner’s World website addressing PTTD (my permanent ailment). Here is the link:  http://sportsdoc.runnersworld.com/2012/03/orthotics-recommendation-for-ruptured-tendons.html. There might be a slight hope for some relief but first I have to find a talented orthotist as mentioned in the article.

A week after the thigh injury, I had my car serviced (smog check and oil change). While that was being done, I was able to do a walking workout of about 8 miles. Rain was in the forecast for several days and the clouds were already thick that morning but fortunately I was spared from it. The walk lasted two hours and I was actually back at the shop in an hour and a half. When I saw my car was still in the oil change bay, I tacked on another 30 minutes. The only running I did that day was to cross one street. When I had my car serviced in past years, I would either run around the neighborhood or if I took it to the shop on a workday, I would take their courtesy shuttle home, go to sleep, wake up in the afternoon and run to the shop to pick up my car. What a time saver, and oh how I miss those days.

The L.A. Marathon was held last Sunday morning and I watched it on TV while riding my stationary bike. I didn’t realize it was the 27^th iteration of the event already. The first time I ran it, it was L.A. Marathon V in 1990 which finished at the L.A. Coliseum. I mentioned the marathon because I had a weird dream Sunday night about a running acquaintance who ran in it. I dreamt that she was pregnant, had a C-section, ran the L.A. Marathon a few days later, then the evening after the race, she was singing and dancing in a Filipino reunion party. I still haven’t told her about that dream. Should I tell her before, or after she runs the Boston Marathon in a few weeks?

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Oil Change, Yes. Attitude Change, No!

No good topic to talk about so I’ll tell you about my boring oil change story which happened last Thursday. My car was due for an oil change and I had been putting it off until I found a coupon for a good deal offered by Discount Tire Centers for $16.95. I went on their website to find the nearest location and found one about 4 miles away. There was an option to make an appointment so I made one for 8:30 A.M. When I arrived the next day just short of my appointment time, there didn’t seem to be a line of cars waiting although there were about 3 being worked on and one customer sitting in the waiting room. I approached the desk and notified the man there that I wanted an oil change and that I had an appointment. He responded curtly that it will be a 2 hour wait because there were a lot of other cars coming in. When I asked about my appointment, he said it didn’t matter. Because of the long waiting time, I briefly considered putting the oil change off for another day or finding another mechanic. I was planning on using the waiting time to do an hour of my run/walk workout. I had to change it to 2 hours of brisk walking instead to kill the additional waiting time. There was not going to be any hill walking on that day because if you know the city of Lakewood, it’s pancake flat all over and not even a bridge to climb on. So I left the car keys and started my jaunt around the flat city. After going out for a mile, I figured I should try to use my Android cellphone GPS app called the Runkeeper which functions similarly to a Garmin GPS wristwatch. Initially it was giving me a pace faster than I thought I was going, but it evened out after several minutes and appeared to be closer to my real pace. I made a slightly over an hour loop back to the car shop with the intent of checking on my car, then heading to a different direction for another hour in case my car wasn’t done yet. I saw that the car was already inside one of the repair bays so I approached the man at the front desk again. He said he tried to call me to let me know that they found other problems with the car. As he began what I expected to be a litany of repairs that needed to be done, I stopped him and said “just the oil change please”. I guess that didn’t go too well with him because if he was curt at the start, he had turned surly now. He went to the mechanic to tell him that I didn’t want any repairs, then returned to me so I can pay for the oil change. In an effort to disarm him,  I asked if he was okay because he appeared so serious. He said yes, but his demeanor didn’t change. The guy must have been having a bad day, or maybe I didn’t give the shop enough business by refusing to hear about and get repairs on supposed defects of my car. I was just being wary because there are reports and exposés of car shops being unscrupulous by suggesting repairs that are not necessary. In any case, I picked up my car, went home, and since I didn’t feel taxed by the slightly over an hour walk on a flat surface, I did 20 minutes of fast paced spinning on the stationary bike just to satisfy my exercise cravings.

I’m still wondering why the man at the desk was so surly. He never smiled and was not very welcoming. Was that his normal personality? Does Discount Tire Centers not have customer service training? And what about setting an appointment time? Was it just useless window dressing for the company since they don’t adhere to it anyway? Or maybe it was just that one unusual day that I happened to be there and it was just bad timing on my part? Well, at least I got the oil change out of the way.

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