I mentioned that I’d had a suprisingly positive service experience with the local Nissan dealership, and I am happy to report that they followed through on all of the things they said they would do for me to try to ease my next appointment with them.
Unfortunately, excellent service isn’t enough, and despite their attempts to repair our relationship, my car is still not working. I’ve scheduled another appointment for a test drive, and hopefully the third time will be the proverbial charm. I’ve learned a couple of lessons, however.
First, I won’t be asking for nor accepting a loaner car. Avoiding the misery involved in driving the low-spec compact car they offer trumps saving a bit of money; I’m very picky about interior design in my vehicle, and the Sentra does not measure up.
Second, I won’t be taking the car more than a block or two when I pick it up. If the problem is immediately in evidence, it will be going straight back to the dealership, and I will be a kind of visibly angry that I don’t often demonstrate anymore.
Third, if for whatever reason this repair does not do the trick, I will no longer be a customer to this business. I’m rapidly running out of service options in St. John’s; I’ve already sworn off two for refusing to schedule service appointments and another for taking nearly two weeks to complete service, all the while failing to provide me with updates on the status of the vehicle or be at all accessible during the business day.
And last, there’s a giant hole in the auto service business in St. John’s. If someone could come along and create a garage that does good work quickly and provides a good customer experience, I feel like they could clean up. There are a lot of small garages around town, almost certainly populated with skilled technicians, but none of them seem to be run by a businessman with an eye to the customer. It seems like a gap that could easily be filled.
St. John’s seems to have that hole in a number of industries, truth be told. There are probably several opportunities to “upgrade” the city via the private sector. I don’t know that I’m the guy to do that, but at least I can shout about it.