I KNEW IT!!!
There's so many things that I like about not having a car, but one of them is that car maintenance involves hiking through a minefield of scams, rip-offs and lies, lies, lies, yeah. I hated it. I always swore that I would learn more about the inner workings of cars, read a book on basic car maintenance, but I never did, and I would only find myself in the waiting room of a mechanic, nodding helplessly as he told me a long list of things that would need to be done and how many hundreds of dollars it would cost to fix it. He could be ripping me off, but how the hell would I know?
The worst was a Jiffy Lube. I almost always turned down suggestions to do anything but change my oil, but I never had a good feeling about the place. The bright colors and comfortable waiting rooms never gave me a sense that they were in anything but the ripoff business.
So I actually took the time out the other day to watch a five minute video of investigative reporting that uncovers EXACTLY what I suspected all along. I highly recommend watching it. The part where the district manager (DISTRICT manager!!) flat-out lies about his identity is worth the time spent.
And hands up if you really think Jiffy Lube is going to "clean up its act".
5 comments:
just one question: were you naked when you watched the video?
Waaaaaah Peekay!
The BBC has a show dedicated to monitoring bad customer service in different industries. I caught the episode on car mechanics, and it seems that auto mechanics are an unsavory bunch all over!
What I find impressive is that they have a whole show dedicated to shaming businesses for bad customer service. Love it!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/tv_and_radio/arewebeingserved/
PK, I was naked under my clothes.
Jen, I love the name of that show: Are We Being Served? Clever. I think that mechanics are like computer people: they know something that you don't, so they're going to take advantage of it. I'm just glad it's something I don't have to deal with any more.
Yah it's clever until you think too long about that really bad show, Are You Being Served? and then I cringe and want to flip the off switch on my brain. My mom used to love that show.
There's a section in the book Freakonomics that talks about mechanics, realtors, and others like that. They have specific knowledge that their customers don't, and they use that to their full advantage. The studies referred to in the book really pointed this out.
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