Just returned from a visit to the Nissan car dealer. Some little plastic thing was a bit loose near the emergency break. Not a big deal, but on a “new” car that is just a year old at least not expected. I usually have great faith in people, but the people from the car dealer are definitely the exception that confirms that rule… I just have no faith nor trust in them at all. Nothing. None whatsoever.
I must admit that I don’t really have a clear reason for that, but I guess the stories about dodgy car dealers combined with little things about this car dealer that annoy me, add up to that result. And the little things are things like: initially it would take an hour to fix the little plastic thing. One phone call later it was 45 minutes… it turned out to be less then 20… That doesn’t really make sense to me. But well, if you are not sure how to fix it, I can understand that you plan in a bit more time…

Mmmmmm… now that I think of it, for most of my “little complains” I can actually find a logic explanation… *hahaha* weird stuff… it’s definitely strange, because if I bring my bike to the bikeshop, to fix something, I don’t care much about what he does with it, as long as he fixes it. But with the car I want to know in detail what they will be doing! If the lady at the counter tries to comfort me with: “They will fix it.” my direct and default question back is: “Who is “they”? And how will they fix it?”. When she replies: “I don’t know, but the mechanic knows.” I say: “Then you need to get the mechanic because I wanne know how.” I guess they don’t really like me there! :-)

It’s actually very strange behavior, as I know hardly anything about cars! :-) I am the typical guy who would open the hood of the car when there is a problem and stand in front of it with my arms in the side staring at the engine. Looking interesting but can’t really do more then making sure all fluids make it up to the correct level. But still when I am at the car dealer, I want to know the tiniest details. It’s purely because I don’t trust them, as when the guy from my bike shop makes up the bill for a small repair and puts on 6 euro for putting some grease on a couple of parts I don’t even question it, but with the car dealer I wonder about the 30 eurocent for extra unknown fluid! :-)

Plus I wanne question them to see if they know what they are doing. And they usually do. That’s a good thing. So I got the car back and the first thing I did after checking it was alright is pulling, pushing and wiggling the little plastic thing, to see if it could come loose again! I refused to except any duck-tape or glue solution, and I couldn’t see any other solution work, so I was quite skeptical when I saw it fixed… But I wiggled, I pushed and I pulled… but it’s still in place… Guess I need to have a little more faith in my car dealer… But I probably have to wiggle, push and pull it for at least a week more to give him that! ;-)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 at 15:43 and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.