It's always the last guy who worked on its fault.

[fastfredracing]

This is another one of my favorite things about the auto biz. No matter what breaks after I have last serviced a car, I somehow caused it.
Customer comes in yesterday, a little salty. I had recently repaired a tire leak on his S 10. Had to dismount the tire , and clean the rim/ and tire, and re-seal. He states that it is now leaking much faster, and he missed work because of it. " Don't you check your work before you send it out" he asks. He said that I did this just two weeks ago. Right front tire.
I check it out, find a nail in the tread. Fix it , no charge just to shut him up, but just now, looked at my records, and it was the left tire that I repaired back in November.
Gotta love em'
I did not loose my temper.

[Zeke]

Well, you did show him the nail and paperwork, right? I've learned to not do repairs involving water leaks on work I did not do originally. If I do, I own it.

[Baz]

You're a good man Freddie. Dealing with the public has it's challenges, Lord knows.

[sc_rufctr]

Not loosing your temper was good but you should let him know it wasn't the tyre you worked on.
Could you write him a letter?

It's worth the trouble IMO.

[dennis in se pa]

I used to run into this in the computer network systems business. As soon as you touched a desktop for maintenance or an upgrade the next thing that went wrong was your fault, even thought the cause was always what we referred to as DEU. Defective End user!
In this case either the guy forgot which tire you had repaired or he swindled you out of a free repair.

[recycled sixtie]

You are a nice guy Fastfred. Lots of customers don't know their right from left. I am sure you will get lots more business because Fastfred keeps my car running for next to nothing! If it were me I would be saying something so I don't get shortchanged. Ayeee people.

[Rikao4]

I find being polite to guys like Fred pays..
which is also why I don't need an appointment to get in..
and why idiots come but once..


Rika

[Rick Lee]

In the case of my 993 transmission failure, it really was the fault of the last guy to work on it. No one else had touched it since it left the factory, other than my fluid changes. Track insurance co. made me take the drivetrain to a well-known P-car shop in MD while the body was repaired elsewhere. Drivetrain sat in a corner for about six mos. before they got a call from the body shop and were told to get it ready. They didn't bother replacing the O-ring under the tensioning plate and used silicone goop instead. I dealt with that leak and installed correct O-ring two yrs. later. Then the tranny failed about three more years later. When we pulled the nose cone off, the main shaft nut, which is supposed to be torqued to 160 ft/lbs, was spinning freely with reverse slapping into the 5th gear. That was a $4k mistake I got to pay for. And they claim they never saw my transmission undertray, which was on the car when I took it to them and not on there when they returned it. Oh, they replaced my Fabspeed MaxFlows with GHL's without asking me too. Since then the car has only ever been left in two more shops, one I totally trust and one when I needed help because I had the wrong part in a box with the correct part # on it and couldn't figure out why the tranny linkage was jammed up. Otherwise, only I work on the car anymore.

[doug_porsche]

Here is my new motto