Customer states…

californiamilleghia said:

My Walmart tire guy would zap the lug nuts on  and then check that they were torqued.....
 

But he did not do it correctly , you need to loosen the nut some and then pull it until it clicks , 

He would just pull it , of course it would click , but he had no idea if it was at the set 140 ponds or  over tight at 250 pounds.

Pet Peeve ......

I would guess a huge percentage do that, and SWEAR they torqued 'em right. 

I found this in a Walmart parking lot...

Customer: Hi can you guys order body parts?

Me: Some yes, what kind of vehicle?

Customer: Oh, I think I hit a deer.

Me: okay.....

I work at a napa store, we get some odd questions. 

DjGreggieP said:

Customer: Hi can you guys order body parts?

Me: Some yes, what kind of vehicle?

Customer: Oh, I think I hit a deer.

Me: okay.....

 

I work at a napa store, we get some odd questions. 

 

 

So you figure he was looking for body parts for his vehicle?  Or the deer?

When I worked at Napa.

"My caliper is stuck. I need the adapter to fit the grease fitting on it."

I thought of one I can share, from when I had my own practice.

I don't remember the details, but this guy comes in a dog with a problem. It was something minor, like skin problems because he wasn't using any flea product. We discussed several options for care for his dog, and he kept turning things down. I finally whittled down the options to the bare minimum, and he still refused any treatment.

All along, he had been angling for some breaks on pricing and discounts, and at this point he starts trying to get me to provide him with free product and not charging for the exam. When I tried to explain to him that we were running a business, and needed to pay the employees, expenses, and that I wasn't working for free, he started to get belligerent. He pulled the classic, "You don't love animals, you just want money."  I told him that I cared more about his dog than him, since he obviously wasn't taking care of it.

We had moved from the exam room to the lobby, and I was just trying to get him out of the office. He decided that he would stand there and argue with me instead of leaving. I told him that if he didn't leave, I was calling the police. That wasn't convincing, so I reached over and pushed to the speaker phone button and dialed 911. My intention in using the speaker phone was that both my antagonist and the 911 operator could hear each other. That got him out the door fast, but not before announcing that, "Your brother said you were an shiny happy person." Good reference, my brother never had a job after age 28.

His final retort was, "I'm never coming back here." Like that would be bad news. He got my standard reply whenever I am told that, "Good. Tell your friends!"

My employer signed a multi billion dollar, multi decade, software support package deal in ~2017. Last week I learned that the software developer has a major release scheduled for 2025. This major release will activate a little bit of functionality that was listed as out of the box functionality in 2015 when the software contract offers were being developed. 8 years of the customer saying the software you sold me doesn't do this basic functionality.

People are jerks.  When they're scared and anxious, they're 1000% worse.  When they then have to pay for the service that makes them scared and anxious, they're 100,000% worse.  Welcome to my world....

I used to do computer sales and repair and had a small chain (3 stores) of shops in town. I got called by one of my better contracts, a state office in a prison, that their server was "out of memory." I know better than to listen to the customer's diagnosis, but for some reason I trusted that 100% and looked up what kind of machine their server was and what memory it needed and made the 45 minute drive out to the prison, went through the check-in and escorting to site procedure, and of course found out that the server was out of disk space. I had to go through the escort out and check out procedure, drive 45 minutes to the closest computer store, drive 45 minutes back, re-check-in, re-escort to site, spend 2-3 hours transferring files and doing the upgrade, then reverse. Cost myself 2+ hours and made the client think less of me.. when I should have just done my own diagnosis. So "customer states, tech for some bizarre reason listens." I did still manage to charge them for the memory upgrade and they commented that it was faster afterwards so that was a plus.

dculberson said:

I used to do computer sales and repair and had a small chain (3 stores) of shops in town. I got called by one of my better contracts, a state office in a prison, that their server was "out of memory." I know better than to listen to the customer's diagnosis, but for some reason I trusted that 100% and looked up what kind of machine their server was and what memory it needed and made the 45 minute drive out to the prison, went through the check-in and escorting to site procedure, and of course found out that the server was out of disk space. I had to go through the escort out and check out procedure, drive 45 minutes to the closest computer store, drive 45 minutes back, re-check-in, re-escort to site, spend 2-3 hours transferring files and doing the upgrade, then reverse. Cost myself 2+ hours and made the client think less of me.. when I should have just done my own diagnosis. So "customer states, tech for some bizarre reason listens." I did still manage to charge them for the memory upgrade and they commented that it was faster afterwards so that was a plus.

If you went with a hard drive with some RAM just in case that would've been more understandable Also if they say the "CPU looks damaged," that means a bookshelf fell on the tower

This thread is making me happy I no longer have a customer-facing job. 

My main contribution is over 20 years old.  Back in 98/99, customer service routed potential Y2K issues to the QA department.   I don't know how many times I had to walk people who were doing Y2K compliance testing on our software through the procedure to change the year on their computer from 2 digits to 4 digits.  I will admit, though, one or two of the customers did find something we missed, so it probably paid off in the end.

Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:

I thought of one I can share, from when I had my own practice.

I don't remember the details, but this guy comes in a dog with a problem. It was something minor, like skin problems because he wasn't using any flea product. We discussed several options for care for his dog, and he kept turning things down. I finally whittled down the options to the bare minimum, and he still refused any treatment

 

I think I would have called the humane society or something. That just isn't right.

Customer comes in with a complaint that his MG TD died while driving and now the starter wont work. The problem must be electrical.

If you are familiar with the XPAG motor, you know better

iansane said:

Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:

I thought of one I can share, from when I had my own practice.

I don't remember the details, but this guy comes in a dog with a problem. It was something minor, like skin problems because he wasn't using any flea product. We discussed several options for care for his dog, and he kept turning things down. I finally whittled down the options to the bare minimum, and he still refused any treatment

 

I think I would have called the humane society or something. That just isn't right.

I wish it was that easy. The humane society has no enforcement capability. Animal Services in our county tries hard, but it's not easy. 
 

As an example, I had a 65 pound Labrador retriever present to me with so many fleas that he was in a coma from blood loss. 
I gave him a capstar tablet to kill the fleas and bathed him for over 30 minutes. The fleas kept clogging the drain. After the bath, he had approximately 5 to 10 fleas remaining on his body per square centimeter. Initially, he had to have had at least 200,000 fleas on him. Yes, he required a blood transfusion. No, the owner did not lose the dog, the judge gave him back to her.

In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :

Not what he's talking about, Doc.  Reread the bold part.

Mr_Asa said:

In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :

Not what he's talking about, Doc.  Reread the bold part.

Good catch, thanks. I try to proofread my posts, obviously I'll miss stuff. 
 

Well, I got a chance to rant a bit. 

In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :

And no one is going to fault you for ranting about E36 M3ty dog people.

On a dog-related note..  A good friend of ours was a vet for a number of years and lived above a clinic out in the boonies.  He told us a story of a good ole boy bringing his dog in because the dog had ticks that he couldn't remove.  He told them that he tried pliers and everything and just couldn't get them to come off.  The vet tech gets the dog up on the table and looks and says, "Those aren't ticks.  Those are the dog's nipples.".  The good ole boy says "Uh, miss, maybe you don't realize, but, uh, that thar is a boy dog".  She looks at him for a minute and says "sir, look down your own shirt and tell me what you see".  It took a half second for it to sink in and he turned red as a beet.  Without a word or further eye contact, he collected his dog and high-tailed it out of there.

In reply to dculberson :

In my experience, people who are not familiar with the workings of a computer will almost always refer to hard disk space as "memory," so "out of memory" would indeed be a full hard drive.  If I say "RAM" to these people, I just assume they think I'm talking about a male sheep.

In reply to wae :

Pliers! Usually they try to burn them off with a cigarette. I'm not sure which is worse. 

Best car related one I've had was a friend who had an early 60's Ranchero being used as a daily driver. He stated "Drum brakes suck. It's never stopped well since I bought it a few years ago and now it pulls to the right pretty bad."

Removing the front drums revealed there were no brake shoes or any of the mechanisms that would operate them inside of either drum, so no front brakes at all!  Further exploration revealed that someone had pinched off the front brake line near the single master cylinder. Opening up the rear drums I found the left side brake shoes had no material left and were metal to metal, the right side had some shoe pad left but it was down to the rivets. So..... the pull to the right and "brakes don't work" well explained!

"Customer states vehicle accelerated suddenly with foot on the brake and crashed into back wall of garage. Inspect vehicle for damage."

This appeared on a Toyota dealership  repair order at the time of the big unintended acceleration scandal.

The story fell apart when her insurance agent called to discuss the damage. Our service writer casually mentioned that her son was pretty upset over the incident, which confused the agent a little. Apparently he'd not been told that the (underage, unlicensed, uninsured) kid was driving.

Nevermind the fact that the vehicle in question was a 4Runner, ergo built in Japan, and thus not subject to the e-throttle pedal recall campaign. And I think it was even old enough that it had a cable throttle anyway.  Nice try, but no go.

"Customer states the rear axle is making excessive noise."  The vehicle was a 2000-ish Tacoma in TRD trim, with the e-locker in the rear diff.

Toyota's regional service liason happened to be at our dealership for a scheduled visit and wanted to take a look.  As he did, our service writer pulled up history on the vehicle.  Turns out one rear differential had already been replaced under warranty not very long ago.  Curious.  Also, the front tires were still original, but the rears were house-brand cheapies (Mastercraft or similar) and already showing heavy wear.  No surprise, as most of the tread appeared to be stuck to the bed, just aft of the wheelwell.  Curioser still.

Claim denied.  Dad was not happy with Junior.

"Customer states drivetrain started making a clunking sound when operated in 4WD in the snow."

This one was a brand-new 2007 Tundra with the 5.7 liter 3UR-FE making something like 380 rated horsepower (it's a hoss).  The customer told our service writer he was just cruising through the snow up to his cabin in mountains, when all of a sudden, the truck started making some horrible sounds.

Up on the rack, we saw that all four tires had heavy scoring, as if they'd been spun on a hard surface.  The rear differential was windowed.  The front diff was also windowed and the mounting ears were broken off.  The transfer case had also walked off the job in spectacular fashion, busting the case open and ejecting a fair number of parts.

Our assumption was that he'd gotten all four tires spinning in the snow and then hit pavement at WOT for great big four-wheel burnouts, and probably more than a few times.  We also assumed that the subsequent sounds were, as stated, pretty horrible.

Claim denied.  But thanks for coming in.