Customer Service Case Study - Meineke 2019

From a post on Facebook comes this case study in Customer Service on the company Meineke, more specifically the local shop run by one Tyler @ 2436 Gulf to Bay Blvd, Clearwater, FL 33765.

You've heard stories like this. Here's another...

I was going to start this rant with a bit of my own background in mechanics as it might be relevant and then I realized it's quit irrelevant. Instead I'll just tell a short story... Well, now a case study for my business.

(I should also mention for anyone who truly knows me, there was an unimaginable amount of Zen on my side of the phone during this conversation today. You'd have thought it wasn't even me.)

After a visit to the local Meineke shop to have her oil changed and get an alignment, my daughter tells me that they informed her that she needs to have the tie rods replaced. I happen to know that these two cannot both be accurate, so I asked her if they charged her for the alignment. She indicated they had.

I asked to see the printout of the alignment as it would tell me at a glance if they were, in fact, able to get the car wheels aligned to within specification. If they were, then the tie rods – although making the alignment hard to do and not as close to spec as desired – would need to be replaced in the not-so-far-off future. But certainly not with the immediacy indicated on the worksheet as, "Needs both inner tie rods."

On the other hand, if they were not able to get the wheels aligned within specs, and it is due to those pesky inner tie rods, well then we certainly need to address them with all the immediacy indicated. But that would also mean that she should not be paying $89 for a wheel alignment when it cannot actually be performed if the tie rods are, in fact, shot.

It turned out she had all the paperwork they gave her in one nice bundle stapled together, but there was no printout from the alignment machine. No problem, I'll call the shop and chat with them!

I call the shop on my cell and get the guy who is apparently in charge. I ask him simply, "Can we get a copy of the printout as it was not included with the paperwork?" to which he replies, "No, not unless you bring the car back in and we 'set up the heads'." So I commented, "That seems like a lot of work to go through just to get the printout. Doesn't your system save the information or don't you keep a copy?" He said, "That's not how it works. If you bring it back in we can set it up and run it."

He is notably agitated and in a hurry, so I feel I need to get his attention with the true gravity of the situation while I have the short thread of his attention.  I said "Well, I don't see why we were charged for an alignment when you can't even prove you did one." He replies, "Hang on, I've got a bunch of customers in front of me," and proceeded to put me on hold.

I waited on hold (did my emails and a bunch of other stuff) for 33:42 while he did *whatever* and then, the call dropped. So I called him back; there was no answer. I waited a few minutes and called back again; my call was auto-dropped. I've been blocked! I tried again and again, but it auto-dropped. He indeed blocked my number.

So I called from my wife's cell and same dude answered. I start with, "Hello, my name is Manuel. Can you please tell me who is the store manager?" He replies, "I'm Tyler, the owner," ... blah blah ... something along the lines of, "I told you the only way to know is if you bring the car in again and we set up the heads. And I don't have time for this!" So I said to him, "Tyler, I'm just trying to figure this out about the alignment and the tie rods on my daughter's car. Can I just ask you a question?" He cut me off before I finished and started in about how he's not going to give me my money back as he's been doing this for years, and if he says a car had an alignment, it had an alignment, etc. When it sounded like he was coming up for air, I tried to finish my question, "Can I just ask you a couple of questions?" but he interrupted me again and replied, "No! I'm not gonna talk to you about this!" and he hung up the phone.

Suspecting I know the answer, I called back from the wife's cell again and find that her number has also been blocked. So I used my daughter's cell phone. He answered and I simply said, "Tyler, if you're the owner, then this isn't really how you should be handling this. I just want to ask you a couple of questions." He started in on me about how he's not going to refund my money and it's "people like you that try to screw a guy" and on and on. I managed to get a few words in edgewise that, "You're not giving me any choice but to call the credit card company and simply dispute the charges." He yelled, "Fine, go ahead! I'm not giving you your money back. It's people like you... " blah blah blah, all while he hung up the phone.

Uhhh... People like me? So, I will teach my daughter one more valuable lesson in life: How to dispute a charge on your credit card. Tyler will have to deal with this, but he's never laying hands on one of my vehicles ever again.

My perception (which is everything): Everything about this screams to me that he immediately put himself on the defensive because he got one over on my daughter by charging her for an alignment, even though they couldn't actually do it, and now he's been found out. I could be wrong, but I've got nothing else going on.

Reality: It actually doesn't matter how we got here. What matters is how it was handled. People remember how you treated them. I recommended Meineke to my daughter years ago as a trusted place to take her car. Why, when I'd actually rarely done business with them other than an oil change? It's because they built a brand and a name and they told me I could trust them with my and my family's cars. This is one bad actor, but this scenario will be emblazed on my daughter's brain forever. And I'll be hard pressed to use let alone recommend Meineke ever again. I can say Jiffy Lube and Take 5 just as easy, and they even sound cooler.

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