I am putting together a series of posts regarding recent experiences ranging from delightful to dismaying in a Consumer Report-y kind of way, yet with no claims of actual connoisseur status, of course.
How I now picture the guy at Diesel Car Repair (not it’s real name) in Greenfield, MA
These are my personal experiences, some almost funny in retrospect, yet only in the cases where I dodged bullets; i.e., in the case of Diesel Car Repair in Greenfield, MA, in which I was told the fuel injection thingie was cracked and needed to be replaced for $2800; $1800 parts, $1000 labor (It turned out to be a loose bolt merely requiring a quick twist), to an ongoing and un-won battle — in which I took the bullets — to be reimbursed for buying the WORST computer I have ever come across in my entire life (and I have had many many computers) from a Computer Care place in a suburb of Springfield, in which the “care” person sold me a Lemonovo, my name for the Lenovo I am stuck with (Me: I need a laptop that is ready-to-go and which will not be complicated to use. I need lots of RAM and it must be returnable. HIM, after the agreement, the promises, the sale and the resulting dismay: “I can’t take it back. You can only return it if you bought it from a big box store”) and which Lenovo won’t fix either, and which has scant few redeeming values beyond being a way-to-sometimes-check-email and expensive-paperweight.
I am also going to include a few awesome and a few disappointing recent dining experiences in Northampton, MA. The names of the restaurants will maybe or maybe not be revealed. In the cases in which I do not name names, I will respond to private inquiries via email.
Times are tough and so sacrificing value and honesty may seem like a way to pay one’s own bills, but the more one suffers from being taken for a fiscal ride, the more one feels compelled to spare others from a similar fate.
Car repair is a slippery slope in that it is a notorious field for horror stories and thus all the more reason that, as a private sole-proprietor business owner, one should perhaps at least make things right when provided with evidence of having given an estimate (In writing no less!) about $2790 too much. Because really, how much is appropriate to charge for tightening a loose bolt? Oh, and the FREE estimate? Well, I am out $100 for that privilege.
And really, after presenting yourself as a computer expert (and charging just $12 below 100$ per hour) and licensed retailer of computers, and topping it off with complaints to a PAYING client — while ON THE CLOCK — about money issues and how your wife holds the purse springs in the household (and sundry other unnecessaries, some in the TMI category), doesn’t it seem a bit untoward to refuse to even TRY to fix a brand new laptop you just sold and which is all-but-non-functioning? If I gave a client a website in which all the links didn’t work, I would make it right, no charge. Oy! This is why I am so thin.
Benigngirl 