The initial unhappy experience ...
A couple of years ago when I was working in Shepparton I brought the car in for a service when I was down in Melbourne. One of the mechanics left a wire off somewhere in he engine that resulted in the car burning fuel twice as fast as usual, and cost me a lot of money in extra fuel before I could bring it back to Melbourne.
KTAS did not even offer an apology, nor any compensation for the additional fuel costs.
The even more unhappy recent experience ...
Recently my car broke down on a Sunday afternoon (and had stalled unexpectedly several times over previous weeks). The RACV came and said it was a faulty fuel pump causing the problem. The car had to be towed to KTAS.
When I came to pick up the car, KTAS informed me that the car had started for them, and despite the history they did not think the fuel pump needed to be replaced. I had timed picking up the car for just before I needed to catch a train to go to work, but when I arrived I was told that a headlight and wipers needed to be replaced (not having been informed of this in the 'phone call the previous day and no apology was offered for this either). I was told that this wouldn't take long so I reluctantly waited as I didn't want to have to come back again, and then as I was about to leave it transpired that the wiper on the rear window hadn't been replaced, so I had to wait longer again and then only had then minutes to get home and get to the train station.
I made three short trips with the car after picking it up and then the following Saturday the car wouldn't start again. The RACV came again and said it was definitely the fuel pump and it was unsafe to drive. In short, this was a complete disaster as I needed to use the car to go various places on the weekend and suffered financial loss as a result. I then had to take more time off work during an extremely busy period to bring the car back on the Monday.
There was no apology or acknowledgment of the inconvenience etc and one of the mechanics said it was good that it happened again and there was almost an argument between myself and the manager as to whether the fuel pump needed to be replaced - "we don't like to replace things until they need to be replaced" and no consideration that I actually needed a reliable car and this is what I brought it in for the previous week.
The manager also tried to use my own profession to suggest that people (i.e. doctors and the RACV man) do not always give the correct advice. The RACV man was very senior and a former Nissan mechanic, so I believe that he knew what he was talking about, and the explanation about the carbon brushes being responsible for the fault made perfect sense in the context of the intermittent failure.
Once again, no apology was offered and no concession made financially. I expected to pay for the pump, but it would have been nice to offer a concession re the labour cost to acknowledge the problems that had resulted from not repairing the car properly the previous week. KTAS did fix the car on the day when I brought it back, which was appreciated.
In all three examples customer relations have been handled poorly and as a result I will be taking my business elsewhere in future.
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