Doing the right thing with prompting from my wife

I have an update to the car repair saga. After listening better to the issue I was having, they took more time to diagnose the problem. I don’t have the car back yet to confirm it’s fixed, I feel better that the dealership discovered the problem.

So, after not fixing the issue and spending several thousand dollars – how did they handle it? Left to the service center, they made a business decision without considering the customer’s reaction – me. They felt that, by not charging me for the diagnostic time the second time through, it would be ok to charge to replace another part along with their labor. Wow! And it was only a few hundred dollars. But, wow!

So, what would you have done? Would you have eaten it? I know I would have – to not further upset the customer. I was dumbfounded. Fortunately, my wife was less so – and called the service manager. Now, thanks to my wife and the manager’s forethought of future business from me again, they did the right thing.

What checks and balances does your company have in place to do the right thing? Is the staff “trained” to look for such potential customer issues and go to the manager for resolution?