Your Service Experience Doesn't Have To Be A Nightmare!

There seems to be an alarming amount of consumers that are generally unhappy with their service experiences in automobile dealerships, chain type retail facilities and private repair facilities. There are many reasons for this disappointment and many people that contribute to these results. You have the selling dealer or used car lot, the servicing dealer or service facility, the manufacturer who built the product and the consumer who uses the product. We have identified some of the most common causes through experiences and research. We'll take a look at these causes in three different categories; these three categories can be explained as one or all of the causes of ninety percent of customer's disappointment with their service experiences. They are, in no particular order as follows;

Expectations: Your expectations of your automobile may be higher than what the manufacturer has designed for its products.

Inability: It is possible, that the servicing facility you have chosen doesn't have the ability to properly service your automobile.

Communication: There may be some difficulty expressing your conce
s about your automobile.

So who is at fault? Everyone involved would be the easy answer, but let's look at the problem from the individual categories and see how they contribute to the consumer's disappointment.

First you have the manufacturer that has advertised and touted it's product to seemingly perform like no other car you have ever seen. You remember the ads of your car being driven to the extremes in any climate doing the impossible, giving you the buyer the false pretense that this car will perform like that for anyone. Not true, you may have missed the disclaimer that the car was being operated by a professional stunt driver or that the events are for illustration purposes only, etc. etc. This is how your expectations of your service experience will not be met by the servicing facility, simply put, they cannot make your car perform in a way that it was not designed for.

You can be servicing your car in a place that was well qualified to service and repair your older car, but it may seem that the technology in your new car is just over the top for your service facility. Your new car is most likely an upgrade from your older car and the facility that is servicing your repair needs may not have adjusted to technology. Technology in today's cars is rapidly becoming overwhelming to some independent repair facilities and some chain store repair facilities, so it is no surprise that when you present your new car for servicing, they may not be equipped with the training and equipment to properly service your car. You will need to identify this before investing in repairs that your facility is unqualified to perform. For instance: If your repair facility is charging you for diagnostic fees relevant to the amount of time spent on the car, you may be being charged for the time necessary for the technician to become familiar with your cars systems. It doesn't seem fair for a consumer to pay for the facilities training of their technicians.

If you're not able to communicate your conce
s of your cars behavior to the servicing facility, than you may be wasting their time as well as yours. If the people writing your conce
s at your service facility don't have a clear understanding of what you expect of them, in terms of problems with your car, they may find noises or problems that are totally unrelated to your conce
s or worse they may not find any problems that relate to your conce
s at all. This problem can be the most disappointing because you could actually end up authorizing a repair that does nothing to address your concern. Or you may be experiencing an intermittent condition that only appears during certain driving conditions that the service facility is unaware of.

If you expect a successful service experience you will need to identify the possible problems that can prevent your success. To understand what you will have to do to overcome these problems, you must be able to identify the differences between your service expectations versus your cars specifications. Make sure that your service facility is qualified and equipped to diagnose and repair your car efficiently. And you will need to learn to communicate the details of your conce
s to your servicing facility.

When your dealing with a warranty issue and the servicing dealer is unable to provide satisfactory results, you may want to step back and re-examine your approach on how to get the results you desire. You can certainly get better results by keeping a good relationship with the servicing dealer. You can also enlist the assistance of the manufacturer when all else fails. The manufacturer is the one entity that has the most to gain by satisfying their consumers who use their products because, it has been proven that satisfied consumers sell products better than any other form of advertising.

Sometimes your best efforts and attempts to help the servicing facility to solve your conce
s still yield little results. When the manufacturer is involved and you are still not seeing the results you require for your satisfaction your state laws may lead you to what's called "Lemon Law" or the manufacturer can allow the case to be decided by an independent arbitrator. An arbitrator will examine all of the service history, review all repair attempts to date and gather information from the manufacturer about the specifications of the car. At this time your education about your responsibilities will have to be polished because the way that you have gone about the repair attempts will also be weighed on the decision to reimburse or even buy back the automobile from you with little to no cost to the consumer. Manufacturers have chosen this sort of remedy to help solve habitual problem cars with cooperative consumers. This process helps to alleviate the consumers conce
s in a timely fashion and to eliminate a long and costly court battle. Check your state laws about your warranty coverage as this option is usually only available while the car is under the manufacturer's original warranty, not an extended warranty policy.

When you're having difficulty achieving results for your repair or service needs and your car is not under warranty, you will learn that the same procedures and practices will help you to achieve the results you're looking for. And you will need to keep track of your costs and methods used to achieve satisfactory results for specific repair attempts and you will need to learn how your repair orders accuracy will play a vital role for your case if it has to go so far as your States Office of Consumer Affairs. There are some very specific guidelines that your repair facility should be following to ensure their customers satisfaction with their services. Your service facility should be qualified in training and equipment necessary to service your car and they should be verifying your conce
s.

We have identified the need for an education regarding your service experiences, you will learn how the skills in the later chapters can benefit you when dealing with any repair facility and any repair problem. Whether your car is under warranty by the manufacturer or if it's covered by an extended warranty policy. It could be a recurring problem that you just can't seem to get solved or, the simplest of annoying noises that your service facility just can't seem to identify or repair to your satisfaction. Learn your rights as a consumer so you don't end up paying twice for the same repair attempt. Know the difference's between a car that operates at specifications and your own expectations of your car. Find out what's written in the owner's manual that came with your car. Take note of your conce
s and learn how to communicate these notes to your service facility so everybody is on the same page when trying to guarantee "Your Next Successful Service Experience".

This article in its entirety is chapter 1 of our up-coming release "Your Next Successful Service Experience" and it promises to deliver on all of these points for your successful service experiences.

Find this and many helpful tips at http://www.creativeautomobileinformation.com , And visit our Blog at http://creativeautomobileinformation.wordpress.com or visit our publishers storefront at http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1640008n