Scribbling #2: Customer Disservice

We've just recently bought a 'new-to-us' estate car (translation for Canadians and other aliens: stai-tion waaa-gon) and the first thing that I wanted to do with it was to give it a 'proper' service by having it looked at by the guys at the main VW dealership. We had to get there by 7am, so you can imagine the cat's joy at thinking that he would actually be fed at 6am when we got up and disturbed his slumber. Yeah, right, like I was going to do that and then be disturbed by him head-butting me at 6am for the next two weeks, wanting to be fed.

Anyway...

The service went fine, until we had to pay VW. This in itself was no problem, but we were nearing to the time for a lunch date with a great couple we know in the nearby town of Nove Zamky. I was also interested in trying out and sitting in the big new shiny cars in the dealership that I knew I would never own, because I am not that stupid to buy a brand new car and watch money drop off it like water off a duck's back. That is, until Mrs C called me over to the desk. And gave me that look that most husbands dread, to which our response is to look at the ground and shuffle our feet.

Anyway...

Everything seemed hunky-dory. The Nice Man at the desk told us to wait for a colleague in order to pay and that she'll be there in a couple of minutes. He went off to find said colleague.

We waited. For ten to fifteen minutes. Nice Man came back. He expressed some version of surprise that the colleague had not turned up. We said okay. And we huffed about the time spent waiting. The Nice Man went away again to find the mysterious colleague.

A Nicer Man came who seemed more flustered than the Nice Man that Mysterious Colleague had not turned up yet. In the meantime I was watching the Nice Man wander down to the other side of the dealership to check for Mysterious Colleague to affirm that, yes, no-one existed on the other side of the dealership. It was just us on this side, huffing and puffing. Nicer Man went away with mobile phone in hand. Half an hour had elapsed.

Nice Man came back and with a surge of pro-activeness, decided that he in fact was actually qualified to give us the terminal in order to pay VW for their three and a half hours work. So, we paid Dozy Idiot (nee Nice Man) and were just about to be on our way... when Mysterious Colleague showed up after having her lunch break. We were edging towards the door with our car key in hand at this point, said a quick "Dovidenia" instead of following through to the third stage of huffing and puffing, and the metaphorical Elvis' left the building.

Dozy Idiot still had not finished with us, as he ran out of the building after us and then took half our paperwork away, as most of it was duplicates and stuff they needed for their files. Joy. We were 45 minutes late by this time, for something that should have taken ten. We can't get that time back. This "yeah, whatever" curse seems to be prevalent amongst most main car dealerships here. It's actually the back street ones that joke with you, give you a cup of coffee, do good work on the car, form a relationship and through that, a reputation - but they have no warranty on the parts that they use, unless they put one on themselves, which is rare.

Still, the VW dealership was thorough. And throughout this blog I specifically did not refer to the one  eight minutes outside of Nitra, on the way to Topal'cany. So you can't pin any of this on them, whatsoever.