Lucky Break

Gufflumpgufflumpgufflump. OMDG this can’t be happening, I thought.  I was on the uphill portion of a bridge to Cape Cod when my very new Mazda 3i started bucking.  Quick glances: plenty of gas, temp was fine, battery ok.   By the way,  I don’t have a house on Cape Cod.  I mooch off other people’s houses.  On this particular Saturday, we were going to visit friends who themselves were mooching their friend’s house.  That made us moooooches.  I turned to my wife, “Call info and find a Mazda dealer on the Cape, whatever this is, it’s bad.”

We bucked over the bridge, breathed, and then bucked all the way to Hyannis Mazda, on a bleak stretch of road.  If Hyannis is where the Kennedy’s live, then it must be a big town, because there was no appropriate housing for Kennedys in sight.
I parked and walked in to the service area.  We’ve all been in this situation: we need something badly and the person who can help us has little ability and even less motivation to give it to us.  Frank, the service manager on that Saturday, was right on script, “I’d like to help you sir, but we have one mechanic on today, and he’s not the diagnostic mechanic.”  A modern car is more like a laptop with wheels, so you apparently you need an IT guy to fix it.  I made a split second decision to be really, really, disgustingly nice, and it worked…a little.

“Have a seat,” Frank said, “I can try to squeeze you in for a quick look.  Maybe it’s something simple.”  Thirty minutes later, the rest of the family left on foot across a weedy lawn toward the bleak road for what was certain to be bad food.  I started leaning on Frank.  I told him how the gufflump sure was weird sounding, and how, “I just got the car and I really like it, but this is unacceptable…”  He started to tell me that I should just get a tow or a rental.  I stood there, pleasantly hearing him out.  I let him finish.  I smiled.  I waited.  I told him that I could wait more.  He stared back at me.  I smiled again, and I reminded him of my lovely children, who would soon be back to tear the dealership to shreds.

“I’ll call my diagnostic guy, he’s local.  Maybe you’ll get lucky.”  Sure enough, Frank tracked down his ace mechanic on his day off, and the guy agreed to come in.  That was weirder than the gufflump.  I began to suspect that aliens had taken over this town, which would explain the disappearance of the Kennedy’s.  The guy showed up, I thanked him heartily, and he took my car into the O.R.  Frank whispered, “You know how those quality control people call you afterwards, and ask you to rate the service on a scale from 1-10, well I don’t normally tell my customers what to say, but ….”  I got the message.

Frank conferred with the ace.  Their arms were pointing all over the place.  They walked into the general manager’s office, then to the owner of the dealership.  They were working the problem, hard, and I wasn’t doing anything to make them do it.  Frank approached me, “Blown ignition coil.  Nothing you did.  Never seen it before.  No parts in stock.  We’re going to take a car off our lot, rip out the part, and put it in your car.  Warrantee.  Half an hour.”

I write about great service, because I see lots of it.  I am compelled to document great service stories and try to codify what they required of the company and individuals involved.  Many times, great service happens in a moment, and a moment of attention is all that is required to make the service great.  But on this day, great service took hours and it required a string of people to decide to do something extraordinary to completely solve a problem that they didn’t personally create but that was ultimately the responsibility of the company that they represented.  Yes, I had to ask.  But they could have said no and stuck to it.  Nobody would have faulted them, including me.  I guess I just got lucky that these people decided that they were going to get me back on the road, whatever it took.

My family returned the dealership.  My Mazda was soon ready – no charge, just a receipt with an amount of $0 at the bottom.  You don’t get to see that very often.  We thanked everybody, from the ace to the owner, and headed out to the car.  My daughter grabbed my attention and opened her hand.  “Look Daddy, I found it on the walk back.  I’ve been looking all summer.”

A four-leaf clover.

Rule #5 of great service: Do whatever it takes.