What Could Be Going Wrong?

Lizzie needed some new tires for her car. No, she desperately needed new tires for her car. I’ve been putting it off, though. Waiting to feel like I have the money for four tires but I should have just done it a long time ago as I’d probably never have felt like I had enough money. Well, the one of those tires popped on her way to work the other day, so that’s when I knew it was time to get that thing in for some tires.

I’d already been looking around at prices, Sam’s Club seemed like that best way to go. I got a set of two tires for my Grand Am there, and they were a good deal and the installation was fast and simple. Overall my experience with Sam’s last time was pretty good - this time, not so much.

Rolled the car in to Sam’s at about 12:30, picked out a set of four Goodyears. They were the middle of the road tire, weren’t as expensive as the Michelin’s or BF Goodrich’s, yet not as crummy looking as the Dunlop’s. Took probably 15 minutes to figure out what tires I needed.

I guess they were in a hurry because at this point they pretty much had all the tires off the car already, even though I hadn’t even paid for the tires yet. They were just starting to put the new tires on the rims when I realized that Sam’s doesn’t take Visa and I couldn’t write a check. That’s when I felt like a real jerk because I had to ask them to put my tires back on so I could go get some cash. They happily went ahead and started doing that.

Well then through the magic of cellular phones I actually managed to get the cash delivered instead, so I told them to start putting the new tires back on, even though they were pretty much done putting the old tires back on. Felt like an even bigger jerk at this point.

So then I was standing out in the viewing area watching the mechanic work on the tires, and something struck me as a little odd. He was using one of those high-powered air wrenches and was not hand starting the lug-nut on the stud before tightening it with the air wrench. Instead, he was just putting the lug directly into the wrench and then just zipping the lugs on without starting it first.

Then one of them wouldn’t tighten, and he turned to me with a puzzled look and asked, “have you ever had problems with the lug nuts on your car? I can’t get it tightened!” I shook my head and thought sarcastically to myself, “What could possibly be going wrong here?” He went to his manager and told him about his problems getting the lugs on and off, so the manager came over to check it out. He had to pry the lug-nut off as it was now stuck, and once he did and got the wheel off, he took one look at the studs and put his face in his hands and started shaking his head in disgust.

A few minutes after thinking over what in the world he was going to do, he then came to me and genuinely apologized for his mechanic having had seriously stripped out most of the studs and lug nuts on the car. They’d have to have the car towed over to a repair shop the following day (since it was now rather late in the day at this point, after all the running around getting cash) and have everything replaced.

I got the installation charge for free, and they of course paid for the repairs over at the repair shop. I got the car after work the following day and they genuinely apologized once again, regardless of the fact that I had wasted a bunch of their time that day.

I wrote about poor customer service a few days ago, these guys gave me a little hope that there’s people who truly care about customers. As for the mechanic who didn’t know how to put on a lug nut properly - well, some people are just hopeless I guess. It had to have been the first thing they told him in training… start the lug nut with your hand first.

But at least now Lizzie can drive safely and her car no longer shakes and vibrates like crazy because of the bad tires. So in the end everything turned out for the good.