Tales From the Service Desk: Survey Says

If you’ve ever had your car serviced at a dealership, you’ve probably received a survey about the experience, either via snail mail or phone. Or perhaps online. This is especially likely if the work was done under warranty.

You’ve probably thrown out/ignored this survey. What you probably don’t know is that doing so may have cost your service advisor money and/or got him in hot water with the boss.

I certainly learned that one the hard way during my time as a service writer.

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Tales From the Service Desk: Dropping the Hammer

During my brief time as a service advisor/writer, I worked in two types of shops. One was an “express lube” – meaning this shop only did basic maintenance, such as oil changes and tire rotations. Cars that needed more complex repairs were sent across the parking lot to the main service bays – the full-service ones.

The other type of shop I worked at was a full-service one. This dealership had no express lube – techs did everything from oil changes to fluid flushes to warranty work to major customer-pay jobs.

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Tales From the Service Desk: Extended Warranties and the Selling of a Scam

During my brief career as a service writer, there were many aspects of the job that I found annoying, but perhaps nothing got my Irish up on a near-daily basis like the extended-warranty business.

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Tales From the Service Desk: When the Wheels Fall Off

It was a bright summer day when our regular customer, a woman in her 30s or 40s who had a haircut that we’d now deem a “Karen”, was leaving the dealer with her brood after a routine service, probably an oil change and tire rotation.

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Tales From the Service Desk: The Buick That Had a Secret

Hi there! You’ve probably learned a bit about your author during my time at TTAC, but you might not know I toiled in the service department of various car dealerships early in my career.

I started as a porter in high school, then eventually worked as a greeter in the service bay (basically, managing the flow of cars and customers in the service drive), before finally working as a service writer (aka service advisor). I did that final job both in an express-service lane at a dealer (think oil changes and basic maintenance) as well as in a capacity as a “regular” advisor (not just oil changes, but all types of repair).

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  • Jeff Corey thank you for another great article and a great tribute to Bruno Sacco.
  • 1995 SC They cost more while not doing anything ICE can't already do
  • Michael S6 PHEV are a transitional vehicles category until more efficient batteries are available and access to charging stations significantly improves. Currently I will buy an EV if I'm only driving in town and a PHEV if I need a road car as well.
  • Frank Bring back the gas Abarth with 250hp, that'll get peoples attention
  • EBFlex PHEVs are the ONLY reasonable solution to lowering the amount of oil we use for fuel. Because they are not being aggressively invested in and because the government is pushing EV, which are far worse than any other vehicles on the road, it’s clear the push to EVs has nothing to do with the environment.