Do you know who is working on your car?

[deecee@exit109.com]

It's me again, with another bit of "Life inside the VW dealership"

I know many of you either do your own work or have a reputable mechanic
like (Todd in Philly) the rest of you still under warranty bring it to the
VW Dealer.  My question to the ones who bring it to the VW dealer are you
sure you know who is working on your GTI/GLX?

How many VW only dealers are left? Not many.  Many are multi franchises I
work at VW/Audi/Porsche. Not bad at least they are all German(Mexican)
cars.  What about the huge mega dealers that have several GM or Ford
franchises along with VW or the Asian VW combos? 

Anyway, The next time you bring your car in make sure you know who is going
to work on your car. Ask about his/her training VW or Pep Boys? 

If the repairs are satisfactory than by all means ask for that person the
next time.

In my shop we have 1 Porsche only tech, 1 Audi only tech, 3 VW only tech,
The "Millionaire" who can work on all 3 lines and me VW and now mostly
Audi. That leaves one more Mr "X"   

Who is Mr "x" ?  A year ago we had an ad for a tech. The ad ran for a few
months for a Porsche tech.Finally we hired Mr"X". Mr "X" is in his late
20's and a drunk. He had Porsche experience and ZERO VW knowledge. Well he
kept screwing up the Porsches that they wouldn't give him any new cars
because they didn't want a bad survey. In turn they gave him VW's to work
on.                  Yes it could have been yours!  

 As the months wore on with Mr "X" getting all the gravy work I stopped
helping him with the problem cars. 

I mentioned he was a drunk. This person would be late or not show up for
days on end. There were countless times he left cars torn apart because of
a binge. Does your boss give you a wake up call each morning? This kid had
one. He thought it was so cool that I have a copy of the answering machine
message the dispatcher left. Because the dispatcher felt sorry for him
being a drunk that he would make sure he received all the gravy VW work to
make hours while the rest of us starved doing warranty work.
This drunk has been out 24 days since Nov 1. The sad thing was every lunch
time he headed for the bar. Remember he might be your mechanic!

Well to make a long story short. After another 6 day binge he called up
last monday late again and asked if it was too late to come to work. My
boss finally had the balls to fire him.

Epilogue to the story, It is very had to find a good VW trained technician,
just make sure you know who is working on your VW. It might be Mr "X" 


Don