What would you do?
You're the manager of the Tire and Lube Express at Wal-Mart. In your department you do oil changes and sell/install new tires plus a few other mechanical operations on automobiles.
One day a customer asks you to do a front end wheel alignment on their vehicle. Fortunately, your experience has implemented a procedure whereby your alignment technician pays attention to the details of checking the car's existing equipment and he discovers that there is an existing broken front half axle. This means that you cannot do the alignment until this situation is remedied because the likelihood is that any new alignment will be out of whack about a half mile down the road from your shop. You inform your customer. They raise hell, accusing you of breaking the CVboot purposely in order to exact higher repair costs. ???
Well, of course I told them we certainly did not do that. We had taken pictures prior and during our inspection. The CV boot was dried out and cracked which any decent mechanic will inform you meant the half axle had been broken for quite some time.
None of which mattered. This customer wanted to take the situation to a higher level. Not a problem. Wal-Mart has a division which investigates these types of situations. They did.
They denied any recompense. They agreed with us and the pictures which didn't lie. The end, right? Nope...
The customer took it further and contacted the District Manager. He called me and I explained it again.
The DM called the "Big Store" and told them to cut a check to the customer for $187.50 to replace the half-axle.
Personally, I think that if this customer had told 5 friends who told 5 more friends, etc., I would have lost dozens of thieves, liars and cheats as customers and that would have been a good thing. The District Manager used what he thought was a tried and true merchandising method - avoiding negative word-of-mouth publicity. I think he ought to have thought it through a bit longer. I realize that that amount of money wouldn't break Wal-Mart. But the philosophy of stealing Wal-Mart blind through lies and thievery could, yes eventually, break even Wal-Mart.
What do you think you would have liked done in this situation?
[Pictures found at Samarins.com]
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