winterbadger | retail stupidity

Chris and I have taken our cars to Merchant's Tire & Auto on Arlington Boulevard for several years now for new tires, alignments, etc.

I took my car in the other day for an oil change/lube/tire rotation/alignment check. I'll just pass quickly over the work taking 2.5 hours after they promised it would take 1 when I called ahead. Let's just fast-forward to me signing out. At which point they charged me $90 for an alignment.

Me: "Wait, aren't I due for free alignments after I had you align the car the last time?"
Them: "I don't see any record of our having worked on your car before."
Me: "Well, I've brought it in several times in the last year or two."
Them: "Well, I can search for other records. What's your phone number?"

Yes, they file customer records by PHONE NUMBER. Now, I don't know about anybody else, but I've had six jobs in the last ten years, some with more than one number--at my current job I've had three, I think. I've also had three home phone numbers, two mobile numbers... And that's not even counting the three numbers that would be added in for Chris, since she took the car in sometimes.

They assure me in the process of trying to sell me a long-term package that it conveys with the car if I want to sell it. So why not, I don't know, use the *CAR* as the object of data tracking? They record the make, model, and year, as well as the plate number, and they have a space in their database for the VIN--even though they never use it (the data tag still prints out on every work order).

Even if you're going to track by customer, why use phone number? Why not use, erm, a customer's name? You can always have a customer number (which they do) to be a unique record identifier, and they could use address or (I suppose) phone number as a secondary sort to distinguish one John Smith from another.

And, yes, I did find a receipt from 16 July 2004 showing that they had sold me a year's free alignments for this car. I called, and they're insisting I bring it in before they will issue the refund. I offered to give them the invoice number for them to look up and my card number to credit the refund to, but they insisted I actually come in. Anyone want to place bets they're going to try to get out of it somehow? If they do, I will stop patronizing them, and I'll be sure to post here about it and make sure my local friends and coworkers know how they do business.