VERSES FROM THE ABSTRACT #1: By Nobby V

A Letter to the Manager of Meineke Discount Mufflers of Plaistow, NH :
(Or, Why I Never Let the Potato Heads at Some Shitty Discount Auto Repair Shop Anywhere Near My Car)

An oil change is a simple enough task, and one I typically would not pay to have done. The $30 I’d spend at the local tune-and-lube tastes better in the form of a steak and a 12-pack in my belly. But it’s January. In New England. And all my tools are in storage at the U-Haul (thanks again McLaughlin’s for fucking up that house purchase). So, I advise my girlfriend to take her Mini to a local place for the oil change. She would be providing her own oil and OEM filter; how badly could it get fucked up?

You managed to answer that question when she opted to take her car to your shop, and answer with a vengeance: you fucked it up badly. When presented with the five-quart jug of Mobil1 oil, your technician apparently assumed that whatever amount was in the jug was the appropriate amount to add to the car’s crankcase, manufacturer’s recommendation be damned. So in went all five quarts, 8/10 of a quart more than the 4.2 quarts the car is designed to hold. With a (seriously) overfilled crankcase comes the potential for many problems: oil aeration leading to crank damage, damage to the catalytic converter ($887.25 without labor at the Mini dealer at last check), etc.

Okay, you made a mistake. We all do it. The true test is how you behave in the aftermath of your mistakes. There are two roads one can take when confronted with a mistake: Road A involves acknowledging the mistake and offering to make it right. You opted for Road B: deny, lie, accuse and pass the blame. And you covered ALL of those bases in your response. Well done.

My girlfriend shows up to pick up her car and asks for the extra oil. You claim that there were only four quarts in the jug (begging the question: if that WAS true, how can you explain that you left the oil 2/10 of a quart short of the manufacturer’s recommendation of 4.2 quarts?). My girlfriend leaves, and drives to the Wal-Mart to double-check what she already knows: there are five quarts in the jug. By this time, your shop has closed for the weekend.

She shows up first thing Monday morning when you open (ten minutes late) to ask that you take out the extra 8/10 of a quart and refund the $17 you charged her for her time and trouble. You deny that the whole jug of oil was ever dumped in. My girlfriend then asks where the extra oil is, if that is the case. Your response: “I don’t know”, the rally cry of those caught in a lie. You finally admit that it might have been filled “a little bit over”. My girlfriend follows you into the bay, where she proceeds to show you how to read a dipstick. She shows you a dipstick that clearly shows the oil level measuring almost a full quart over the “FULL” mark. You proceed to badmouth Mini with something along the lines of “if they made a proper dipstick, I could have read it”. Don’t you manage a (shitty) auto repair shop? I would hope that you would be able to read ANY dipstick without difficulty. I would be wrong.

After having another technician remove the excess oil, you return and claim that the level was “only a bit overfilled, and not enough to worry about”. 8/10 of a quart is not “a bit”, and is more than enough to run the risk of damage, especially on a car with a small engine like the Mini. But here’s where you go above and beyond and really deliver on the customer service: you refuse to refund the $17 she paid, claiming that my girlfriend “probably overfilled it herself after the fact to get her $17 back”.

Wow. Well done. You managed to exacerbate one simple mistake and turn it into a shining example of why the public (and women in particular) fear auto repair shops, scared of being mislead or taken advantage of. There’s a reason for these fears: they are right.