I came home from a date (yes, I actually had a date) on Sunday, stopped in my driveway to retrieve Saturday's mail, and noticed an awful rat-a-tat-tat-tat noise coming from beneath my beloved Gideon (Tahoe). Oh no! This meant he would need to go to the dealership on Monday for a check-up and consequently...an oil change since I get $9.95 life time oil changes and he was past due.
On Monday, I got crazy busy and time escaped me. I didn't even get a chance to call Lonestar Chevy until after lunch to try to make an appointment. My regular service guy, Mike, told me it would be best to bring it in on Tuesday morning and that as long as the "check engine light" didn't come on, it should be okay until then.
On Tuesday, I had one of my employees follow me over to Lonestar and I bade Gideon farewell. Later that afternoon, good ol' Mike called me to tell me the oil change was done and that the noise was because the catalytic converter was coming apart and that it needed to be replaced. He told me that I had two options. I could have them replace it with the manufacturer's catalytic converter which would run me $1085 PLUS tax (holy rusted metal, Batman). I quickly asked what might be my second option. He said I could take it to someplace like Meineke and that they would use a generic catalytic converter, cut it to fit my vehicle, and charge me about half the price. Um....so let me get this straight...you have possession of a vehicle needing to be fixed. You have a willing/paying customer. You don't want to try to make the sale. Do I have this right?! This goes against everything I know about business. I was sooooo confused. I kinda still am, for that matter. I had one of my employees take me back over there to pick up poor Gideon and decided I would take care of him the next day. Why can't anything just be easy???
So, once I got back to work, I made a couple of phone calls and I was told approximately $800 to $1000 by a couple of other places. I finally called Meineke and nice guy Bill told me $275 or something like that. I thought he meant for the part plus labor and tax. It still sounded a whole heck of a lot better than Lonestar's price, so I asked if I could bring it to them in the morning and he said sure!
Wednesday morning, I brought Gideon to Meineke. I called to check on him around 3pm and they told me he was good as new. Went to pay my bill and it was $287.30. Whoa! Are you freakin' kidding me?! That's like 1/4 of the price of the dealership. So was Mike at Lonestar just being nice in telling me to take it to Meineke? Well...regardless, I am thankful and I totally made a new friend this week, and its name is Meineke.
I did ask what else they do there and was told, by Bill, that they are a full service shop and can do anything. I feel like I'm spreading the word by blogging about it. If you need something done...you might just want to consider Meineke...friendly, fast service for a very fair price! =)
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