My car is making funny noise recently. So I made an appointment with a local Nissan dealership 9AM today, to take a look. The customer rep asked my phone numbers and the usual stuff. I gave them both my work number and mobile number (that turns out to be a mistake). He told me expect an hour and half before getting back to me. The dealership is about 20 minutes walk from my home. On the way back to home, I decided to work remotely using VPN so that I don’t need to ask somebody giving me a ride or rent a car. I started work using Remote Desktop and fixed the problem I mentioned in the previous post. There are a few glitches such as “Network disconnected” or slow response from Graphic intensive applications. But in general I am pleased with the performance of Microsoft Remote Desktop.
When I was happily working on computer, I forgot one thing — call the dealership more often. I did give them a call at 12:30 PM and they told me they still have not figured out the cause of noise. So I figured give them some breeze time. I had some sympathy for them because I am doing similar things such as they do: debugging computer problem vs. car problem. But they did not call my cell phone. When I walked to the dealership at 6PM, they told me they called my work number and left a message. Dahn! They did find the cause of the problem, but they did not fix it without my permission. Now I have to wait till tomorrow morning to pick up my car. I can take another 20 minutes walk. But I was disappointed by them not calling my cell phone number earlier.
This reminds me of something I experienced in Toyota dealership when I was shopping my first new car years ago. I was going to buy a Toyota at two dealerships but both of them have a “either buy it at my price; or just leave” attitude. So I ended up not buying it.
Japanese car companies, Toyota, Honda and Nissan are having a good time these days in the US market. Their quality and reliability are undisputed. But their customer service…I don’t want to talk about it.