Update on Repair Status

I’ve been having a running discussion with the service department at Crestview RV, Georgetown. Like many business that rely on customer service, they don’t seem to give their employees (maybe other than sales, but I haven’t dealt with their sales department much) any training in dealing with customers. I guess they think it’s a skill you’re born with. No! Like most skills, it’s something you develop through mistakes, training, or lucky experience. Invest in it, people.

Anyway, they finally had Ursula ready on Tuesday. How did I find out? I call yet again last Friday, and the service manager told me there was about a half-day’s worth of work let. Did I want him to bring the technician in on overtime? (I’m sure I’d have been billed for the OT rate, but by then we’d already missed the opportunity to do anything with her for the weekend.) I talked to the service manager only after repeated attempts to talk to the service writer, who seems to be allergic to returning telephone calls.

I didn’t pick her up on Tuesday because I got the word too late to make arrangements. Fine, the service writer wanted to go over the bill face-to-face because it was about twice what he had told me it would be when I authorized the work. I couldn’t get loose on Wednesday, and Thursday gave me just enough time to bring her home to get ready for the weekend.

Here’s a lucky shot. This guy dive bombed us on a walk and I yanked the camera up and shot! Just a blurry sample of what you’ll see when we post the trip photos.

So I went in this afternoon to pick her up and pay her out. The service writer told me he had “forgotten” to include 18 gallons of special coolant for Caterpillar engines at $22/gallon and a handling fee for taking Ursula to a cooling system specialist. The remaining couple of hundred was eaten up in some incidentals I had requested separately.

The bad news: the ice maker I had asked them to disconnect and remove was disconnected but not removed. And I forgot to ask them to inspect the beast while she was in their shop for the better part of a month.

The good news: the cooling system specialist seems to have lived up to the name. Where Ursula had been pushing hot on the trip home from her house, which is only a couple of miles from Crestview, her needle never got to the center of the normal range this evening. Tomorrow’s the real test.