(Un)fit for purpose
During the bleak, late January blues, we had a customer wanting to buy a car we had in stock ASAP. He was desperate for a replacement car ready by Monday morning. Keen to oblige, my boss opened up on a Sunday morning and duly netted the sale.
The car in question was a Laguna Estate. The next morning it was given a quick check-over which, given the allotted timescale, was all we could manage. What nobody realised was that the car wasn’t just a form of transport to the customer, it was to be their livelihood. I believe it’s called the ‘gig economy’. We all know what’s coming… In fairness, the car was a local part-ex from a retired gent who’d owned it since the dealer had pre-registered it. The Laguna had thus gone from collecting its pension from the post office to delivering it for them. Yes, this elderly, fragile car was now a parcel van hard at work during the January sales.
After just over a month, the Laguna had developed three faults: a flat battery, a blown heater and an EML light. The first two we’d obligingly sorted for the customer, in the first instance paying cash for a battery they’d had fitted at Halfords one Sunday morning without first consulting us. In the second instance, we diagnosed the faulty heater part and ordered a replacement. Unsurprisingly, the owner could never spare us the time to fit it.
The third fault we never even got to diagnose. The customer knew their rights and wanted their money back. My boss, too weary from the game, just rolled over and gave them their money back once the car was returned. No matter how much we fixed this car, we couldn’t be doing with them calling at 9am every Sunday to whinge about another fault.
Deep down we knew then that the car would never be up to the job, but then few diesel estates for just over a grand would be. Not that we knew what it had been bought for at the time of sale, but then that’s as much a failing of ours as theirs.
Was the customer naive in expecting the car to meet their every motoring need? Yes. Or was the customer just using us in lieu of a hire car for a month? Dunno.
The car was returned in an appalling condition. The inside looked and smelled like a bus stop bin – truly disgusting. The mechanics of the car had suffered, too, after more than 2500 miles covered, fully-laden, working the multi-drop circuit.
The inner rear pads were down to the metal – a sure sign of being heavily loaded and driven hard – and the inner edges of the tyres were shredded from all the residential speed humps. In addition, the EML was signalling a choked EGR valve, no doubt due to all that stop-start work.
What could have been a cheap, useful car to the right person was now as good as scrap to us. But naturally, we dodgy dealers were the villains of the piece as the customer is always right.
‘After just over a month, the Laguna had developed three faults’