I have a rant. It’s about dishonesty and a blatant disregard for customer service.

This weekend, my girlfriend dropped her car off for basic service at an Inver Grove Heights car dealership that will remain unnamed. This dealership carries the name of a very well known and wealthy man.

It is a Volkswagen dealership.

She is new to Minnesota, so she decided to choose this dealership based on name recognition and size.

She made an appointment for Saturday so she wouldn’t have to be without her car during the work week.

She needed a headlight replaced, an oil change and a tire rotation.

Simple enough, right?

Three hours later we received a call saying her car was done. We were at the Renaissance Festival at the time, so we left a couple hours early to get her car before the dealership closed.

When we arrived to pick her car up we noticed oil that had been spilled down the side of the driver’s side door. It was not cleaned up and was very noticeable. Not a big deal, but for a dealership that “thrives” on customer service it was a blatantly lazy move.

She asked for a towel to clean it up when one “customer service” man said to a mechanic, “This lady’s customer service would improve if her car was cleaned when she picked it up. Maybe we should run it through the car wash.”

Yeah. There was no running it through the car wash. The two mechanics walked away, sending a car salesman outside to wipe the car off with a rag. I couldn’t have been more impressed with the disregard for customer service. It was as though the mechanics were trying to get fired.

This was just the tip of the iceberg.

As we were driving to the grocery store, I noticed the headlight wasn’t fixed. She was charged $40 for the headlight including labor, but her car had the same burnt-out light.

This sparked some investigation into the rest of the work that was supposedly done to her car.

When we got home from the grocery store we checked the tires. She had recently put two new tires on her car so there were two different brands. She was charged $30 for a basic-tire rotation.

The tires were not rotated.

With inquiring minds now at work, we checked the oil. The car had been driven three miles from the dealership to out house. (The grocery store is on the way home.)

The oil was black. There was no way the oil had been changed; I would be surprised if it had even been topped off.

All in all, she was charged $105 for no work.

This is frustrating. She tried to take her car ion for the scheduled maintenance and nothing was done except running her debit card for $105.

When bringing the car in on Monday morning to get the work done and make the statement that we will not be back again, nor will our friends, she did get a free rental car.

What is the moral of this story?

Double check the work that is done on cars.