This sounds stupid coming from an adult, I know, but this is the first time it’s really come up in my life.
In this scenario you work 9-5. You own a car. And you’re the type of person to take it to the shop for the oil change so they can take a look over the car and tell you about how the wear and tear looks and if something needs replacing soon.
Does everybody else in the world who does this take time off work or something? Do it only on the weekends? So you drop the car off in the morning and they say, hey, your brakes are almost gone and need to be replaced. Do you sit there and wait and go to work an hour or two late? If not, how do you get to work on time (do they drive you there and pick you up later)? What if your work is a half hour away (isn’t that unreasonably far for them)? Or do you pick a regular mechanic closer to work rather than close to home to alleviate that? As you can tell, I have a bunch of questions. The reason why this hasn’t come up in my life before is because right now I work in the same building as my mechanic, so it’s no issue to let them have it all day and then drive out of the lot like normal when I’m done work. But this isn’t exactly a common situation, and it’s going to be ending for me soon. So tell me, how do you handle this? (As you might be able to tell, “just taking the afternoon off” is like a foreign concept to me as I have not yet been lucky enough to enjoy jobs with these sorts of benefits without wrangling the boss. But if that’s how it’s normally done that’s how it’s done.)
I could say the same thing about actually walking into a bank to do business, but thankfully I don’t have to do anything in person any more it seems. Thanks, technology.
I’ve usually just used dealers/shops close to where I work, and they’ve offered to drop me off at work after getting the work order written and signed.
Luckily we have two cars in the family, so someone drops me off, usually early in the morning, and we drop an envelope with the key and a description of the issue in the mail slot.
They call me, tell me what’s wrong, I authorize the repair.
We’ve used this shop enough that they leave the key for the car in one of the wheel wells, I get a ride, drop off the payment through the mail slot, and off I go.
If you’re using a dealership (more expensive, but it’s an option) they are usually open on the weekends. Lots of the oil change shops (Jiffy Lube, etc) are also open on the weekends.
Informative. I didn’t know shuttle service was common with mechanics. I tried googling about this problem earlier but it didn’t hit upon the answers I was looking for. Thanks for the replies, everybody. I have a much better idea now.
As mentioned above: I drop it off in the morning and the shuttle gives me a ride to work. If in the course of working on the car they find something else that needs attention the service adviser calls me and I decide to let them do it or let it go for awhile. When I am about to get off work, I give them a call and the shuttle comes and picks me up.
We have three vehicles (one is a seldom-used farm truck). So, for instance my gf drops her Subaru off the night before it’s being worked on. I pick her up and bring her home. She’s stuck driving her truck until the Subaru is ready.
Some dealerships have shuttle service so you don’t have to worry about a ride home (or a ride to work) when you drop off your car, but the last dealer I did this with would not come and pick up up; you had to get back to the dealer on your own to pick up your car.
The dealership that I most recently bought a car from has loaner vehicles, so you’re all set for transportation until you can get back there to pick your car up.
Both of these dealerships are also open until 9PM on Mondays and Thursdays, which helps with the timing of picking your car up after work.
I had a dilemma a while ago where I had to drop the car off at the dealership, then get to the airport to catch a flight.
I considered asking a friend (this was at 6 am), I considered Uber, I considered a taxi. I thought, what the hell, and asked at the dealership for a ride. They said no problem and drove me the half hour to the airport.
mmm
We have 2 vehicles. Plus our car guy has a loaner that you can get if you’re lucky. When we both were working in different directions, that was our best option. The shop is not open on the weekends.
Now that my husband is, for all intents and purposes, retired, he takes the vehicle and waits for it. If it’s going to be a lengthy servicing, we may drop it off the night before and pick it up after I get home from work. One time, I even got them to come pick me up when the car was done - the shop is about 5 miles from home, so they sent one of their mechs on his lunch break.
We’ve been lucky that it’s never been a big deal for us.
Also, some of us can work remotely: for maintenance/repairs that I can’t handle on a weekend, I usually just work from the shop while I wait for my car (in addition to shuttles being more common, most places also now have free wifi).
My dealership has a shuttle/drop off, loaners when needed, some evening and weekend hours devoted just to oil changes and routine stuff. And when worse comes to worse, oil change places (think Jiffy-Lube) do pretty fair routine inspections although they usually cost a little more than the dealerships I’ve used.
Public transportation is my friend. Leave the car at the shop in the morning, take the train to work, repeat backwards when car is ready. If it’s just an oil change or something, schedule on the weekend.
I’m surprised how many people have mentioned taking their car to a dealership. The few times in the distant past when I took my car back to the place I bought it I’ve been screwed over royally.
Other than recall work, I take my cars to a local shop. Even oil changes and state inspections, which come “free” with my vehicle, I’d rather pay my mechanic to do, rather than suffer a dealership’s annoying up-sell.
My last two dealers (Saturn and Subaru; both on Rt 19 north - Ross/Wexford) have been horribly honest with me and in most cases cheaper than alternative independent garages. The indie I used for ages sold out to a less-than-trustworthy “Captain Hook” who used it as a base for his towing operation so that option was removed and I got a case of lazies and tried the dealer a couple times. For me it worked out. Now around our area a honest Ford dealer is harder to find than an honest politician. But for some of the other brands it isn’t quite so bleak.