Mac's Independent Volvo BMW Mini Service

How does that saying go? No good deed goes unpunished? I get a call at 5:45 PM on Wednesday from a lady from Irvine that has a BMW that's overheating on her, but she does not want to pay the dealer $250 to check it out or have it towed to her regular mechanic for $300. She asks me if I can take a look at it. I'm already booked for the rest of the week and ready to close the shop for the night, but I agree to take a look at it before I go home that night. When she arrives, she goes on and on about having tires and alignment done on her car earlier in the day and repeating several times that they must have done something to her car. I expressed my doubts, but told her I'd know more after checking it out. I told her that I would charge $125 for the basic diagnosis then inform her when I knew more. The code told me that there was a communication issue problem with the electric water pump. I got the car up in the air and removed the at least 20 screws that hold the protective underbody cover to get a better look at the water pump. There is a short ground wire that goes from the water pump to the engine that is notorious for breaking, but it was in great shape and there was no corrosion around the water pump. The next step was to check the four wires going to the water pump and see if they were all receving the correct signal to operate the pump. I figured this would take another couple of hours to check the wiring viabilty between the pump and the engine computer. I called the customer at this point to inform her how far I'd gone and that it would cost and additional $280 plus the original $125 to verify for sure the cause of the problem. Being that the repair might require replacing the engine wiring harness or water pump or engine computer, which all are very costly, I wanted to take the time to be sure on the proper repair. I called her that night to inform her and she was very hesitant about the pricing and wanted to pass it on to her mechanic and call me back in the mor ning. Even though I explained that after checking the car out, the tire people had nothing to do with her current situation, she still wouldn't let it go. I finally left the shop at 8PM that night. By the time she called me back the next day, I was already committed for other work that would take me to the weekend and explained to her that I realistically could not spend more time on her car till Monday. Because she kept on expressing her doubts about my mechanical abilities, I suggested that she take it to her regular mechanic, because I knew that she was too suspicious about me and could never gain her trust. I've been doing this too long to try and satisfy a customer that thinks every mechanic is trying to rip them off. I got a quote for $165 from a local towing service to get her car to her favorite mechanic, but instead, she wanted to take it to some other recommendation out in Glendale. I've learned that trust goes both ways. If your customer suspects everything you do, then you can't trust the customer either. As you can see, she basically complained because I was too honest and glad I was, because she would never be worth it as a customer.