All equipment requires periodic preventive maintenance and occasional repair for one reason or another. I own four Ford product vehicles and there are things they might need that I cannot or choose not to do. Some things I do for myself. I have two vehicles that are up for routine periodic work, to wit, automatic transmission service. Which I used to do, but doing it at home is messy, fluid can't always be replaced 100%, ATC from the store is expensive by the quart anyway, etc, etc.
Today I was in the neighborhood of the Ford store, so I decided to stop in and do some groundwork. Such as, asking if they still gave a 10% senior citizen discount on work performed. Which they have done in the past but I haven't been in there since pre-Covid. The answer to that one was, "10% discount up to $100 ceiling on work done."
Then I came to a few questions of a semi-technical nature. Which the representative couldn't answer without going out to ask someone else whom I didn't see. But someone in the shop. Three times.
I resent this lack of product expertise. I have personal knowledge of how all this used to work. The dealer employee you talk to when you first enter the service department is now called a "service advisor." Many years ago, they used to be called "service writers" (because they "wrote up" your repair order) or "service salesmen." I believe Ford started calling them service advisors in the 1970's. I will use the term I'm most familiar with, service writer. My experience with people in this position in times past, some not so distant, was that they were people who knew about the product. Some had worked previously in the shop. They had technical knowledge on some level.
My experience the past few times I've been in this Ford dealer service department is that the service writers were younger men and women and the ones I have talked to basically don't know all that much about automobiles. I will be a little cruel and say, when the K-Mart store down the street closed, a few of the discharged clerks there walked up the street to the Ford store and got hired as service writers.
Without going into details, I have a lot of past experience with the workings of Ford service departments back inside the shop. But none lately as I am no longer employed nor do I have any connections with any shops. All I know is that I am a bit reluctant to take my vehicles into a Ford store. Because enough times when I've gotten my vehicle back, I've later discovered stripped threads, missing parts, and over- or under-torqued fasteners. A situation that has caused me to go back to doing more and more of my own work after previously deciding to quit doing such things and just spend my money. Another thing I resent is spending my money on work that isn't properly done.
Today I was in the neighborhood of the Ford store, so I decided to stop in and do some groundwork. Such as, asking if they still gave a 10% senior citizen discount on work performed. Which they have done in the past but I haven't been in there since pre-Covid. The answer to that one was, "10% discount up to $100 ceiling on work done."
Then I came to a few questions of a semi-technical nature. Which the representative couldn't answer without going out to ask someone else whom I didn't see. But someone in the shop. Three times.
I resent this lack of product expertise. I have personal knowledge of how all this used to work. The dealer employee you talk to when you first enter the service department is now called a "service advisor." Many years ago, they used to be called "service writers" (because they "wrote up" your repair order) or "service salesmen." I believe Ford started calling them service advisors in the 1970's. I will use the term I'm most familiar with, service writer. My experience with people in this position in times past, some not so distant, was that they were people who knew about the product. Some had worked previously in the shop. They had technical knowledge on some level.
My experience the past few times I've been in this Ford dealer service department is that the service writers were younger men and women and the ones I have talked to basically don't know all that much about automobiles. I will be a little cruel and say, when the K-Mart store down the street closed, a few of the discharged clerks there walked up the street to the Ford store and got hired as service writers.
Without going into details, I have a lot of past experience with the workings of Ford service departments back inside the shop. But none lately as I am no longer employed nor do I have any connections with any shops. All I know is that I am a bit reluctant to take my vehicles into a Ford store. Because enough times when I've gotten my vehicle back, I've later discovered stripped threads, missing parts, and over- or under-torqued fasteners. A situation that has caused me to go back to doing more and more of my own work after previously deciding to quit doing such things and just spend my money. Another thing I resent is spending my money on work that isn't properly done.
