I’m always telling Alex she should look elsewhere for auto maintenance and service. She goes to the dealer. The Dealer. Dealers have a tendency to be overpriced, take excessive time to do things, and treat customers pretty poorly when things don’t go well. They keep their customers coming back by terrifying them with tales of unauthorized car repair disasters.

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Well, today I see why Alex likes this place. Yes, there was a hassle with this appointment (twice in one week she’s come up here after confirming an appointment, only to be told there is no appointment), but she says this is a rare occurrence. Her friendly customer service guy, Paul, was apparently in a bad mood the last time she came to a failed appointment, but she says generally he’s friendly and efficient. Today he got me in and situated in five minutes, and he has a soldering iron next to his maintenance forms. Bonus points for the soldering iron.

The car is now being repaired. Alex says she has had multiple experiences in which Paul has told her that certain things were near needing replacement, but repair/replacement was not yet necessary. More points for (apparently) not gouging my wife. This time it’s replacing rear brake drums. Honestly, I could probably do that without too much trouble. But I’d need tools. And I’d need jack stands. And I’d be out in the not-so-warm weather for a few hours, and probably do a couple of back-and-forths to the parts store. And if I did that, I wouldn’t be sitting here in the WiFi-enabled customer lounge, sitting in my ergonomic little faux-leather chair at a well-appointed computer workstation, blogging about my very first John Bear dealer maintenance experience while eating the apples and cookies provided for customers.

If the car is out within an hour (Paul’s projection), then the experience is even better. I can no longer blame Alex for resisting looking for places that are cheaper and closer to home. Shoot, who wouldn’t want to websurf and eat free munchies while their car got fixed?