Roberts Automotive

Okay, so you did all the required maintenance, have a AAA membership and are ready for that long holiday trip to Grandma’s house. You are half way into a trip of hundreds of miles when……..well, as Robert Burns so aptly stated in his poem To a Mouse, “the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley“. No matter how well prepared you are, something can go wrong. While AAA is a great organization, I find their website kind of cluttered and confusing. You can feel confident, however, that the shops they recommend will more than likely give you dependable service at a fair price. But it’s always good to have a plan B in case plan A doesn’t work out. Two other organizations that most people don’t know about are the Automotive Service Association (ASA) and the Alliance of Automotive Service Providers (AASP). Member shops are found on their websites by punching in your location. I would imagine finding one of them on a smart phone would be a piece of cake although it depends on whether you have cell service or not.  Shops belonging to these organizations have good reputations and some may also be AAA authorized repair centers. So, if you are traveling over the holidays far from your local shop, keep these organizations in your toolbox. The shop finder at AASP is located at http://aasp-pa.org/. Then click on Shopfinder at the top of the page. Find the Shopfinder on the homepage of ASA at http://asashop.org/. Both sites will show a map with shop locations. Clicking on them will bring up address and phone information. No machine is 100% reliable. With hundreds of moving parts and hundreds of electrical devices, anything can go wrong at any time. Also, remember to pack a flashlight in the glove box, preferably one of those windup ones. Then you never need to worry about dead or leaking batteries. Cover yourself by having a plan before you leave home.

When your car needs repairs, make sure you set aside enough time to give the repair shop all of the information it needs to successfully repair it. Perversely, many folks don’t do this. A case in point is noise complaints. My policy is that the customer must bring the car into the shop and point out the noise to the mechanic who is going to fix it. You might think that makes sense, but it is surprising how many people consider it an inconvenience. I can’t tell you how many times in my past life that I have repaired a noise and it was the wrong one. From my perspective it a noise caused by safety or reliability issues should be addressed immediately. However, a noise of that type may have been going on a long time and the driver tuned it out. What they are hearing may be a mere annoyance, but since it is a new noise, it gets their attention. I don’t have a noise freshness meter to tell me whether the driver is hearing a new or old noise so if it isn’t pointed out to me, I may fix the wrong one. This has caused countless hours of frustration for both the customer and the shop. If your repair shop asks you to bring the car in so someone can listen to the noise, they’re doing you a favor and saving you money. They have your best interests at heart. They want the outcome to be successful for you and the shop. If the car is not making the noise when the mechanic is there, and it happens quite often, don’t waste time and money looking for it. Check engine lights are another situation that have outcomes that are less than satisfactory, but that is a subject for another post. Until next time, drive safely for the sake of your family and others.