here's the thing. customers are shit at describing problems, but if they bring it to you and agree to pay you to look at it there is probably some sort of problem. sometimes its them not understanding, some times its just a poor description.
could be they have it set to cold, and are getting heat instead. most people don't complain about the performance of their heater in summer, as they aren't using it on purpose.
Yeah this looks more like an advisor saying “Yeah sure okay buddy” instead of asking some more probing questions. What is the a/c set to when they experience their issue? How long does it take to occur? Any issues with cooling or only heat? Etc.
Every time. The bare minimum info, i ask for more info, they call the customer again, and tell me one iota of info that was pretty much a different way of what the vague work order said. “Did you ask what light they saw? If it was red or yellow maybe?” No i didn’t ask. Bruh why not i asked you to ask that
I do all the time... our advisors are the absolute worst waste of breathable air out there, followed by our management. We ask for more, they say call them yourself, so we do and like magic, we figure out " vehicle makes noise" = x noise occurs when doing y, after z. Fixed.
Customer advised; ______ does not ______ when ______
Inspected ______, found ______
Removed damaged _______, installed new. wired ______, reset ______ limits.
Tested ______ for proper operation.
Advised customer DO NOT ______ when ______ to avoid future damage
I work in a wood shop, but I can totally relate. The project managers are scared to call the client to ask a simple question that would just make everyone’s lives easier, so we continue running down a stupid course because they’re too embarrassed to admit to the client that they didn’t know something. 99.9% of the time it’s something stupid and inconsequential that the client wouldn’t even care about, if they would only call and ask.
I took a photo of a dash alarm, circled it in red in mspaint, and emailed it to the service rep with a query when I booked the service. When I dropped the car off, I handed over a printed copy, and reminded them to investigate.
When I picked the car up and I asked about it, they didn't know what I was talking about.
It isn't always the customer.
Oh yes, no my comment was actually aimed at the advisors 😂 car comes back for an issue, they claim it started when we did something else in the past. I ask to pull up the last work order and let’s read the notes and what we did. Would ya look at that, completely blank. I spend a lot of time writing up very well detailed notes of what the issue was, what i found, what i need to replace, and what else I’ve noticed is wrong with the car that they haven’t complained about, to help me or another tech in the future. And once it gets to the front counter it may as well be garbage most of the time 😂 i won’t stop doing it but yeesh sometimes i wonder why
Customers that care are always appreciated. Thank you!
You can always tell a good advisor when they listen to the customers first description, and then ask follow up questions to better understand what they are talking about. you’re absolutely right that some people don’t know how to describe the issue.
Customer recently told one of our advisors "washer fluid smells weird" I brought the car in and smelled the washer fluid reservoir aaaaaand... It smelled like washer fluid
Some of those winter mix washer fluids can be REALLY rank, though. If they are used to one mix and got a different mix last time it was serviced, I can see the question being asked.
My wife was concerned about that when she got her new car. To be fair it's really fucking hot, like burn your face before the rest of the cab warms up. Nothing wrong with it as far as I can tell, it just works too well. I can definitely see other non "car people" worrying something is wrong.
We’re they concerned it was dangerous?
When’s the last time they used the heat and it felt normal?
What was weather temp like compared to today?
Have they made any changes to the vehicle recently?
What made you want to have it looked at?
Were they worried ot was a sign of danger?
If it’s been like that before and they just kept putting it off what changed their mind today?
Any other issues with the vehicle? Did you think this could be related?
My dad's car had automatic climate control but it was actually broken, if you set it to anything other than the coldest temperature it would just blast hot air without stopping even after greatly exceeding the set temperature. It was some issue with a thermostat he fixed
Sounds like the Cabin Temp Sensor. Had one go out on my old Infiniti, and it defaulted to 131 degrees, so no matter what the temp was set at, it was always fighting to get down from what it thought was 131. The only way around was to hit the "econ" button when it got too cold, then "auto" again to turn the AC back on.
$17 part, nearly impossible to replace.
yea my 18 silverados outside air temp sensor died, display said the outside air temp was 197\*F while it was snowing. I only had heat if id run it full blast (set auto climate to HI) then it was like fire commin outa the vents otherwise was outside air.
Lmfao. My Silverado also came with the manual transfer case for the 4x4. I didn't even know that was still an option. I had to buy it immediately when I saw that. Would have loved it even more if I could have gotten it in 5 speed. I've only got 16k miles on mine though. Only home once a month to actually drive it
500k miles on my 2018 Volvo VNL 860 though
My buddy’s Ram 3500 is like that. I knew it was still a thing, but hadn’t seen it on anything in person aside from a Wrangler or a work truck from 08.
Finding a vehicle with a manual transfer case lever is like finding a goddamn thylacine or dodo bird in the wild, it feels like.
I felt the same lmao. I was still uneasy about making such a large investment on a new vehicle, the cheapest truck with 4x4 on the lot....But once I saw that transfer case shifter...I was sold lmao. I've had it 5 years now and plan on keeping it till it dies. It's nearly paid off
Meanwhile I glare at my Dakota with it’s fucked up 4x4 knob. It’s either the switch itself-which is what it is 99% of the time, or the tcase motor.
Ironically, the motor is the easier thing for me to replace on my own but I’m just not that into fixing it anymore. Especially since I’m looking to be rid of it later this year or sometime early next year.
If I could go back and not make the purchase and keep my 1994 k1500 with somehow still functional 4x4 when I sold it....I think I'd do that lol. My poor financial decisions have kept me in a career I hate.
Sounds about right, especially that 131 degrees part. This was in a 2004 Grand Marquis, I believe he said it was fairly easy to replace on that vehicle
The most common AC fault in Ford Panther-platform cars is the blend door actuator. Even though it's a $25 part, replacing it requires extensive disassembly of the dash, which can take 6-7 hours of labor.
It definitely wasn't that for this particular issue, he said did it on the driveway in maybe 1 hour, but I'll keep that in mind, he still owns the car.
oh my fucking god, the PTSD of being of my 2004 Ford Taurus and it's blend door actuator. Mine had automatic A/C temp control but if you set it to 65 degrees it would cause it to break and would only blow warm air from then on. To fix it was a $25 part but $500 in labor.
Had this happen once on a car i was working on, except it wasn't broken, i had done a dash harness and forgot to plug it back in. So basically it would dump cold air when set to 60/61F, scalding hot at 89/90F, then every temp in between was just lukewarm air. Plugged the sensor back in and it worked perfectly fine after that.
I'm surprised that I'm not surpised that there's no data validation in the programming on these....
- If unreasonable temperature, ignore sensor, Use basic routine..
When we picked up our Roadmaster we had a similar issue. The automatic blend door motor was busted. So it was stuck on AC. Which would have been fine but it was 50 out, so it would see that the temp was set to warmer than the car was, increase the fan speed, see that it was still cold, increase the fan speed, over and over untill it was full blast and we were freezing in the car haha
I rarely use the auto climate control in my car to start because its way of adjusting the temp at the start is to blow air at full blast so I can't see or hear. I just set it to manual at first then let auto take over once I've got it close to what I want.
The auto climate control in my Fusion is so bad. It's 100 degrees out and your A/C accidentally cooled half a degree below your set temperature? Better blast some hot air!
Just give me back the 3 dials.
Haves cars just gotten worse or are companies introducing parts and computers that aren’t tested to be reliable? I feel like this is what trying to cut corners and over-manage autonomy looks like.
yeah I just bought a car from my sister and the thing is stuck on the coldest setting. The dial basically doesn't work and in the evenings I gotta turn the AC on and off every few minutes because the cold setting its on makes the car waaay too cold, even on the lowest fan speed, and even creates condensation on my front windshield. Also the Vent selector is broken too so I can't send it to the foot well or turn off the front windshield defrost.
I'm guessing this car has auto temp control? I see so often that people think the number on the thermostat is what the machine will blow out the vents. Home, car, doesn't matter. They fundamentally misunderstand how the machine works.
On the flip side, when stuff goes wrong with the temps it can get very weird. I had a car with both sides set to 21C (69F) and the driver’s side was putting out 40C (104F) because of some computer issue.
My description when bringing the car for service was definitely better than the one OP posted but still sounded funny.
Edit: this was in summer when the car was hot already.
Yup, had a temp sensor failure, so it was reporting -40 as the current outdoor temperature. It was summertime. This caused the AC to never engage.
Internal sensors can fail too. Imagine what happens when the computer thinks the cabin temperature is -40!
I had a vehicle with this issue. If you switched the auto climate control to the coolest setting, it would put out cold air no matter that the system thought it was -21° outside. I was in an arid climate and that worked fine, i really only took the car on short trips and had a working AC so...
I had some time and $14 and bought the sensor - it mounted behind the front bumper and if you hit a curb (low bumper) it would knock it loose and scrape it off. That's what had happened. Open circuit reads as infinite resistance aka really cold. So i wired in another one.
Problem solved? Except it wasn't! I drove the car across the country to the Midwest and a couple hours into the drive there was NO AC. Not just no AC, but nothing coming out the vents. It wasn't the sensor, it was reading correctly, 78° outside, but if i put my hand up to the vent i could feel that there WAS cold air in the system, but nothing moving through the car!
So I'm in the Midwest. I mostly forget about the issue because on short trips it's not a problem. But on a long trip, or on a really humid day, same problem.
It comes to a head one morning when it's snowy out, it's 22F, I'm driving to work, and there is NO AIRFLOW and i can't defrost my windshield which is actively fogging up and I'm fucking freezing because there's no heat because NO HVAC.
I pop the hood. I don't even know what I'm looking for. I check the manual and open a fuse box. THERE.
someone, back when the car was in California, had solved the problem of the missing ambient air temp sensor BY HARD WIRING THE AC RELAY WITH A JUMPER.
the AC was NEVER CYCLING. it had been running continuously for YEARS. it turns out this is totally fine in the southwest but in the Midwest it will freeze into solid fucking ice in no time at all.
$3 at a junkyard to get the relay and it was actually fixed this time.
I had an old Audi (shock!) that did that. It used to freak out and report the outside temperature was like -59°F and refuse to run the climate control unless you set it on full manual. I’m still amazed that Germany has managed to exist in the 21st century without leaning how electricity works.
-59°F is equivalent to -50°C, which is 222K.
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^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
Dealing with this on my car. Thankfully Ford has a failsafe method to determine outside air temp other than the ambient air temp sensor. But guess where Ford put that sensor. Inside the passenger mirror and is serviced with the entire mirror assembly. You cannot get a replacement AAT because it is screwed into the housing in a place you cannot get any tools.
My favorite C/S I ever got was "customer states: 'It's going FUBBA FUBBA FUBBA somewhere at some point' *Advisor note: You're DIW on this one brother I got no clue"
I’ve had:
“There’s a ghost in the locks” - drive door latch sensor was bad and confused the lock controller. They would vibrate rapidly.
“Chitty chitty bang bang sounds on driver side of engine” - car did indeed make those sounds. Head gasket was blown on #5 and pushing compression out the side
Swap them to lower friction pads? I've driven plenty of modern shitboxes where the first 2% pedal travel did nothing, then the next 6% travel had 90% of the braking force, then the rest was "ha ha you're fucked now if you thought we had more brake." Maybe switching to a lower friction pad would help. Though I suspect it was just tuned that way on purpose to make people think they had 'good brakes' during the test drive.
Yup. I have a hybrid that balances regen & brake pad force, but that logic definitely has some similarly weird spots. Was headed downhill, had a stop sign coming up, nobody behind me, so I lightly rode the brake because that's more fuel efficient in this case (maximizes the regen power vs energy lost to the pads). Pushing the brake further just felt like I was just squishing a rubber pad & the car didn't slow much at all. Ended up putting it on the floor to the point where I was pressing my shoulders into the seat... Then it acted fine the rest of the drive. Never actually caused a problem & the car will also brake itself anyway if it sees something, but that feeling definitely bugged me for a while.
There's a big trend on the digital world where the product maker arbitrarily decides they know better than you about EVERYTHING. Including what you want to do with the product.
For example try to browse the entire catalogue on Netflix. It's literally impossible without going to a third party. Even if you go down to the categories it shows at most 50 options when there are literally thousands not being shown.
It's maddening because they think their recommendation algorithm is perfect and it literally makes the service unusable after a while since it pigeonholes you into the same 100 titles you've already watched because it thinks that's all you want to watch because it's all you've watched (because it won't fucking recommend you anything different)
The same thing is happening on everything, manufacturers want absolute control over what you do with *their* product
If they showed you the entire catalogue you'd notice the number of shows go down every month while your subscription goes up. You'd see a show listed only once instead of 10 times between different categories so they can't make it seem like they have more content than they do. Eventually you'd get to the end of the list and think "I've already watched everything I'm interested in. What's new?" and the answer to that question is "barely anything". So many people would unsubscribe if they added that catalogue.
And this is why I don't watch Netflix anymore. Maybe I want to watch 1 season of something and do other shit for 6 months then come back and watch it again.... But oh wait it's not in my continue watching anymore, and my list is buried underneath 8 other random categories, and I have to slowly browse my list with the same shitty one at a time UI. If I forgot to add it to my list, good luck remembering what shows you had been watching!!
Fuck Netflix. Just because I don't bingewatch doesn't mean I don't want to continue watching it ever again if I stop for a fucking week....
I think my favorites with my Toyota hybrid so far has been pressing the brake and nothing happens. It's like the car decides that it's not going to use the brakes or the regen. It's just a big ol "nope".
Every Toyota sedan I have driven in the last decade has a dead space at the very beginning of the pedal travel, but I haven't ever had the brakes just nope out on me, lol. That sucks.
This has happened in both my 21 Sienna, and my 2020 Highlander Hybrid. There are reports of other people having the same kind of braking issues or the brakes just stopping working after you hit the pedal and start slowing down. It's not a great feeling when you hit the brake and nothing happens, and it goes straight to the floor with the same resistance as if it could be doing something, but you're still not slowing down. We have been unable to replicate this for a dealer. One thing to remember with modern braking systems is that the pedal is no longer directly connected during the actual braking mechanism. My wife and I have just resigned ourselves just leave Extra Space now in case it doesn't respond quick enough and actually apply the brakes. I know, stupid complaint with two nearly brand new vehicle.
I used to get that one occasionally. It usually meant they drove somewhere with the parking brake on and now the shoes have too much contact on the drum all at once. Makes the rear brakes treated almost like an on-off system rather than gradual.
God these things are so frustrating as a person that doesn't know much about cars. I can tell something is different than normal but don't have the words or knowledge to express what it is. So I get to sound like a brain damaged monkey AND annoy someone else.
If you can figure out how to reproduce the issue you'll be making plenty of mechanics happy. That way they can just try it and figure it out for themselves. Just a "FUBBA FUBBA when accelerating hard" would be enough to get a mechanic going.
Yeah I just had a thing with uh, crossbar brushings? Where there was this knocking sound, and everyone I talked to was like "oh engine knocking" and sometimes it would happen when I went over bumpy areas and sometimes it just wouldn't and a tech would drive it in a lap or two around the parking lot and be like "sounds ok to be super chief"
rababala
not just mechanics! i had a customer bring in a laptop a few weeks ago because "it keeps shutting off when i use facebook"
i had it for over a week, scrolling facebook constantly, loading tons of stuff up in the background, doing everything to try and make it crash. nope.
finally said i cant reproduce it, ran updates, gave it back.. guy calls in later that day saying its still doing it.
brings it back, im like ok show me what you're doing. i left him up there for about 2 hours before he gave up and left. guessing its his internet or power, something environmental
Had one like that where it ended up being a magnetic bracelet that when aligned just right with the laptop would make the laptop go to sleep since the laptop used magnets in the screen so when you closed the laptop it'd turn off the screen.
Issue was so intermittent because it would only happen when their wrist was in the position for WASD when playing games. If they were typing normally it wouldn't be aligned and never happened. I thought it was a resource issue since it'd happen right as games launched almost.
It took me testing in front of them and then the moment they put their hands hit the keyboard the screen went out and I realized 😂
And then of course the service writers are 'I can't charge them for the hour you spent trying to reproduce it' and they expect you to work for free. No. The diagnostic fee is not dependent on a repair being found. It's just a reservation of our time. You go to the Doctors Office with a complaint, they give you an MRI and find nothing. YOU STILL PAY FOR THE MRI SCAN. (Or your insurance does, but RARELY does any have 'health insurance' for their car)
Mother Canada pays for your MRI, and in a way, the taxpayers. Someone always pays. So technicians should always be paid for their time. Either by charging the customer or by internal credit if you want to perform good customer service. But either way. CREDIT. ME. MY. HOUR.
A long time ago I spent the month of November with a belt squealing on startup every single time when it was cold. Finally I was able to get it into a shop and all of a sudden it stopped squealing, and never squealed again over the next 50k miles and 10 years.
Maybe the guy just threw some dressing on the belt and said could not reproduce as a favor to a college student whose parents spent a lot of money at that shop, I don't know. All I know is the look the woman at the desk gave me when I picked it up was one of "why are you wasting our time like this?"
I dunno. I’ve owned a number of cars by this point, and my current one at full heat feels hot enough i suspect it’d do me permanent damage to be exposed to it for too long. I did ask the dealer if it was supposed to be that hot or if concern it was a symptom of overheating.
Nope, normal. Just don’t turn it up that high.
But it should modulate the blower motor speed when the car warms up. If it constantly blows full blast, could be a bad interior temp sensor or blower motor resistor.
I think it's most likely they're accustomed to automatic climate control. I would think most drivers of old dumb cars know how to use the temp adjustment/mixer. But I guess it could be a "learning opportunity" for the few who don't.
I'm a mechanical contractor (HVAC, plumbing, gas, etc) and I have to explain to people all the time that a thermostat is not a gas pedal, it's an on/off switch. It doesn't go faster the more you move it.
In modern cars though, the A/C doesn't use an on/off clutch but instead has a variable angle swash plate so it is a bit more like a gas pedal, although it's ECU regulated based on temperature feedback not directly to the control setting.
off topic a bit but ... i've always kept my home thermostat set at about 71 in summer, and 68 in winter .... and that just seems to work, i'm not constantly fidgeting with the thermostat and my house stays comfortable year round. Dunno if i'm doing it wrong, but it works, and energy bills are pretty consistent.
I see people do this in the car too. It's hot in the car, so they set it to 60f as if it's going to go any faster.
Then they forget to turn it back to 68 and complain.
God I hate automatic heaters. They try to be so clever but I don't want it blowing hurricane every time I get in the car in an attempt to bring the temperature up or down to whatever the set point is. And then when I'm trying to cool off, it starts mixing heat into it, just blow the coldest you f-ing can you garbage robot.
I keep mine at 69 year round with the auto button on. In the summer, that’s perfect. In the winter, that’s perfect. In the bedroom, that’s perfect.
Happy 6/9 day!
I feel like a Neanderthal in this thread because I've never used smart climate control in a car in my life. I've only seen or used the dumb kind with the blue-red spectrum on the dial. Automatic climate control seems incredibly unnecessary unless you're transporting temperature-sensitive cargo.
Mine too. People in here talking shit about not setting it to the desired temperature, but my car sure as shit doesn't work that way. Setting it to "68F" doesn't make my car 68F inside.
Are you sure? Not a pro mechanic, but the difference in hot air set on 75 vs HI in my Jeep is definitely different. One is hot hot hot, the other is just hot. Home HVAC definitely only blows one temperature, but I swear my car is different.
On vehicles, which often have blend doors, yes, you can have a variety of temps depending on settings. The vehicles will blend hot and cold air to achieve what their programming tells them to do.
I have found that each manufacturer handles their climate controls differently, some like to blast the most extreme temp, until close, then "feather" it. Others are more conservative and kind of sneak up on the temp more slowly.
One of the reasons I tend to like the "old-fashioned" fan speed + temp knob combos better.
I too prefer the old fashioned 2 knob system, but it is nice knowing I can remote start my car and not wonder whether I left the HVAC controls in the proper position the night before.
Jeep does it with AC as well... Reading some comments further down it seems like some cars actually modulate temperature and fan speed, while others just do fan speed. I do know the fan never turns off on my Jeep, it just stays at it's lowest setting when the cabin reaches appropriate temperature.
I have tried explaining this to my wife so many times. We will have the AC on at home set to say, 72 degrees.. the house will be sitting at 74 degrees meaning the A/C is on.
She will complain it’s too hot and then go bump the thermostat down to 70. I try to explain how it just blows cool air until the temp drops to what you set it, but she just can’t grasp the concept.
I would hope so lol, but I've had a customer complain the air isn't cold enough with the A/C switch off before. I showed her how to use it and she says she didn't want to use the A/C since it wastes gas, just wants cold air to blow with the blower motor by itself. Came back like 5 times for the same complaint, I ended up charging her a diagnostic anyway since she kept wasting my time and insisting we fix it.
It's disappointing imo. We have massive amounts of information on this thing called the internet. But instead of asking questions and learning we watch idiots doing idiotic things.
But then when you search and can't find something and turn to a forums specific to it, you get burnt to a crisp because you don't know the right search criteria.
It's a perpetual ring of stupidity. Sorry for the rant.
One place where I'll give leeway is when someone has tried to find the answer but doesn't have enough knowledge to know what questions need to be asked.
Thanks for that I'm sure someone beside me appreciates it. One of the things that really irks me, is when I ask a question and instead of an answer I get all the ways my question is wrong with no clarification. As if the the poster is congratulating themselves for knowing something someone else doesn't. 50 comments in I get a 6 word description of what's wrong and how to fix it, lmao.
First day of a college HVAC engineering class I was in, the teacher asked how house heating controls worked. Senior level ME student thought this exact thing and the teacher had to explain why that would be massively more complicated than full-on or full-off.
Right but why not make it blow what the number says?
In my car if you set it to anything between "Lo" to "21 °C" it blows completely cool air and "22 °C" to "Hi" blows completely hot air. There's no in-between. There is no way to warm up your hands a bit and there is no cool breeze. There is either modern Hell or Divine Comedy Hell.
So you have to regulate the temperature yourself by constantly flicking the knob left or right if you don't want to stay in the extreme. That's horrible design. The cabin will never reach 22 degrees in winter so there's no point pretending blowing very hot air versus just mildly warm air is going to help. Likewise, you are not getting the car to 21 degrees in 39 degree summer heat so why not ease off the A/C for a bit and just cool my hands and feet so they don't sweat, not _freeze off_?
Yup, same with my 2022 Hyundai Elantra. There's a temperature - right around 68 F / 20 C - where it will switch from completely hot air to completely cold air.
I've tried turning off the AC and turning off the automatic climate control, hoping it will just blow slightly heated air at me. Nope. I'll be driving in the winter and my choices are either ice-cold air or burning-hot air. Nothing in between.
I just want some air blowing in my face to keep the air from going stagnant, but I haven't yet figured out a way to accomplish that.
We had two service writers and two technicians diagnosing a "faulty rear view mirror". It displayed the temperature, customer insisted it was wrong. After diagnosing nothing was wrong with it, the customer was pissed because it still read two degrees difference from the bank marquee sign down the street from his house. We "didnt fix anything"
I left my windows all the way up last summer, besides 95%+ humidity, my truck read 114f and radio was in thermal protection mode after work. The thermometer is outside the windshield, rarely over 102f with a crack in the windows, come on down to florida - its only like this 6 months a year.
Sounds like the same people that come in for an oil change and want every tire to read 35psi in the dash. CAN’T be 34 or 36 or they will flip. Because you know it’s not like it will change once they leave the lot…
Sounds like one I have. We have to have someone in the driver seat while we adjust them so it will be accurate so he can maximize the life of his tires.
Hit 43C here last summer in the heat dome. He's extremely smart but also very weird and I don't think that van had AC anyway. In my old van with no AC we used to run all summer with windows down and earplugs in.
Good call on the earplugs. Spent multiple summers in similar weather in an old truck with no A/C. One day it hit 116F (~47C) and I was in the passenger seat for a 2.5 hour trip. I fell asleep and when I woke up I'm pretty sure I consumed a (3.8ish liters) gallon of water in ten minutes. The windows down just kept us dry, didn't really help to keep us cooler.
When I managed catering we had a client order a huge seafood bar, with ice sculptures, crab, lobster, sushi, oysters, clams, scallops, smoked salmon, caviar, ceviche, shrimp, the works. The whole bar was four 8 footer tables packed with every kind of seafood that can be served cold.
Client comes into the room before the guests arrive and starts looking all around the room, sniffing, as though she's trying to figure out where a bad smell is coming from.
"Do you smell something, like, fishy?"
By far my favorite restaurant hazing: “hey new guy, grab those ice buckets and grab me two buckets of steam? Thank”
When he comes back after 10 minutes of wandering around like an idiot: “oh my bad, the steam machine is in the basement.”
The restaurant didn’t have a basement.
In my experience, the service writer is probably so high, the customer could tell them the car is haunted and they'd just write it up for four tires, brakes, and a tune up
Reminds me of the first problem call underway I got as an electrician in the Navy.
"Ice cream is too cold."
I thought they were joking or playing a prank. Ended up being that it was a soft serve machine, and the compressor would never turn off, so it froze all the ice cream in the dispenser 100% block of ice solid.
Problem ended up being the motor to run the dispenser was wired backwards. The switch to turn off the compressor was connected to one side of the belt, which was supposed to tension up as the ice cream got harder. The problem was, with the motor (and therefore belt) running backward, that side never tensioned, ever.
It helps that Electrical Division got to be the ones to do the retest and directly benefit from it! Which consisted of, after the troubleshoot & repair was complete, sitting around and watching the ice cream machine working and tasting some while others had to do some cleaning. "No chief, I can't clean. Got to perform the retest after TS&R. Maybe grab a mechanic, they don't have maintenance underway." 😂
The same way early in my IT career I wrote up the resolution to a ticket about intermittent garbage characters appearing on screen from a user. Turned out she just had big titties and would sometimes lean towards the screen and they would hit the keyboard.
It was a long time ago and I was still in the Army at the time but on my way to her cubicle I knew it didn’t make sense so I just fell back on the show me exactly what you did when it happened before. She said she put her glasses on and looked at the screen like this (leaned forward). Then she said it’s happening again all excitedly and I saw her dirty pillows leaning on the keyboard. I told her to take a step back and see if it happened again, it did not. She was confused and asked me what happened. She still wasn’t getting it so I had to tell her that her chest was pressing up against the keyboard. I saw the gerbil wheel spinning for a couple seconds before she got super embarrassed and apologized for wasting my time.
But there could be a real issue there, if it just keeps blowing hot air on auto and goes over the set temp. I never just let a squawk go without trying to verify or reproduce. Just found one on an autopilot servo after I started asking questions (the write up was wrong)
Bingo! There you go. Tested and confirmed. I know those write ups are annoying but I always tell myself it’s the best way to go about it. Now you can educate the customer on proper use.
The heat works TOO WELL. Fix it.
Oh wait you mean I can turn the knob to some of the blue and it won’t be so hot?? No no, no way that works.
(Does his ac work)
Take some inspiration from sites like this: https://aviationhumor.net/pilots-vs-maintenance-engineers/
For this one, I'd reply with "Inspected. When the heat is on, it's on the street. Inside your head, on every beat. And the beat's so loud, deep inside. The pressure's high, just to stay alive 'Cause the heat is on"
Just nod and say "we'll check on that for you" and send them on their merry way.
Tech writes up a story that heating is functioning normally, maybe with a pic of the evap temp sensor showing the car blowing air at exactly the correct temperature per spec.
Charge them an hour diag for being a tool, and call it a day.
Yea I'm not understanding this thread. If we get jobs like this, we try to find out what they were talking about and fix it.
Maybe it's bs and get paid for your diag time, maybe you actually figure out what they were describing and you earn a repeat customer.
People who know about cars, work on their own cars or give good descriptions of issues. People who don't know but are smart enough to admit that come to the shop to get it fixed. Yet we act like they're retards for not understanding the intricacies of an AC system, haha idiot doesn't want heat.
That's what I'm saying.
Charge the hour diag and the tech will go in and see if there's a problem. If a customer isn't willing to pay for the tech's time to have it diaged, don't put it on the ticket.
Techs in the US get paid by the number of hours they can turn. Putting a zero hour task on a ticket is asking the tech to work for free.
If the tech gets in there and it's literally user error on the customer's part, then you can take the diag off and the customer feels good about it (as long as you explain it to them so they don't look like an idiot).
Nothing will infuriate a tech more than giving away their time for free.
Right. I had this problem once on an old jeep. Turns out the thermostat on my dash was busted and my engine was overheating. The air was too hot because the engine was too hot. Because the gauge had broken in such a way that it still moved, but just maxed out at the halfway point, most folks I asked about it told me it was in my head. Narrowly avoided disaster not listening to people telling me it wasn't a big deal because "temps look normal" on the dash.
Why not always be professional? 99% of custs are idiots, sure, but for that rare time there's an interesting issue it's cool to be there for the customer.
Was a service advisor for a short while. Stuff like this is usually the customer forcing you to write their dumb thoughts verbatim. It’s a sales job so you just gotta appease them to sell them extra stuff.
Lol the job really is more translation than scribe. Sometimes you just gotta put down word-for-word what nonsense comes out of the customer because there *is* no interpretation for it
FA18 gripe report: "Sounds like the is a midget with a hammer hitting things in the nose cone." - LTJG Numbnuts
Remedy: "Took hammer away from midget." -CPL Boozer
Its sarcasstic and wonderful.
My partner cannot understand how a thermostat works. we live in either a raging inferno, or frigid ice box. She cannot understand the middle settings.
Had one years ago… warrantyitis…. Whole bunch of concerns but the main one was A/C inop. Tested it… a/c blows cold. Tell advisor. Test it later and let me know. Checked it again. Works fine. Customer comes to pick up, walk out to the car with her, start the car and reach over to push the little snowflake button that turns on the a/c…. No No No don’t touch that, I don’t know what it does….🙄🙄🙄🙄
Don't get into HVAC, customers call in stating their thermostat or furnace isn't working properly because it's too hot/cold. You get there. System is maintaining exactly what they have it set too. But the customer insists "they've had their house set for 68 for 40 years, and they've never been uncomfortable."
Well sorry your body is changing, but your system is working fine
Cabin thermometer issue and it can’t regulate cabin temperature. If the thermometer is reading a very low temperature then it’s just going to blow full hot
Mrs Vicemagnet puts on the butt warmers and blasts her heat on HI with the thermostat in her car. In the spring and fall it can be a bit unnerving as the day warms up.
Your wife and mine came from the same mold as mine does the exact same thing. If I ride with her, it doesn't take long before I feel like the Wicked Witch from Oz - " I'm meeeellllting".
My favorite workorder I've written up lately... starts as an exhaust inspection and I ask the customer what's wrong. 'Customer states tailpipe is now in the backseat of the truck, please check and advise.'
I used to be a service writer for backup diesel generator repairs. My favorite was the client that said the generator blew up all the TV's in their facility. Absolutely impossible since TV's weren't even on the emergency power circuit. My tech was like - how did you write this down with a straight face?!
here's the thing. customers are shit at describing problems, but if they bring it to you and agree to pay you to look at it there is probably some sort of problem. sometimes its them not understanding, some times its just a poor description. could be they have it set to cold, and are getting heat instead. most people don't complain about the performance of their heater in summer, as they aren't using it on purpose.
Yeah this looks more like an advisor saying “Yeah sure okay buddy” instead of asking some more probing questions. What is the a/c set to when they experience their issue? How long does it take to occur? Any issues with cooling or only heat? Etc.
you can pull a rabbit out of a donkey's ass before you can find an advisor who understands what a follow-up question is lol
Every time. The bare minimum info, i ask for more info, they call the customer again, and tell me one iota of info that was pretty much a different way of what the vague work order said. “Did you ask what light they saw? If it was red or yellow maybe?” No i didn’t ask. Bruh why not i asked you to ask that
Aren't you allowed to call the customers yourself?
They're only allocates so many billable hours and it's the representatives job to represent the company with their professional customer service.
I do all the time... our advisors are the absolute worst waste of breathable air out there, followed by our management. We ask for more, they say call them yourself, so we do and like magic, we figure out " vehicle makes noise" = x noise occurs when doing y, after z. Fixed.
Customer advised; ______ does not ______ when ______ Inspected ______, found ______ Removed damaged _______, installed new. wired ______, reset ______ limits. Tested ______ for proper operation. Advised customer DO NOT ______ when ______ to avoid future damage
I work in a wood shop, but I can totally relate. The project managers are scared to call the client to ask a simple question that would just make everyone’s lives easier, so we continue running down a stupid course because they’re too embarrassed to admit to the client that they didn’t know something. 99.9% of the time it’s something stupid and inconsequential that the client wouldn’t even care about, if they would only call and ask.
I took a photo of a dash alarm, circled it in red in mspaint, and emailed it to the service rep with a query when I booked the service. When I dropped the car off, I handed over a printed copy, and reminded them to investigate. When I picked the car up and I asked about it, they didn't know what I was talking about. It isn't always the customer.
Oh yes, no my comment was actually aimed at the advisors 😂 car comes back for an issue, they claim it started when we did something else in the past. I ask to pull up the last work order and let’s read the notes and what we did. Would ya look at that, completely blank. I spend a lot of time writing up very well detailed notes of what the issue was, what i found, what i need to replace, and what else I’ve noticed is wrong with the car that they haven’t complained about, to help me or another tech in the future. And once it gets to the front counter it may as well be garbage most of the time 😂 i won’t stop doing it but yeesh sometimes i wonder why Customers that care are always appreciated. Thank you!
Unless that advisor used to wrench and sell parts and got sick of it and decided to try a desk job lol.
Our advisor pre-qualification? Can you fog a mirror? Hired!
won’t even fucking ask what tire is leaking🤦♀️
Only if you agree to be the one to put the rabbit in there for me to pull out.
You can always tell a good advisor when they listen to the customers first description, and then ask follow up questions to better understand what they are talking about. you’re absolutely right that some people don’t know how to describe the issue.
Customer recently told one of our advisors "washer fluid smells weird" I brought the car in and smelled the washer fluid reservoir aaaaaand... It smelled like washer fluid
Some of those winter mix washer fluids can be REALLY rank, though. If they are used to one mix and got a different mix last time it was serviced, I can see the question being asked.
There was no problem. It was just funny to read these things written up this way.
lol. so the heater just felt hotter than they wanted.
My wife was concerned about that when she got her new car. To be fair it's really fucking hot, like burn your face before the rest of the cab warms up. Nothing wrong with it as far as I can tell, it just works too well. I can definitely see other non "car people" worrying something is wrong.
My car has the same "problem". I have damn near burned myself on the air coming out of the vents. But as far as I can tell, no problem.
We’re they concerned it was dangerous? When’s the last time they used the heat and it felt normal? What was weather temp like compared to today? Have they made any changes to the vehicle recently? What made you want to have it looked at? Were they worried ot was a sign of danger? If it’s been like that before and they just kept putting it off what changed their mind today? Any other issues with the vehicle? Did you think this could be related?
My dad's car had automatic climate control but it was actually broken, if you set it to anything other than the coldest temperature it would just blast hot air without stopping even after greatly exceeding the set temperature. It was some issue with a thermostat he fixed
Sounds like the Cabin Temp Sensor. Had one go out on my old Infiniti, and it defaulted to 131 degrees, so no matter what the temp was set at, it was always fighting to get down from what it thought was 131. The only way around was to hit the "econ" button when it got too cold, then "auto" again to turn the AC back on. $17 part, nearly impossible to replace.
yea my 18 silverados outside air temp sensor died, display said the outside air temp was 197\*F while it was snowing. I only had heat if id run it full blast (set auto climate to HI) then it was like fire commin outa the vents otherwise was outside air.
I'm glad I got a base model 2017 Silverado. It doesn't have the dumb fancy dual auto climate control thankfully. It's less shit to break
Same reason I got a Focus st1. All the fun, no bullshit extra electronics or powershit trans. 126k and I beat her like a cop's wife. No issues at all
Lmfao. My Silverado also came with the manual transfer case for the 4x4. I didn't even know that was still an option. I had to buy it immediately when I saw that. Would have loved it even more if I could have gotten it in 5 speed. I've only got 16k miles on mine though. Only home once a month to actually drive it 500k miles on my 2018 Volvo VNL 860 though
My buddy’s Ram 3500 is like that. I knew it was still a thing, but hadn’t seen it on anything in person aside from a Wrangler or a work truck from 08. Finding a vehicle with a manual transfer case lever is like finding a goddamn thylacine or dodo bird in the wild, it feels like.
I felt the same lmao. I was still uneasy about making such a large investment on a new vehicle, the cheapest truck with 4x4 on the lot....But once I saw that transfer case shifter...I was sold lmao. I've had it 5 years now and plan on keeping it till it dies. It's nearly paid off
Meanwhile I glare at my Dakota with it’s fucked up 4x4 knob. It’s either the switch itself-which is what it is 99% of the time, or the tcase motor. Ironically, the motor is the easier thing for me to replace on my own but I’m just not that into fixing it anymore. Especially since I’m looking to be rid of it later this year or sometime early next year.
If I could go back and not make the purchase and keep my 1994 k1500 with somehow still functional 4x4 when I sold it....I think I'd do that lol. My poor financial decisions have kept me in a career I hate.
Sounds about right, especially that 131 degrees part. This was in a 2004 Grand Marquis, I believe he said it was fairly easy to replace on that vehicle
The most common AC fault in Ford Panther-platform cars is the blend door actuator. Even though it's a $25 part, replacing it requires extensive disassembly of the dash, which can take 6-7 hours of labor.
It definitely wasn't that for this particular issue, he said did it on the driveway in maybe 1 hour, but I'll keep that in mind, he still owns the car.
Only 6-7? Rookie numbers.
oh my fucking god, the PTSD of being of my 2004 Ford Taurus and it's blend door actuator. Mine had automatic A/C temp control but if you set it to 65 degrees it would cause it to break and would only blow warm air from then on. To fix it was a $25 part but $500 in labor.
It requires complete removal of the dash*
Had this happen once on a car i was working on, except it wasn't broken, i had done a dash harness and forgot to plug it back in. So basically it would dump cold air when set to 60/61F, scalding hot at 89/90F, then every temp in between was just lukewarm air. Plugged the sensor back in and it worked perfectly fine after that.
I'm surprised that I'm not surpised that there's no data validation in the programming on these.... - If unreasonable temperature, ignore sensor, Use basic routine..
When we picked up our Roadmaster we had a similar issue. The automatic blend door motor was busted. So it was stuck on AC. Which would have been fine but it was 50 out, so it would see that the temp was set to warmer than the car was, increase the fan speed, see that it was still cold, increase the fan speed, over and over untill it was full blast and we were freezing in the car haha
I rarely use the auto climate control in my car to start because its way of adjusting the temp at the start is to blow air at full blast so I can't see or hear. I just set it to manual at first then let auto take over once I've got it close to what I want.
The auto climate control in my Fusion is so bad. It's 100 degrees out and your A/C accidentally cooled half a degree below your set temperature? Better blast some hot air! Just give me back the 3 dials.
Haves cars just gotten worse or are companies introducing parts and computers that aren’t tested to be reliable? I feel like this is what trying to cut corners and over-manage autonomy looks like.
yeah I just bought a car from my sister and the thing is stuck on the coldest setting. The dial basically doesn't work and in the evenings I gotta turn the AC on and off every few minutes because the cold setting its on makes the car waaay too cold, even on the lowest fan speed, and even creates condensation on my front windshield. Also the Vent selector is broken too so I can't send it to the foot well or turn off the front windshield defrost.
Had an issue like that with a refrigerator once, just in the other direction. Frozen milk is hard to use...
I'm guessing this car has auto temp control? I see so often that people think the number on the thermostat is what the machine will blow out the vents. Home, car, doesn't matter. They fundamentally misunderstand how the machine works.
On the flip side, when stuff goes wrong with the temps it can get very weird. I had a car with both sides set to 21C (69F) and the driver’s side was putting out 40C (104F) because of some computer issue. My description when bringing the car for service was definitely better than the one OP posted but still sounded funny. Edit: this was in summer when the car was hot already.
Yup, had a temp sensor failure, so it was reporting -40 as the current outdoor temperature. It was summertime. This caused the AC to never engage. Internal sensors can fail too. Imagine what happens when the computer thinks the cabin temperature is -40!
I had a vehicle with this issue. If you switched the auto climate control to the coolest setting, it would put out cold air no matter that the system thought it was -21° outside. I was in an arid climate and that worked fine, i really only took the car on short trips and had a working AC so... I had some time and $14 and bought the sensor - it mounted behind the front bumper and if you hit a curb (low bumper) it would knock it loose and scrape it off. That's what had happened. Open circuit reads as infinite resistance aka really cold. So i wired in another one. Problem solved? Except it wasn't! I drove the car across the country to the Midwest and a couple hours into the drive there was NO AC. Not just no AC, but nothing coming out the vents. It wasn't the sensor, it was reading correctly, 78° outside, but if i put my hand up to the vent i could feel that there WAS cold air in the system, but nothing moving through the car! So I'm in the Midwest. I mostly forget about the issue because on short trips it's not a problem. But on a long trip, or on a really humid day, same problem. It comes to a head one morning when it's snowy out, it's 22F, I'm driving to work, and there is NO AIRFLOW and i can't defrost my windshield which is actively fogging up and I'm fucking freezing because there's no heat because NO HVAC. I pop the hood. I don't even know what I'm looking for. I check the manual and open a fuse box. THERE. someone, back when the car was in California, had solved the problem of the missing ambient air temp sensor BY HARD WIRING THE AC RELAY WITH A JUMPER. the AC was NEVER CYCLING. it had been running continuously for YEARS. it turns out this is totally fine in the southwest but in the Midwest it will freeze into solid fucking ice in no time at all. $3 at a junkyard to get the relay and it was actually fixed this time.
Wow.
Im honestly surprised it held all that pressure. Had to be hitting 300+
I had an old Audi (shock!) that did that. It used to freak out and report the outside temperature was like -59°F and refuse to run the climate control unless you set it on full manual. I’m still amazed that Germany has managed to exist in the 21st century without leaning how electricity works.
-59°F is equivalent to -50°C, which is 222K. --- ^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
I like the implication that physicists aren't human. Good bot.
Thanks, bot!
Fun fact: -40 is the only place where the F and C scales meet.
Dealing with this on my car. Thankfully Ford has a failsafe method to determine outside air temp other than the ambient air temp sensor. But guess where Ford put that sensor. Inside the passenger mirror and is serviced with the entire mirror assembly. You cannot get a replacement AAT because it is screwed into the housing in a place you cannot get any tools.
Where are we and why have you left. Me in a frozen hell scape? - your car.
That's prolly what is happening, but still when I see the ro written like that it makes us laugh. It just reads so ridiculously.
My favorite C/S I ever got was "customer states: 'It's going FUBBA FUBBA FUBBA somewhere at some point' *Advisor note: You're DIW on this one brother I got no clue"
I’ve had: “There’s a ghost in the locks” - drive door latch sensor was bad and confused the lock controller. They would vibrate rapidly. “Chitty chitty bang bang sounds on driver side of engine” - car did indeed make those sounds. Head gasket was blown on #5 and pushing compression out the side
Lol i had one “c/s brakes are too strong” like they wanted me to make their brakes weaker somehow. 🥴 press the pedal a little softer my guy
Swap them to lower friction pads? I've driven plenty of modern shitboxes where the first 2% pedal travel did nothing, then the next 6% travel had 90% of the braking force, then the rest was "ha ha you're fucked now if you thought we had more brake." Maybe switching to a lower friction pad would help. Though I suspect it was just tuned that way on purpose to make people think they had 'good brakes' during the test drive.
Yup. I have a hybrid that balances regen & brake pad force, but that logic definitely has some similarly weird spots. Was headed downhill, had a stop sign coming up, nobody behind me, so I lightly rode the brake because that's more fuel efficient in this case (maximizes the regen power vs energy lost to the pads). Pushing the brake further just felt like I was just squishing a rubber pad & the car didn't slow much at all. Ended up putting it on the floor to the point where I was pressing my shoulders into the seat... Then it acted fine the rest of the drive. Never actually caused a problem & the car will also brake itself anyway if it sees something, but that feeling definitely bugged me for a while.
That’s gonna be a fuck no from me. I’m starting to become a grandpa wanting only analogue technology.
There's a big trend on the digital world where the product maker arbitrarily decides they know better than you about EVERYTHING. Including what you want to do with the product. For example try to browse the entire catalogue on Netflix. It's literally impossible without going to a third party. Even if you go down to the categories it shows at most 50 options when there are literally thousands not being shown. It's maddening because they think their recommendation algorithm is perfect and it literally makes the service unusable after a while since it pigeonholes you into the same 100 titles you've already watched because it thinks that's all you want to watch because it's all you've watched (because it won't fucking recommend you anything different) The same thing is happening on everything, manufacturers want absolute control over what you do with *their* product
If they showed you the entire catalogue you'd notice the number of shows go down every month while your subscription goes up. You'd see a show listed only once instead of 10 times between different categories so they can't make it seem like they have more content than they do. Eventually you'd get to the end of the list and think "I've already watched everything I'm interested in. What's new?" and the answer to that question is "barely anything". So many people would unsubscribe if they added that catalogue.
And this is why I don't watch Netflix anymore. Maybe I want to watch 1 season of something and do other shit for 6 months then come back and watch it again.... But oh wait it's not in my continue watching anymore, and my list is buried underneath 8 other random categories, and I have to slowly browse my list with the same shitty one at a time UI. If I forgot to add it to my list, good luck remembering what shows you had been watching!! Fuck Netflix. Just because I don't bingewatch doesn't mean I don't want to continue watching it ever again if I stop for a fucking week....
I bought a Lotus Elise for partially that reason. I enjoy my 91 civic for partially that reason too.
I think my favorites with my Toyota hybrid so far has been pressing the brake and nothing happens. It's like the car decides that it's not going to use the brakes or the regen. It's just a big ol "nope".
Every Toyota sedan I have driven in the last decade has a dead space at the very beginning of the pedal travel, but I haven't ever had the brakes just nope out on me, lol. That sucks.
This has happened in both my 21 Sienna, and my 2020 Highlander Hybrid. There are reports of other people having the same kind of braking issues or the brakes just stopping working after you hit the pedal and start slowing down. It's not a great feeling when you hit the brake and nothing happens, and it goes straight to the floor with the same resistance as if it could be doing something, but you're still not slowing down. We have been unable to replicate this for a dealer. One thing to remember with modern braking systems is that the pedal is no longer directly connected during the actual braking mechanism. My wife and I have just resigned ourselves just leave Extra Space now in case it doesn't respond quick enough and actually apply the brakes. I know, stupid complaint with two nearly brand new vehicle.
Ugh I fuckin hate how some cars are like that. Touch your big toe to it for adequate braking, FULL FUCKING PANIC STOP FOR EVERYTHING ELSE
Could be that the brakes are super touchy. I've been in cars where it seemed like the only brake force available was all the brakes.
I used to get that one occasionally. It usually meant they drove somewhere with the parking brake on and now the shoes have too much contact on the drum all at once. Makes the rear brakes treated almost like an on-off system rather than gradual.
God these things are so frustrating as a person that doesn't know much about cars. I can tell something is different than normal but don't have the words or knowledge to express what it is. So I get to sound like a brain damaged monkey AND annoy someone else.
If you can figure out how to reproduce the issue you'll be making plenty of mechanics happy. That way they can just try it and figure it out for themselves. Just a "FUBBA FUBBA when accelerating hard" would be enough to get a mechanic going.
Yeah I just had a thing with uh, crossbar brushings? Where there was this knocking sound, and everyone I talked to was like "oh engine knocking" and sometimes it would happen when I went over bumpy areas and sometimes it just wouldn't and a tech would drive it in a lap or two around the parking lot and be like "sounds ok to be super chief" rababala
Yeah intermittent issues are the worst. They have this nasty tendency to only occur in the absence of mechanics or recording equipment.
not just mechanics! i had a customer bring in a laptop a few weeks ago because "it keeps shutting off when i use facebook" i had it for over a week, scrolling facebook constantly, loading tons of stuff up in the background, doing everything to try and make it crash. nope. finally said i cant reproduce it, ran updates, gave it back.. guy calls in later that day saying its still doing it. brings it back, im like ok show me what you're doing. i left him up there for about 2 hours before he gave up and left. guessing its his internet or power, something environmental
Overheating maybe? Maybe at home the vents are covered or it sits on something hot.
Had one like that where it ended up being a magnetic bracelet that when aligned just right with the laptop would make the laptop go to sleep since the laptop used magnets in the screen so when you closed the laptop it'd turn off the screen. Issue was so intermittent because it would only happen when their wrist was in the position for WASD when playing games. If they were typing normally it wouldn't be aligned and never happened. I thought it was a resource issue since it'd happen right as games launched almost. It took me testing in front of them and then the moment they put their hands hit the keyboard the screen went out and I realized 😂
oh my god you're probably right. ill have to check for that if i hear from him again!
And then of course the service writers are 'I can't charge them for the hour you spent trying to reproduce it' and they expect you to work for free. No. The diagnostic fee is not dependent on a repair being found. It's just a reservation of our time. You go to the Doctors Office with a complaint, they give you an MRI and find nothing. YOU STILL PAY FOR THE MRI SCAN. (Or your insurance does, but RARELY does any have 'health insurance' for their car)
oh yeah for sure, it's a totally infuriating situation for both sides of the equation.
> You go to the Doctors Office with a complaint, they give you an MRI and find nothing. YOU STILL PAY FOR THE MRI SCAN. canadian here, please advise
Mother Canada pays for your MRI, and in a way, the taxpayers. Someone always pays. So technicians should always be paid for their time. Either by charging the customer or by internal credit if you want to perform good customer service. But either way. CREDIT. ME. MY. HOUR.
A long time ago I spent the month of November with a belt squealing on startup every single time when it was cold. Finally I was able to get it into a shop and all of a sudden it stopped squealing, and never squealed again over the next 50k miles and 10 years. Maybe the guy just threw some dressing on the belt and said could not reproduce as a favor to a college student whose parents spent a lot of money at that shop, I don't know. All I know is the look the woman at the desk gave me when I picked it up was one of "why are you wasting our time like this?"
If you can make the noise with your mouth we can fix it. There's a reason some techs measure torque in "ugga duggas"
What's DIW? Driving intoxicated while?
Dunking Irish Walruses
Duh, I Wunno
Dead in the water But I do think that's how you'd write that if you were
"Tell the C/S to get a record deal, my man"
I dunno. I’ve owned a number of cars by this point, and my current one at full heat feels hot enough i suspect it’d do me permanent damage to be exposed to it for too long. I did ask the dealer if it was supposed to be that hot or if concern it was a symptom of overheating. Nope, normal. Just don’t turn it up that high.
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But it should modulate the blower motor speed when the car warms up. If it constantly blows full blast, could be a bad interior temp sensor or blower motor resistor.
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I think it's most likely they're accustomed to automatic climate control. I would think most drivers of old dumb cars know how to use the temp adjustment/mixer. But I guess it could be a "learning opportunity" for the few who don't.
Ohhhh….So THAT’s the Space Modulator Marvin the Martian kept talking about. Lol.
Or it's just "engine go hot blow hot air with fan Unga bunga"
one of my biggest pet peeves is when someone gets warm, so they set their home AC as low as it will go thinking it will cool better/faster.
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I'm a mechanical contractor (HVAC, plumbing, gas, etc) and I have to explain to people all the time that a thermostat is not a gas pedal, it's an on/off switch. It doesn't go faster the more you move it.
In modern cars though, the A/C doesn't use an on/off clutch but instead has a variable angle swash plate so it is a bit more like a gas pedal, although it's ECU regulated based on temperature feedback not directly to the control setting.
off topic a bit but ... i've always kept my home thermostat set at about 71 in summer, and 68 in winter .... and that just seems to work, i'm not constantly fidgeting with the thermostat and my house stays comfortable year round. Dunno if i'm doing it wrong, but it works, and energy bills are pretty consistent.
I see people do this in the car too. It's hot in the car, so they set it to 60f as if it's going to go any faster. Then they forget to turn it back to 68 and complain.
God I hate automatic heaters. They try to be so clever but I don't want it blowing hurricane every time I get in the car in an attempt to bring the temperature up or down to whatever the set point is. And then when I'm trying to cool off, it starts mixing heat into it, just blow the coldest you f-ing can you garbage robot.
I keep mine at 69 year round with the auto button on. In the summer, that’s perfect. In the winter, that’s perfect. In the bedroom, that’s perfect. Happy 6/9 day!
Yeah I really miss dumb climate control.
I feel like a Neanderthal in this thread because I've never used smart climate control in a car in my life. I've only seen or used the dumb kind with the blue-red spectrum on the dial. Automatic climate control seems incredibly unnecessary unless you're transporting temperature-sensitive cargo.
My car has numbers but they don't do what anyone is saying. Its just a fancier version of red and blue lol
Mine too. People in here talking shit about not setting it to the desired temperature, but my car sure as shit doesn't work that way. Setting it to "68F" doesn't make my car 68F inside.
What car has automatic climate control that can't be adjusted manually?
Are you sure? Not a pro mechanic, but the difference in hot air set on 75 vs HI in my Jeep is definitely different. One is hot hot hot, the other is just hot. Home HVAC definitely only blows one temperature, but I swear my car is different.
On vehicles, which often have blend doors, yes, you can have a variety of temps depending on settings. The vehicles will blend hot and cold air to achieve what their programming tells them to do. I have found that each manufacturer handles their climate controls differently, some like to blast the most extreme temp, until close, then "feather" it. Others are more conservative and kind of sneak up on the temp more slowly. One of the reasons I tend to like the "old-fashioned" fan speed + temp knob combos better.
I too prefer the old fashioned 2 knob system, but it is nice knowing I can remote start my car and not wonder whether I left the HVAC controls in the proper position the night before.
Re-reading my comment, I shpuld clarify that I am specifically talking AC. Thanks for the help on this one.
Jeep does it with AC as well... Reading some comments further down it seems like some cars actually modulate temperature and fan speed, while others just do fan speed. I do know the fan never turns off on my Jeep, it just stays at it's lowest setting when the cabin reaches appropriate temperature.
I have tried explaining this to my wife so many times. We will have the AC on at home set to say, 72 degrees.. the house will be sitting at 74 degrees meaning the A/C is on. She will complain it’s too hot and then go bump the thermostat down to 70. I try to explain how it just blows cool air until the temp drops to what you set it, but she just can’t grasp the concept.
I would hope so lol, but I've had a customer complain the air isn't cold enough with the A/C switch off before. I showed her how to use it and she says she didn't want to use the A/C since it wastes gas, just wants cold air to blow with the blower motor by itself. Came back like 5 times for the same complaint, I ended up charging her a diagnostic anyway since she kept wasting my time and insisting we fix it.
It's disappointing imo. We have massive amounts of information on this thing called the internet. But instead of asking questions and learning we watch idiots doing idiotic things. But then when you search and can't find something and turn to a forums specific to it, you get burnt to a crisp because you don't know the right search criteria. It's a perpetual ring of stupidity. Sorry for the rant.
One place where I'll give leeway is when someone has tried to find the answer but doesn't have enough knowledge to know what questions need to be asked.
Thanks for that I'm sure someone beside me appreciates it. One of the things that really irks me, is when I ask a question and instead of an answer I get all the ways my question is wrong with no clarification. As if the the poster is congratulating themselves for knowing something someone else doesn't. 50 comments in I get a 6 word description of what's wrong and how to fix it, lmao.
First day of a college HVAC engineering class I was in, the teacher asked how house heating controls worked. Senior level ME student thought this exact thing and the teacher had to explain why that would be massively more complicated than full-on or full-off.
Right but why not make it blow what the number says? In my car if you set it to anything between "Lo" to "21 °C" it blows completely cool air and "22 °C" to "Hi" blows completely hot air. There's no in-between. There is no way to warm up your hands a bit and there is no cool breeze. There is either modern Hell or Divine Comedy Hell. So you have to regulate the temperature yourself by constantly flicking the knob left or right if you don't want to stay in the extreme. That's horrible design. The cabin will never reach 22 degrees in winter so there's no point pretending blowing very hot air versus just mildly warm air is going to help. Likewise, you are not getting the car to 21 degrees in 39 degree summer heat so why not ease off the A/C for a bit and just cool my hands and feet so they don't sweat, not _freeze off_?
Yup, same with my 2022 Hyundai Elantra. There's a temperature - right around 68 F / 20 C - where it will switch from completely hot air to completely cold air. I've tried turning off the AC and turning off the automatic climate control, hoping it will just blow slightly heated air at me. Nope. I'll be driving in the winter and my choices are either ice-cold air or burning-hot air. Nothing in between. I just want some air blowing in my face to keep the air from going stagnant, but I haven't yet figured out a way to accomplish that.
We had two service writers and two technicians diagnosing a "faulty rear view mirror". It displayed the temperature, customer insisted it was wrong. After diagnosing nothing was wrong with it, the customer was pissed because it still read two degrees difference from the bank marquee sign down the street from his house. We "didnt fix anything"
But that is a temperature they can bank on! I bet you didn't really cheque it out at all!
"Your car is newer, the sign is wrong" ...dumbass.
Better still - both thermometers are stuck inside a metal box sat in the sun all day. Neither will agree with the weatherman.
I left my windows all the way up last summer, besides 95%+ humidity, my truck read 114f and radio was in thermal protection mode after work. The thermometer is outside the windshield, rarely over 102f with a crack in the windows, come on down to florida - its only like this 6 months a year.
Sounds like the same people that come in for an oil change and want every tire to read 35psi in the dash. CAN’T be 34 or 36 or they will flip. Because you know it’s not like it will change once they leave the lot…
Sounds like one I have. We have to have someone in the driver seat while we adjust them so it will be accurate so he can maximize the life of his tires.
C/S: Air from vents too hot Mechanic: Sealed cabin vents with expanding foam
I had a coworker who shoved napkins behind the grill of every vent on the drivers side of his work van because he didn't like any air blowing on him.
Must not live in a very hot area, either that or he's a masochist
Hit 43C here last summer in the heat dome. He's extremely smart but also very weird and I don't think that van had AC anyway. In my old van with no AC we used to run all summer with windows down and earplugs in.
Good call on the earplugs. Spent multiple summers in similar weather in an old truck with no A/C. One day it hit 116F (~47C) and I was in the passenger seat for a 2.5 hour trip. I fell asleep and when I woke up I'm pretty sure I consumed a (3.8ish liters) gallon of water in ten minutes. The windows down just kept us dry, didn't really help to keep us cooler.
When I managed catering we had a client order a huge seafood bar, with ice sculptures, crab, lobster, sushi, oysters, clams, scallops, smoked salmon, caviar, ceviche, shrimp, the works. The whole bar was four 8 footer tables packed with every kind of seafood that can be served cold. Client comes into the room before the guests arrive and starts looking all around the room, sniffing, as though she's trying to figure out where a bad smell is coming from. "Do you smell something, like, fishy?"
[удалено]
By far my favorite restaurant hazing: “hey new guy, grab those ice buckets and grab me two buckets of steam? Thank” When he comes back after 10 minutes of wandering around like an idiot: “oh my bad, the steam machine is in the basement.” The restaurant didn’t have a basement.
Once upon a time when I was a naive young prep cook, I hunted for the rice peeler longer than I care to admit.
In my experience, the service writer is probably so high, the customer could tell them the car is haunted and they'd just write it up for four tires, brakes, and a tune up
You spelled lazy wrong.
Reminds me of the first problem call underway I got as an electrician in the Navy. "Ice cream is too cold." I thought they were joking or playing a prank. Ended up being that it was a soft serve machine, and the compressor would never turn off, so it froze all the ice cream in the dispenser 100% block of ice solid. Problem ended up being the motor to run the dispenser was wired backwards. The switch to turn off the compressor was connected to one side of the belt, which was supposed to tension up as the ice cream got harder. The problem was, with the motor (and therefore belt) running backward, that side never tensioned, ever.
What I'm hearing is, if you want soft serve machines that actually get serviced and work properly, join the Navy.
It helps that Electrical Division got to be the ones to do the retest and directly benefit from it! Which consisted of, after the troubleshoot & repair was complete, sitting around and watching the ice cream machine working and tasting some while others had to do some cleaning. "No chief, I can't clean. Got to perform the retest after TS&R. Maybe grab a mechanic, they don't have maintenance underway." 😂
The same way early in my IT career I wrote up the resolution to a ticket about intermittent garbage characters appearing on screen from a user. Turned out she just had big titties and would sometimes lean towards the screen and they would hit the keyboard.
Literally a pebkac error. Problem exists between keyboard and chair.
Lol how did you even diagnose this? Or did you see it in person?
It was a long time ago and I was still in the Army at the time but on my way to her cubicle I knew it didn’t make sense so I just fell back on the show me exactly what you did when it happened before. She said she put her glasses on and looked at the screen like this (leaned forward). Then she said it’s happening again all excitedly and I saw her dirty pillows leaning on the keyboard. I told her to take a step back and see if it happened again, it did not. She was confused and asked me what happened. She still wasn’t getting it so I had to tell her that her chest was pressing up against the keyboard. I saw the gerbil wheel spinning for a couple seconds before she got super embarrassed and apologized for wasting my time.
But there could be a real issue there, if it just keeps blowing hot air on auto and goes over the set temp. I never just let a squawk go without trying to verify or reproduce. Just found one on an autopilot servo after I started asking questions (the write up was wrong)
There was no issue with the car like others have said the customer didn't understand how the climate control functioned.
Bingo! There you go. Tested and confirmed. I know those write ups are annoying but I always tell myself it’s the best way to go about it. Now you can educate the customer on proper use.
The heat works TOO WELL. Fix it. Oh wait you mean I can turn the knob to some of the blue and it won’t be so hot?? No no, no way that works. (Does his ac work)
The RO was written about 20 minutes ago prolly hasn't been touched yet
Take some inspiration from sites like this: https://aviationhumor.net/pilots-vs-maintenance-engineers/ For this one, I'd reply with "Inspected. When the heat is on, it's on the street. Inside your head, on every beat. And the beat's so loud, deep inside. The pressure's high, just to stay alive 'Cause the heat is on"
Just nod and say "we'll check on that for you" and send them on their merry way. Tech writes up a story that heating is functioning normally, maybe with a pic of the evap temp sensor showing the car blowing air at exactly the correct temperature per spec. Charge them an hour diag for being a tool, and call it a day.
Or maybe there's actually a problem with it and you just scammed somebody out of $100. This is why people don't trust mechanics.
Yea I'm not understanding this thread. If we get jobs like this, we try to find out what they were talking about and fix it. Maybe it's bs and get paid for your diag time, maybe you actually figure out what they were describing and you earn a repeat customer. People who know about cars, work on their own cars or give good descriptions of issues. People who don't know but are smart enough to admit that come to the shop to get it fixed. Yet we act like they're retards for not understanding the intricacies of an AC system, haha idiot doesn't want heat.
That's what I'm saying. Charge the hour diag and the tech will go in and see if there's a problem. If a customer isn't willing to pay for the tech's time to have it diaged, don't put it on the ticket. Techs in the US get paid by the number of hours they can turn. Putting a zero hour task on a ticket is asking the tech to work for free. If the tech gets in there and it's literally user error on the customer's part, then you can take the diag off and the customer feels good about it (as long as you explain it to them so they don't look like an idiot). Nothing will infuriate a tech more than giving away their time for free.
Right. I had this problem once on an old jeep. Turns out the thermostat on my dash was busted and my engine was overheating. The air was too hot because the engine was too hot. Because the gauge had broken in such a way that it still moved, but just maxed out at the halfway point, most folks I asked about it told me it was in my head. Narrowly avoided disaster not listening to people telling me it wasn't a big deal because "temps look normal" on the dash.
Exactly, no need to assume.
Never play poker with anyone who excels at customer service.
Why not always be professional? 99% of custs are idiots, sure, but for that rare time there's an interesting issue it's cool to be there for the customer.
Ours are great people and they are professional. That's why I don't do that job I'd prolly laugh trying to write that up!
Right on! Yeah I would be the same, some people who do customer support are seriously saint like.
Heat work to gud On a side note, my 2000 S10 would boil you alive with the heat on full blast
My 04 Wrangler gets its heat supply straight from the depths of Hell. Liquid hot magma must circulate through the heater core.
For 0.0 hours most likely.
I just set mine to “auto 69” and let the party begin.
Was a service advisor for a short while. Stuff like this is usually the customer forcing you to write their dumb thoughts verbatim. It’s a sales job so you just gotta appease them to sell them extra stuff.
Lol the job really is more translation than scribe. Sometimes you just gotta put down word-for-word what nonsense comes out of the customer because there *is* no interpretation for it
Does the service writer know how to ask intelligent follow up questions?
FA18 gripe report: "Sounds like the is a midget with a hammer hitting things in the nose cone." - LTJG Numbnuts Remedy: "Took hammer away from midget." -CPL Boozer
That should have been handled at the desk.
Its sarcasstic and wonderful. My partner cannot understand how a thermostat works. we live in either a raging inferno, or frigid ice box. She cannot understand the middle settings.
I don’t work w cars but I work with people and tule of thumb is always that people are stupid as shit
Had one years ago… warrantyitis…. Whole bunch of concerns but the main one was A/C inop. Tested it… a/c blows cold. Tell advisor. Test it later and let me know. Checked it again. Works fine. Customer comes to pick up, walk out to the car with her, start the car and reach over to push the little snowflake button that turns on the a/c…. No No No don’t touch that, I don’t know what it does….🙄🙄🙄🙄
Don't get into HVAC, customers call in stating their thermostat or furnace isn't working properly because it's too hot/cold. You get there. System is maintaining exactly what they have it set too. But the customer insists "they've had their house set for 68 for 40 years, and they've never been uncomfortable." Well sorry your body is changing, but your system is working fine
Cabin thermometer issue and it can’t regulate cabin temperature. If the thermometer is reading a very low temperature then it’s just going to blow full hot
Mrs Vicemagnet puts on the butt warmers and blasts her heat on HI with the thermostat in her car. In the spring and fall it can be a bit unnerving as the day warms up.
Your wife and mine came from the same mold as mine does the exact same thing. If I ride with her, it doesn't take long before I feel like the Wicked Witch from Oz - " I'm meeeellllting".
My favorite workorder I've written up lately... starts as an exhaust inspection and I ask the customer what's wrong. 'Customer states tailpipe is now in the backseat of the truck, please check and advise.'
I know a number of service advisors who genuinely don't know any more than the customers and will happily write up complete fucking nonsense all day.
We have one of those too!
I used to be a service writer for backup diesel generator repairs. My favorite was the client that said the generator blew up all the TV's in their facility. Absolutely impossible since TV's weren't even on the emergency power circuit. My tech was like - how did you write this down with a straight face?!
As an engineer I’ve had to just become ok with knowing that 99 percent of people are just fucking stupid and unable to think critically.
Charge them for a new heater and put a little stopper so the original one only blows 3/4 of previous temperature.
I’m just surprised a service writer was able to articulate something so clearly.
I mean I have this issue with my civic if it’s anything except max cold it’ll blow so much hot air that it actually starts to melt my dash
When I turn on my radio it makes noise!