KMart Follies in the Auto Centre

Ah! The good old 1960’s-70’s working at the KMart Auto Centres. One of the most difficult things to deal with was the Kmart policy of “Satisfaction Guaranteed or Money Cheerfully Refunded”. Now that might sound like a good policy and for the most part it was, but not always. There is always the shopper out there who wants to beat the system. In Windsor Ontario I managed the Kmart auto centre near the entrance to the bridge to the USA. In those days a popular service was “Engine Tune Up” and was a widely advertized service special. One Monday morning a man came into the garage for a tune up on his V8 Chevy. We did all the usual things, new spark plugs, points condenser and rotor, set up the carb and installed a new air filter. The customer drove off apparently happy with the service. The following Saturday he arrived at the front service desk with a claim. I was paged to the front of the store to handle the complaint. This man had received a speeding ticket during the week and was blaming the tune up as the reason!!. He claimed the car was idling too fast and that is what caused him to get a speeding ticket. I took him out to his car, and true enough it was idling a little on the fast side. However, putting the car in drive without touching the pedals I let the car coast, we only reached about 12 MPH hardly a cause for speeding??? The owner tried to insist it was my fault but I stood firm. I could hardly stop from laughing this was such a ridiculous claim. In the end we took his car back into the shop and slowed the idle down then sent him on his way to pay his speeding ticket. He was mad and said that’s it, I will never deal with you guys again!!!!! If we had paid his claim he would have probably returned the following week with a parking ticket claiming we were to blame. Those were indeed the good old days!!!
God Bless and keep reading.