A bit of jugaad
What this country (USA) needs is a bit of improvisation from time to time instead of a programmed formulaic response to situations.
Driving back from Michigan, we stopped at my friend Praveer's house in Cleveland. As we were about to leave, we noticed that there was a puncture in one of the tires. Fortunately, there was a shop nearby for tire repair and we went there.
The guy at the shop looked at the tire and said "yes, that'll have to be replaced" and began looking at the other tires (which were fine) and measuring their tread marks. I asked him what he was looking for and he said "if the treads on the other tires are worn to less than (some strange fraction of inches) then we'll have to replace all the tires." I pointed out that the car had done less than 10,000 miles (why do these people insist on not using the perfectly logical metric system?) and that it was unlikely that all the tires were worn out and needed to be replaced.
Now if this was India, we would have stopped at a roadside tire wallah and he would have fixed the puncture for Rs 50/-.
In any case, we bought a new tire from him and drove back to Pittsburgh.
The next day, there was an alarm light on the dashboard and it seemed to me that the car was vibrating while braking. Worried that the brakes may fail, I called the Honda service center. The lady at the other end said, "I can give you an appointment for Monday (5 days later)". I asked her, "do you think it's safe to drive the car in this condition for 5 days?" She said "I'll transfer you to one of the mechanics." The guy at the other end listened to the symptoms and said "we'll have to look at the car. I'll transfer you to appointments (the first lady)." I appealed to him "she's going to give me an appointment for Monday but it does not seem safe to drive the car like this. Can you have a look at it today?" He thought for a while and said "you can bring it in on Thursday (tomorrow)." I thanked him and said, "great, how long do you think it will take?" He said "you can bring the car in tomorrow but we won't be able to look at it until we have a free spot (Monday)."
The whole thing was getting both infuriating and frustrating. At which point my wife took over.
She called the guy who sold the car to us, found he was on vacation but still somehow managed to convince someone to have a look at the car the same day. It turned out that the light was the low tire pressure light. Apparently it has to be manually switched off after fixing the problem. The vibration while braking was normal.
Protocols are good but there has to be enough freedom of action (or common sense) to know when to breach protocol.
Driving back from Michigan, we stopped at my friend Praveer's house in Cleveland. As we were about to leave, we noticed that there was a puncture in one of the tires. Fortunately, there was a shop nearby for tire repair and we went there.
The guy at the shop looked at the tire and said "yes, that'll have to be replaced" and began looking at the other tires (which were fine) and measuring their tread marks. I asked him what he was looking for and he said "if the treads on the other tires are worn to less than (some strange fraction of inches) then we'll have to replace all the tires." I pointed out that the car had done less than 10,000 miles (why do these people insist on not using the perfectly logical metric system?) and that it was unlikely that all the tires were worn out and needed to be replaced.
Now if this was India, we would have stopped at a roadside tire wallah and he would have fixed the puncture for Rs 50/-.
In any case, we bought a new tire from him and drove back to Pittsburgh.
The next day, there was an alarm light on the dashboard and it seemed to me that the car was vibrating while braking. Worried that the brakes may fail, I called the Honda service center. The lady at the other end said, "I can give you an appointment for Monday (5 days later)". I asked her, "do you think it's safe to drive the car in this condition for 5 days?" She said "I'll transfer you to one of the mechanics." The guy at the other end listened to the symptoms and said "we'll have to look at the car. I'll transfer you to appointments (the first lady)." I appealed to him "she's going to give me an appointment for Monday but it does not seem safe to drive the car like this. Can you have a look at it today?" He thought for a while and said "you can bring it in on Thursday (tomorrow)." I thanked him and said, "great, how long do you think it will take?" He said "you can bring the car in tomorrow but we won't be able to look at it until we have a free spot (Monday)."
The whole thing was getting both infuriating and frustrating. At which point my wife took over.
She called the guy who sold the car to us, found he was on vacation but still somehow managed to convince someone to have a look at the car the same day. It turned out that the light was the low tire pressure light. Apparently it has to be manually switched off after fixing the problem. The vibration while braking was normal.
Protocols are good but there has to be enough freedom of action (or common sense) to know when to breach protocol.
I think car service business in the States should have model similar to medical care; urgent and emergency care centers in addition to appointment based system :). Even in India, specialist cardiologists have minimum 2 months of waiting period!
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