Thursday, May 7, 2015

Q: What do you call a couple of women in the front seat of a car?

A: Air Bags.
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Oh, this is outrageous and my intention was not to offend anyone but to relate it to a story of how times have changed and how we do business here at Holzhauser’s.

One rainy morning back in the early 1980s I was driving to work when a tractor trailer pulled out on me and cut me off.   I had two choices – either hit the tractor trailer or swerve to the left and hit a curb.   Since my car was a compact, I figured the lesser of the two evils was to hit the curb.   The tractor trailer driver went on his merry way and I ended up with a bent lower control arm and shifted subframe.

Fortunately, I had just began dating Joe several months before.   I took my car to the dealership where I purchased it to get it repaired.  Back then, being young (just barely 20) it was a whole different environment when it came to women and car repair.   I was totally intimidated by the service manager who was old enough to be my father.  He assured me they would “take care of me.”   After a couple of days in the shop, I picked up my vehicle and it didn’t feel just quite right.  Joe drove it and put it up on the lift at the shop where he worked.  He told me they did replace the control arm but that was it!   They did not pull the subframe or align the car to make the vehicle drive straight down the road.

Being armed with this information, I went back and told them that the subframe had shifted and the car was still drifting to one side.   They assured me that they knew what they were doing and, in no uncertain terms, told me that I did not know what I was talking about.  After I began explaining to them the problem in more “technical terms” thanks to Joe’s Auto 101 Crash Course, they finally listened to me and fixed the car properly. 

When Joe and I opened Holzhauser’s Auto in 1995, that scenario played over and over in my head.   I vowed to never treat anyone, particularly women, who came in to have their car repaired with such disrespect.  It was an unwritten rule in our shop then and now that everyone, male or female, would be educated in lay terms on what the problem was with their car, given an explanation on the best way to fix it and any questions they had were answered.

Now that we are celebrating our 20th Anniversary in business, I believe that my experience has made a difference in the way we do business.  We appreciate all of our customers - young, old, male or female -and we do our very best to make you comfortable when you come in for service.  After all, you are what keep us going and we hope for another 20 years of serving you!

Keep checking our blog for the latest news and tips from Holzhauser’s Auto!

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