Auto Gossip

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32636, 18 June 1971, Page 7

Auto Gossip

by

A. J. P.

Giving service How much service do service stations give, and how much should they be expected to give? I think most motorists would answer “very little” to the first part of the question, although when one considers garageowner’s comments about the cost of labour and the small profit on petrol the answer to the second query may be harder to find. But take the case of a correspondent, Mr R. K. Logan, who says that in the course of a 3000-mile trip throughout New Zealand he bought 82 gallons of petrol at more than a dozen different servicestations—and only once did he get his windscreen cleaned without having to ask for it to be done. Hard to disagree And to be sure of getting tyre-pressures checked, he had to ask before he bought the petrol, otherwise his request would be forgotten as a new customer arrived, Mr Logan writes. “One wonders fust why oil companies bother to advertise. The petrol appears to be the same, and the service uniformly bad,” he writes. From my experience when travelling, I cannot quarrel with Mr Logan’s comments. On one occasion when I asked a garageman if he would Milestone for MG Production of the M.G.8., Britain’s best-selling sports car, has now reached 250,000, British Leyland has announced. Since the "B” was introduced in 1962 nearly 200.000 have been exported, earning Britain s4oom in foreign exchange Of these, 135,000 have been sold in the United States.

mind cleaning the windscreen, all I got was a waved hand and the comment “There’s the cloth.” My mistake was I paid for the petrol before I asked, it seems. Theory and practice There are some service stations I refuse to patronise because of the rude and unhelpful attitude of the staff, and my own garage is one of very few I have encountered where one is likely to have one’s windscreen cleaned without asking. The difference in attitude between the happy, smiling and helpful fellow who appears on garage forecourts in television advertisments and the surly, curt and unco-operative person who sometimes appears under the same companies’ banners in real life is just too startling to be funny. Different standards Sometimes I think there is a special law applying to garages and service stations: “The quality of the service is in inverse proportion to the size of the establishment.” A generalisation, of course, but it is interesting how often a small garage gives a better standard of service than a large and more imposing concern. It is also noticeable that the standards of some concerns are excellent when they are small, but as they grow the standards slip at a corresponding rate. Quote of the week “In spite of what market research might suggest, there are many people who would prefer one or more map pockets in their car to an extra pair of nasty chrome strips down the sides.”—-Julian Mounter in “The Times” on the faults of modem British cars.