So yesterday afternoon I schlepped back up to Costco. Having been told by two different car dudes to stay off the freeways with the Vintage 2006 tires, I followed the surface streets way to Hell and Gone up to Yorkshire and 27th Avenue. This is a very time-consuming schlep: about 40 minutes, and the second one I’d had to make in two days. Monday a.m. when I went up there to buy new tires, they said they had the tires, but if I’d wait a day and make an appointment, they’d give me a discount. Since the bill was shaping up to be $500 and I’d just dropped $214 on replacing the mirrors, I agreed to come back.
The mirrors. Yes. You’ll recall that the side mirrors have been held on with Gorilla Tape for some time, hm?
Well, that cat got out of the bag.
I drove myself to the Mayo’s ER with the giant bellyache that led to their slapping me in the hospital and chaining me to a saline drip for five days. So my car was left in the parking lot.
My son arranged to pick up my car and drive it home, which meant…yes. I’m afraid so. He found out about the Gorilla Tape.
Totally abhorred. I didn’t think he was EVER going to stop lecturing me.
So, nothing would do but what, last week, I had to put Chuck the Wonder-Mechanic up to replacing the mirrors.
While the car was at Chuck’s, I asked him to rotate the tires.
When I went to pick up the tank, he said they couldn’t rotate the tires because they were cracking so badly they probably wouldn’t survive being taken off and remounted. “You need new tires! And please…don’t drive on the freeway with these things!”
{sigh}
So Monday morning while I’m talking to THE cutest most handsome and drop-down-dead adorable young tire salesman and arranging to get Costco to change the tires the next day, I say to him, “I have to drive out to Sun City this afternoon and I’d like not to have a flat between here and there.”
His Cuteness says, “Well, just be sure to stay off the freeway.”
Moving on to {argh!}
Well, obviously, I made it to Sun City on the surface streets — that was really a treat! — and home, and back up to the Costco, all without mishap. Turns out those tires were installed in 2006. They were nine years old!
Because I stopped commuting when I was laid off in 2009, they still had plenty of tread. And I’d never noticed the cracking, which was obvious once the guys pointed it out.
At any rate, I’m sitting there interminably — this experience took two hours, but I’ve brought the laptop and manage to grade a 2500-word Spanglish paper and do a couple of other small projects, so I’m keeping myself amused — when the excessively cute Costco tire dude says, “Uhmmmm…. I made a mistake yesterday.”
“Don’t have the tires?”
“The ones we had are the wrong ones.”
Ooops.
What he proposes to do to make this right is to give me four tires that they DO have in stock, which are a grade better than the $500 worth of tires I paid for yesterday, AND to give me a discount on top of a discount. When all that is said and done, I pay $311 for FOUR tires, better than the ones he’d originally ordered.
THEN his boss says, “Let us buy you lunch.” (It’s 3:30 or so by now.)
I say, “Why, shore!” So he comps me whatever I want from the snack bar.
They don’t have filet mignon with béarnaise sauce, so I order up a piece of pizza and a soda.
Predictably, this stuff upsets the ailing stomach. But that doesn’t matter. Now I don’t have to use the few items left in the larder to fix dinner, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had a pizza. So that was nice.
LOL! Is that or is that not the most amazing transaction ever?
Thank you for this funny and insightful blog….Couple of things …. first based on your experience I for one now understand why Costco will one day rule the world… To admit a mistake and then make it right and then to provide a “comp” meal on top. Makes me want to run out and get a Costco membership right now…And that is the beauty of this….Now you are a Costco customer for life…but more importantly you will share this story….over and over again…Goodwill like this is a precious commodity!!!
Thank you for this article as it reminds me to address issues I have with an “extra vehicle” with low mileage that has tires that may be approaching 10 years old that are “checking ” on the sidewalls. Sadly these tires weren’t cheap and the vehicle has very low mileage …65K…BUT I love this thing. It’s about 18 years old and has a lot memories stashed away in it. And even though it only gets 15mpg….it is a hoot to drive and recently I find myself looking for excuses to drive it. My plan is to put a couple bucks into it on some repairs…be nice to have a temperature gauge that worked… and replace my geriatric Michelins. It would seem Costco would be the ticket for new tires!
Yeah…this is the kind of thing that buys customers. Considering that I spend over $200 every time I walk into the place, the couple hundred bucks they sacrificed on this transaction will earn them $2400+ over the next year.
What…65K? It’s practically a new car!!
Seriously, mine has 132,000 miles on it now, but Chuck thinks it will run at least to 150,000 and maybe to 200,000 miles. Let’s assume it “only” makes it to 150,000. That gives us a remaining lifetime of 18,000 miles.
BUT…since I’m not commuting and I don’t drive this vehicle out of town anymore, I’m only putting about 3,000 miles a year on it. So its remaining lifetime for me is probably around six years.
In six years, with any luck, true self-driving cars will be on the road. And that’s what I’m holding out for, because one of those things could keep me out of the life-care community for anywhere from two to ten years. Given that those places cost around 70 grand a year, even if such a gadget costs a hundred grand, it would save me money if it kept me in my home for just two years. After that, every year it helps me stay out of an institution is gravy.
This vehicle is a “conversion van” that was the “rage” back in the day. DW used to drive this when the kids were little and it was great. Has a TV…DVD player….lots of room and rear seat that goes down into a bed…It has been an easy keeper and is a pleasure to drive and would bring little in a sale. My thought is it is a good back up vehicle….cheap to insure and for a couple bucks in repairs should last long enough to get “historic tags”.
Total score at Costco. I think we may have had this conversation before but I love the place. Sometimes we just stop by for lunch, ya can’t beat the prices at the food court, and you can people watch.
In my mind it is akin to the medieval marketplace.
Cool story. Costco definitely comes through when it comes to customer service. It’s amazing that other retailers continue to sacrifice customer service in the name of profitability, yet Costco does not take on this practice and continues to book record profits.
Not only that, but they apparently treat their employees decently. People who work there have nothing but good things to say about the place. When I’ve mentioned that I was laid off in front of one of those folks, the person invariably says “you should apply for work here!”
The only other organization where I’ve heard people say that is the federal government.
That’s fantastic! Sure wish we had Costco in Arkansas. *sigh*
😉 It’s never too late to move to Arizona!
Alright, every one of these stories makes PiC go HAH! We have an ongoing battle about how Costco’s pretty good, but maybe not always the go-to store for everything. He firmly (tongue in cheek) believes Costco serves all needs and even I have to admit this tends to make me want to use them more.
Well, it’s not for everything. For one thing, they don’t have everything. I still end up having to go to a few other places for things like lettuce in quantities that won’t spoil before I can eat it, scallions, and meat that supposedly comes from animals raised in relatively less inhumane conditions. Melons, especially those sweet soccer-ball sized watermelons, are invariably sold in packs of two in which one is ripe and the other is not — to get only ripe melons, you have to buy at a store that sells one at a time.
The big issue with Costco, though, is that it’s Impulse Buy Central. To get out of there without something that you don’t need, you’ve gotta have self-discipline of steel. Nay, titanium!