Mechanics

I need new tires.  It doesn't sound like much.  After all everyone who owns a car needs new tires from time to time.  It's something that I always dread though.  Not just because tires are expensive, but because I'm female.  In fact I often buy tires online so that I don't actually have to deal with any people because of the trouble I've had in the past as a female wanting to buy new tires.  Since I have a Costco membership that gives me cash back I decided that this year I would bit the bullet and talk to a real person about tires.

I went into the shop with the list of tires that I was interested in.  The gentleman behind the counter looked at my list and pulled up his prices for the tires I was looking at on Tire Rack.  He couldn't beat any of the prices.  Then unlike almost everyone I've asked for tires before he asked me why I liked those tires.  He listened to my answer and then proceed to offer me another tire that he thought would be better.  When he talked about that tire he talked about how it compared to the ones I was looking at in the features that I was interested in.  In other words he treated me like an intelligent person, who had done their research, and knew what they were looking for.  I was immensely grateful.  I was also extremely frustrated.  I shouldn't have to feel grateful for being treated with respect.  Let me share with you some stories from my past though to show you why this was so different and that that is a problem.

Long ago when I was first starting out my grandmother let me have her car.  The tires were bad and I went to the Firestone where I lived for new tires.  I bought the cheapest tires they had because that was all that I could afford.  While I was there they did their free inspection on my car.  They then came back to me with over $1,000 worth of work that needed to be done on my car.  They told me that without the work my car was not safe to drive.  I called my grandmother in tears.  I knew she didn't have the money to help me, but I didn't know what else to do.  She told me to take it to her mechanic.  She said that he was cheaper and that he would look it over and help me figure out what I needed to do right now and what could wait until I had a little more money.  I took him the list and he went over my car.  None of it needed to be done.

More recently I purchased a sports car.  It was the first time I'd ever owned a sports car and I lived in Wisconsin at the time.  At the time I worked as a delivery driver so I drove a lot in all kinds of conditions.  As such I decided that winter tires would be a necessity.  I found some that I liked on Tire Rack and did the research on them, but at this point I'd never bought tires online before.  I decided to check with the dealership that I had been referred to for work on my car.  After keeping me waiting for an hour they told me that there were no winter tires for my vehicle and offered me all season tires that they sold.  They didn't say they didn't carry them, but that they didn't exist for me car.

Not long after the winter tire incident I stopped in at a shop that I had been delivering sandwiches to.  I asked them for a specific set of tires to see if they could beat the price online.  They didn't even look.  Instead of the high end performance tires I asked for he tried to sell me low end all non performance tires.  He pointed out how long the tread life was on them.  He pointed out how they were the tires that he put on his mom's car.  I wanted to yell at him, but as I was there delivering food and just asked on my way out I had to stay professional.  I was tempted to ask him next time he came in and ordered the high calorie Italian sandwich if he would prefer our honey mustard chicken.  After all it did have just a fraction of the calories of the one he was ordering.  I suspect he wouldn't have been very happy.

These are just some of the stories that I have.  Finding someone to work on my car without ripping me off or treating me like a child is a constant struggle.  I've had so many mechanics do things that didn't need to be done or change the price after the work was done refusing to honor the quote I was given.  Things that I never see happen to my boyfriend or the men in my life.  I and I suspect many women have a history of such bad interactions with these kinds of places that being treated with the basic respect any customer should receive stands out.  This is a problem.