Story Time

[Denise Trimble]

I know, with all this experience and time served; there are a lot of great stories our contributors have to offer.
I once worked for a dealer in a bigger city (with an interesting customer base) and overheard a counter guy's interaction with a customer:

Customer: (part in-hand) I need a cruise control servo for my '89 Celebrity
Counterman: No problem! I have one and it will be $XX.XX plus the core charge. I see you've brought the core with you.... (core is returned to GM and so on)
Two weeks later, customer comes back, pleading with this counterman to have his old servo back because the new one "didn't fix his problem". After a while of explaining reasons why he could not have it back, regardless of the fact it was no longer in the building, the counterman began to get a little smirk on his face.
He told the customer "Can you spell DOG as in dog house?" The customer replied "D-O-G". The counterman asked "Can you spell CAT as in cat scratch?" The customer replied "C-A-T". The counterman said "Can you spell F@#K as in cruise control servo?" The customer was perplexed but replied "There is no F@#K in cruise control servo."
Counterman: "THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU!!! THERE IS NO F@#KING CRUISE CONTROL SERVO!"

That was 33 years ago. There are many more, but that is my all-time favorite.

[AlanHomes]

I do not remember what year it was. The television show 60 Minutes broadcast a story about rear shoulder belts and how GM offered them as an accessory for years. The next day our phone was blowing up with calls, one customer had a 73 Cadillac Fleetwood ragtop asking for rear shoulder harness.
Remember this is back in the paper catalog days, rotary dial phones, on the last two pages where nobody ever looked were accessories. And there were part numbers for shoulder harness, only available in black, but at that time, still available. Had to make a few calls to support for vehicles that had no offerings, was usually told they were not designed for such, only a few select models.

Speaking of rotary dial phones, we had a DTMF pad that would be placed over the microphone of the handset for touchtone usage. When GM Tracs????, I think???? came around, we could place orders via a touchtone phone, CSD, CSO, VIP etc. Enter your dealercode and password, part number etc.

Every dealer had the same password at the rollout, and were instructed and advised to change it. The generic password was GMPART. If you knew the dealercode of another dealer, and they did not bother to change their password, it was simply a midnight run to the 7-11 payphone, call GM, place an order for a few school bus frames to the dealer that did not change their password. Not that I ever did this.

Next story will be about the pizza delivery to the service lane, long before caller id. Maybe one about ordering taxicabs for the same service writer.

[jaybird62]

any of ya'll old enough to remember getting key codes faxed in with that vin conversion ?

the first gm dealer i worked at had the old "silent"700 thermal paper printers ..

and i remember the parts manager had a cable he had to plug in to transmit the stock orders..

the old card file was still there.. luckily i never had to use one of those..

[AlanHomes]

any of ya'll old enough to remember getting key codes faxed in with that vin conversion ?

the first gm dealer i worked at had the old "silent"700 thermal paper printers ..

and i remember the parts manager had a cable he had to plug in to transmit the stock orders..

the old card file was still there.. luckily i never had to use one of those..

I remember card files, and the drum fax machine with the telephone cradle. Each card had the part number, and if stock was running low, there would be a yellow "flag", if the last part was sold, there would be a red "flag". Gawd, that was a long time ago.

We would pick up the phone, hit the pager code and start farting over the PA!!! Ahhhh, to be young again.

[AlanHomes]

The front office called back to parts one morning. Telephones were screwed up, customers on hold could hear our conversations, be it swearing at service writers, or talking shit with customers.

But I think the ultimate one that I was involved in......... Randy from the body shop walked back to parts, had a laugh box, push the button and it would start laughing. We played it over the PA a few times, nice and loud. A few minutes later the general manger stormed back to parts hollering "Who did that, it was very unprofessional" and stormed off to ask the service writers etc the same question.

One of the secretaries I was good friends with walked back a few minutes after that with a grin on her face and asked me "Al, what did you do?" I played stupid, she knew I was involved and thought it was funny as shit. Well what happened is, a deal, repair or something along those lines had gone sour, the customer was up front in the showroom, started yelling he was going to sue. About that time the laughter played over the PA.

[Denise Trimble]

[quote="jaybird62"]the first gm dealer i worked at had the old "silent"700 thermal paper printers ..
quote]

The first one I worked at had that too!

[jaybird62]

the first gm dealer i worked at had the old "silent"700 thermal paper printers ..
quote]

The first one I worked at had that too!

o,lc.... showed daily sales..
ctrman number, vv voided the sale he had been working on forever....
not that i would do that either....
that had to be in the 80's...

i think that system was called vim net ? i remember when gm went to pulsat.. the guy who put in a ton of them around here still comes in here some... he drove a 6.2 diesel suburban square body when he was doing that.. it was breaking in half long ways when he parked it at close to a million miles...

[Parts007]

Our body shop was a 1/2 block up the road. Less than a 5 minute walk which included crossing a street. Whenever the boss was away we used to page a new salesperson to the body shop. Every sales person was, at some point, called over there. I never realized the innocent victim in all this…. The body shop manager, who was wondering why all these salespeople were coming over to see him.

[AlanHomes]

Before there was such a thing as caller id, we would call the local taxicab companies....Red Top, Yellow, Airport, Dupont and have them sent to the service lane for the same PITA service writer. Of course they never caught on as the dealership was always calling taxis for customers. The service writer would throw a hissy fit, jump up and down like Daffy Duck. For some reason he always blamed the parts department.

The local Pizza Hut was called for a delivery order. No caller id at that time also. Another pissy service writer was at lunch, two supreme pizzas would show up with his name as the order/recipient. Someone always ended up paying, the service writers all had lunch, when the unsuspecting writer returned, all were thanking him for lunch but how was he going to pay back whomever forked over the cash?
We got the call in parts about this one, it was all we could do to keep a straight face, I had to vacate the premises as I could not hold in my laughter.

[AlanHomes]

When I first entered the business after school in my Senior year, it was at the New Car department, Koons Ford, Falls Church VA. The department was on Roosevelt Street, the main showroom, body shop, service department was on Broad St, aka Route 7.

In the sales office was what we called a Sripto, connected to a dedicated telephone line. Not sure of the actual name of the device, but it had a form and in the New Car department was a receiver with the same form. Date, type of vehicle, color, any add-ons which usually was an undercoat job or radio sway. The salesman would fill out his form using a pen connected to a mechanical arm and it would duplicate exactly in the New Car department. If they wrote "Alan is a royal pain", it would duplicate on the other end. Did not matter what was written, each stroke of the pen matched exactly on the other end.