Blog 1 Bad customer experiance

Discussion Questions:

1.  From Don’s point of view, what was wrong here? What did the shop do

wrong that upset Don so much. (After all, they were fixing his van.)

-What the shop did wrong was take apart the engine without consulting Don about it first. As Don was only expecting the van to be in the shop for half a day and the fix not to cost too much it was a big surprise to Don when the shop told him it would take 3 to 4 days to fix and cost nearly 4 times the amount of his monthly mortgage payments. All of this without even talking to Don about fixing the van before they started the job. 

2.  From the repair shop owner’s point of view, what was wrong with Don

getting upset at them? What did they do right or wrong?

-Don should not have got to upset with the shop owner as he did ask for the shop to fix his car and gave no time limit or expectations on what he was expecting done and telling them how much he could afford before they started checking and fixing the car.

3.  What should have been done in this circumstance? If you were Don, what

would you have wanted to be done?

-The shop should have offered a discount on the repair of the vehicle, to an amount that Don could afford to pay, and the shop should have offered a loan vehicle for Don so that he had a vehicle to carry on with his work. This is what I would have wanted to happen if I where Don.

4.  When the repair was finished, and Don went to pick up his van, he took the

van and did not pay the whole repair bill. Did the repair shop have the right to

hold the van until they got paid?

-Yes the repair shop did have the right to hold the van until the bill was paid as the shop had only carried out instructions to repair the vehicle so they needed to be paid for the work that was done. Only once the bill was fully paid is when Don should have got his car back.

5.  If Don took the repair shop to court, what would you have ruled if you were

the judge? Should the repair shop pay for a replacement rental vehicle?

Should Don pay the whole repair bill? Should the repair shop pay Don for lost

business because he could not pick up and deliver clothes to his customers?

-If I where the judge I would have told Don that if he did not pay enough of the repair bill then I would have ruled that he should pay more, but not all of it as the repair bill would cost Don a lot more than what he could afford.  And if the shop had not yet finished repairing Dons van then they should offer a loan vehicle or rental vehicle for him to use until the shop has finished. But the shop should not have to pay for lost business as the shop was only doing as it was told to repair his vehicle they should have just offered a loan vehicle to use.

6.  What New Zealand laws relate to this story? What do New Zealand laws

say should have been done in this case?

-The link to the fair trading act was not working so I could not find out what the New Zealand laws would have stated. But I presume that it would state that Don would have to pay the repair bill in full and that the shop would have to offer loan vehicles to people whos cars are going to take a while to fix and the shop would have to pay Don for lost business.