The yellow paint jarred my memory.
When I picked up my new foreign minivan at a brand new dealership back in 02, there was a yellow scrape on the rear corner, exactly the same yellow that you have Chris.
"What happened here" I asked the service writer.
"It must have been there when you dropped it off this morning" he replied.
"It's the exact same color as the new paint on your parking lot poles" I said.
"This has happened before, customers bump into the poles because they are not paying attention" he gracefully pointed out with a smirk.
"Good point you have there. Tomorrow morning I will be here at 7.00 AM in the service drive talking to your customers as they wait to drop off their cars, I'll strike up a conversation with them and tell them about my wonderful experience I've had at your beautiful new dealership. At some point management will want to know why a guy is chatting to customers in the service drive and you can tell them all about it."
"Okay, as a courtesy I'll get a body man over here to buff it out, will that make you happy"? he said with a scowl.
"The paint's broken so that's not going to work, is it? I'll get an estimate and mail it to you and you can send me a check. You know, I was driving by a dealership one Saturday morning not long ago and there we're picketers walking around the dealership, the signs said they got screwed or something. On my return trip they we're inside in a circle having a pow wow trying to work out a resolution. They we're only out there about 30 minutes, I guess one lost sale can be expensive for a dealership. Good bye and have a nice day" I said.
I got the check and moving forward I document the mileage and condition to avoid misunderstandings.
