Caring for the customers

Typical call, the owner has a van that he does all his own work on and it failed the emissions test. Being a 95 it gets the TSI which is a two speed idle test in Western Pa. My first thought was it's a van, yuck. I've never liked working on them and the older I get and the harder it is to move around it just gets more unpleasant. The guy was fun to talk to however and he wasn't really too interested in repairing it right now as much as he wants to do just enough that it qualifies for a waiver sticker. To get a waiver in Pa the owner only has to spend up to $150 attempting to repair the car. Only certified repair technicians can authorize a waiver so he was told to call us. When diagnostics and repairs are done by a shop the whole bill can be applied towards the waiver fee. If the owner does the work himself only the parts that were used qualify and he has to provide the receipts for the parts, have two failed emissions tests and then the technician has to confirm that the work was done and follow the rest of the routine to authorize the waiver. The customer had only put on about $70 in parts so he didn't qualify for the waiver yet, but they could be applied towards it and if we do the diagnostics that would get him to where he needs to be. He joked about just getting a bill to put him over the limit but I have my policy on that and if he has to spend a dime we make sure that he gets some value out of the expense and we really work towards making an improvement in the vehicles performance. (I won't throw parts for the sake of throwing parts). The last thing we agreed on was since this is a (conversion) van and the engine cover needs to be removed, he would pull the passengers front seat and have the engine cover fully exposed so that I would not have to spend any time doing that. He set his appointment for this morning (Friday).

This morning he called to let us know that he couldn't keep his appointment today. His son went into sudden cardiac arrest last night and he has been in the hospital with him all night and he had to head back there. The worst part was when he said that it doesn't look good for his son. Meanwhile he was apologizing for not being able to make it in and was worried that it would be an issue for us. All I could do was offer our sympathies and let him know that we would add his son to our prayers and re-assured him that his family was more important and taking care of his van can wait. We will be there for him when he is ready, and for him to not worry about us because I have plenty of work to keep me busy. Just thinking about what he was going through put a dark cloud on the whole day.