Loyalty

I am not a car guy. I never really have been. I like driving really nice cars, but don’t like paying for them. As a result, I drive a 1995 Honda Accord that I have owned for 15 years, and that has almost 200,000 miles on it. Most of the time, this works in my favor. However, this last week it did not.

I was driving to Virginia for a series of meetings and stopped to get some breakfast. I noticed when I stopped that a small amount of steam was coming out from under the hood. I popped the hood, and found a hairline crack at the top of my radiator from which antifreeze was oozing. I was about to set off on a stretch of road that can only be described as desolate, so I needed to do something.

I called the mechanic in North Carolina that I have been a customer of ever since we moved here. I told him what was happening, and asked his advice. He gave me a few options, and told me how to accomplish prepping the car for each one. I then called him back probably eight times in the next 20 minutes, as I worked thru his suggestion, just to confirm I was doing stuff right. Each time I called, he was patient to answer what I am sure were moronic questions, and made sure I felt comfortable with the instructions. He was confident I could make it to my final destination, and wished me well.

In the intervening time, the lady at the drive-thru had called a local mechanic and I had the chance to talk to him and ask what to do. I got the response that you would expect from a mechanic in a town where I had no history, and who also knew that I was in a pinch. He “offered” to tow my car in, put it up on the lift, and do a full diagnosis. No matter how much I told him that I was sure this was the only crack, and really just wanted to know if it was OK to drive it, he insisted on a full workover. The cost for this workover? It would be $75 to tow it, plus their regular hourly rate to diagnose it, and it would take at least an hour or two to figure out what was wrong.

I thanked the local mechanic for his time, and set off for Norfolk. As I was driving, I called my brother and asked him if he could get me set up with a mechanic there. He called the guy he has been a customer of for 20 years, and got me an appointment for as soon as I could get to town.

What’s the point of this story? Because of the loyalty and trust built by years of doing business together ( both my mechanic and my brothers ), I was able to deal with a bad situation, get to my meetings and get my radiator replaced so I could return home. I am confident if I had called either place as a new customer, I would not have received the kind of treatment I did.

Sometimes, business is not about the lowest price or the best deal. You can use that methodology for buying a bar of soap. However, as I found this past week, the loyalty that my brother and I had shown two separate businesses paid off in spades when I was in a pinch.

Another lesson learned in how I want people to think about my business.