RE: Warranty work refused
Let me give you another viewpoint. I'm not trying to argue or be a butthead, but please bear with me.
Years ago I worked in service department management in the automotive field.
Warranty work is a different situation than customer pay work.
I can understand, on one hand, a dealer refusing to do warranty work if you bought it somewhere else. If you live in the same town as your, well let's just call him your "hometown dealer" and you decide drive hundreds and hundreds of miles to save a few bucks, then you come home and expect your hometown dealer to do warranty work, you're going to have issues.
We had people, like I said, drive hundreds and hundreds of miles to save a few dollars. Then they'd come back to hometown and bring in a laundry list with a lot of complaints, and want to wait on it or get it in and out that same day. Their essence was "screw every body else, I want mine fixed at no charge, and I want it now!"
What about the people who bought from home town local dealer? They go in for warranty work and there is Joe Blow wanting his in now! And Joe Blow is worried so much that he brings in a laundry list of every possible potential problem, "just in case" it goes bad later. This takes a lot of time, and therefore money, to pay the technician, which the manufacturer will probably not pay for. Nothing found to fix, no reimbursement.
And as far as the argument about "Snowbirds or other travelers just traveling though and needing a repair"? Well, most likely they will get fixed under warranty, because people do understand they don't live there, they're traveling and not near home and their hometown selling dealer.
I will tell you for the gospel truth I've personally seen and witnessed people driving in and bragging to everyone how they saved XXX$$$ buying their car out of state. Mr Hometown dealer made no money, and his employees realize that they need to stay in business and take care of their bread and butter. If the person was nice we would eventually work it in, but forget about putting you to the front of the line ahead of everyone else.
I could go on and on but I think I've made my point. There are always two sides to every story.
RE: Advice on Costco or Sam's Club?
Sams sucks. It's like going to a crappy flea market.
Costco is much better. The employees are paid much better, with better benefits, then Sams, therefore the employee attitude and service is much better than Sams.
Generally speaking, both have a lot of the same stuff for sale, but Costco goes above and beyond and offers a LOT more variety and higher quality stuff than Sams.
The only good thing I can say about Sams is that they provide some competition to Costco. If Sams went out of business it would not be a good deal, competition wise, but other than that I wouldn't care one tiny iota if Sams closed up.
