Smile!

I’m not being funny about it, or anything, but I feel a bit intimidated when I walk into a garage.

There’s something about mechanics which makes me feel uneasy, I’m not a dolly bird so it’s not like they’re undressing me with their eyes, I just get this impression that they are laughing at me: ‘silly woman, she doesn’t understand engines, let’s rip her off!’

It’s not cheap to run a car in Spain, but we don’t really have many other choices, the public transport if you don’t live in the city isn’t all that, so to get from A to B you have to have a vehicle.

The local roads seem to wreck tyres as well, I’ve been a driver for 24 years and I’ve never seen tyres literally shred and fall apart before. Well, now I have.

We hadn’t had the car serviced for a while, we need it daily and it’s not easy to give it up to a garage who may have it for a couple of days (they always seem to take longer than they say they will be), but the faithful Kangoo was beginning to make noises about it being time for a bit of loving.

So, I bit the bullet and booked it in with a new garage I’d seen on Facebook, FIX-it Mallorca. Well, actually firstly I went to check them out in Son Castello in Palma, and asked for a quote. Amazingly I was greeted with a smile, in English and given a written quote for my car’s rehabilitation. It took me aback to actually get any of those three things, but all of them? Come on, surely that’s too good to be true? FIX-it it turns out is also the first garage in Mallorca where if you can repair your own car you can rent a space and literally do it yourself, not an option for me, but if you’re handy with a wrench it’s good to know.

Well, the big day dawned for the Kangoo, and incredibly we got there on time to drop it off at 8am. ‘I’ll call you when it is ready,’ said Arnie, a big handsome Dutch guy (handsome is not relevant I know, but he is, and rather charming as well).  I waved ta ra to the car, fully expecting to see it in three or four days (as per the norm), but he was as good as his word, and he called at 1pm the same day to tell me it was ready to pick up (and popped a couple of jokes in there as well about re-spraying my car Dutch orange). There were no scary extra costs on the bill, and it’s running like a dream (as much as a van pretending to be a car can be that is).

Now it’s kind of sad that good service is such a big deal that I am writing my column about it this week, but it’s true, it’s still something to shout about here in Mallorca.

There was no fuss, no lies, no crazy ‘we told you to come back tomorrow’ none of it. Many businesses in Mallorca could learn a thing or two from FIX-it’s approach to their patrons: be friendly, tell the truth, be reliable, be a good price, value your customers, and do your best work. Which would you rather have, your current clients raving about you, or your ex-clients complaining? I know which one I’d choose.

www.familymattersmallorca.com

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