Last week I got a flat tire that I’ve been putting off getting fixed. Today I was walking past Tony’s Tire Service on Armagh Street, Christchurch but found out that they were closing in the next 5 minutes.
I spoke to a mechanic, and asked if I could just leave the car in their carpack for the weekend and see them after the weekend to sort things out. He was genuinly concerned that I was going to be without a car for the weekend, and laughed with a sort of disbelevement when I replied that I didn’t care!
Anyway, he said that if I get the car here in the next 10 minutes he’d fix it up on the spot. I had to explain that I was about a 10 minute walk away already and I still had to jack the car up and replace with a spare tire (something that was probably going to take a while because I’ve not changed a tire since I was about 12 years old). I agreed, but only on the condition that he wouldn’t wait for me.
30 minutes later I drove in, and everything was shut up, but there he was waiting. He even said don’t worry about getting out of the car, I’ll grab the tire from the boot, come back Monday and I’ll have sorted it out.
Something that I should mention here is that Tony’s Tire Service don’t even charge for puncture repairs (on the contition that you have one of their stickers on your back windscreen).
It really amazed me that here was a mechanic – someone who might not really consider it part of their duty to satisfy customers beyond the actual repairs they do – who was a real customer champion: going out of his way, staying after hours, for an unknown customer, for a repair that probably isn’t going to be charged.
Total props to Tony’s Tire Service!
Yay! What a nice man.