What is the weirdest customer request you have ever received?

[Cheeseburger]

I love the one about "no cheese" and the roll bar one!LMAO!!!

 

[2QWIK4U]

It is unreal the # of people who don't know what kind of car they own!!!I'm a parts mgr at a Mitsubishi dealer and they call or come in and want to price say a .....engine controller......"Well,I think it's a 95 or 98 not sure,just price me all of them!"
Me:Well if you'll give me about 6hrs I'll do that!!!!!!
Most people don't even know what the vin # is,you ask them for it and they stand there like you asked for their kidney or first born child.

 

[Welby]

Originally posted by 2QWIK4U

Most people don't even know what the vin # is,you ask them for it and they stand there like you asked for their kidney or first born child.

I assume you mean that they don't even know the meaning of Vin number, because I sure as Hell can't just tell you any of mine off the top of my head

 

[2QWIK4U]

I mean if you tell them they'll need to get the vin off the car for you so that all the options can be broken down.
Something else comes to mind,some of us sitting around the old shop where I used to work and a sales guy walks up and was telling us he wanted to get a little more out of his Mustang.We gave him different options to try and one of the techs mentioned that the stock cam wasn't that great for hp.
I swear this is true......the next day he came in and said he pulled the cam out and it didn't feel any faster or slower so he just left it out to save weight!!!!!! We all said well ......ok.He was a cocky salesman who wanted to act like he knew cars but had no clue.Of course it was a Rustang so he might not have been able to tell any difference

 

[EightSecV6]

We have never really had any strange requests, I have been in the Buick business pretty heavily for about 14 years and in general our customer base is intelligent. I did have an old retired policeman come in about a week ago and tell me he just paid $90 for a door panel pull strap for his grandson's GN an asked if I thought that was high... I did'nt know what to say!

 

[tc86gn]

I have never worked at a parts store but I have run across a lot of dumb parts clerks.

Especially at auto zone!!

 

[Pablo]

Yeah, no doubt, knowing about cars isn't a prerequisite to work there.

My coworkers knew nothing about cars.

 

[mygrain]

I tried getting a coil for my old ski boat with a carbed 305. The poor kid behind the counter could not begin to figure out how to process my request without knowing what kind of car the engine was in. I eventually started getting annoyed and told him just give me a coil for a 74 caprice. It worked but man was I annoyed.

 

[Buick From Hell]

The name of our business is in the phone book: "Williams & Sons Engraving"... we just answer the phone "Williams & Sons" which is already a mouthful...

It's amazing how many times the first words we hear are: "Do you do engraving?"

Speaking of people not knowing their cars: My cousin told me of a girl who came into his shop one day...

"My husband told me to bring the car to you guys for tune-up"

"No problem, what kind of car is it?"

After thinking a minute:
"Brown!"

 

[vicious6]

Working in the retail parts business for many years, I have about heard it all. Probably the ones that stand out in my mind are as follows:

1) My mechanic says I need a Massive Air Flow!!!



2) When I used to work at a local NAPA franchise store, I had this old guy come in and asking for a distributor cap and rotor button. I replied "well sir what knid of Dodge is it for?" He says "it's a Dodge truck". I was like ok, its a Dodge truck. I asked him what year dodge truck it was. He looked at me like I was an idiot and said he did'nt know. At this point I was thinking he shouldn't even be under the hood in the first place. I kept my composure and was thinking ok, we can still pull this off. I asked him what size engine he had. At this point he gets really bent out of shape about the whole thing and says "ah hell it don't matter, they are all the same!" Well needless to say, by this time I had had about all I could stand from this reject from Deliverance. I simply said ok, walked to the parts ilse, picked up the first cap and rotor I came to and sold them to him. About 3 or 4 hours later guess who comes flying into the parking lot! He comes in ranting and raving about getting the wrong parts telling me that he lived 1 hour away and screaming about the trouble I had caused him. I simply looked at him as calmly as could be with a silly smirk on my face and said "well sir you said they were all the same!" He slammed the parts down on the counter and did'nt even wait for his refund!!!


If I had a penny for every time I have heard "it don't matter, they're all the same" in the parts business. I would probably be well off!!!

 

[Turbo Indian]

I use to be a forman on a natural gas pipeline crew. I was running a gas service from the street to a house. before we even got started I went to the door & spoke to the home owner to find out where the septic tank was @. the 85+ year old man pointed and said it's on the left side of the house. well about 15 min. later my tractor is sitting abou 4' under ground in a full septic tank! I called the company superintendent, when he arrived the old man said, I told that little bastard it was there. it took a big rig wrecker to extract the tractor.