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I just talked to Joel on the phone.

He asked me what the problem was, and I asked him if someone had contacted him from AAMCO head office. He told me they had. I asked him if they'd let him know what my whole complaint was. He told me they hadn't, which I thought rather surprising. He said that he was waiting for a fax from them. I suggested that he wait till the fax arrived before we continued. He suggested that, as he would be dealing with it anyway, I just tell him what the problem was.

So I told him.

He informed me that the world isn't perfect, and that neither is he. He is, he explained further, at the mercy of the people who provide the parts. This is his explanation why the job took as long as it did.

When I asked him why a company as big as AAMCO doesn't have a stock of parts for such a common transmission as my car's has, he seemed at a loss for words. "What can I say, Jack? What can I do? How can I appease you?"

When I explained that his promise that the car would be done by the monday, he told me that was his target, as he likes to appease his customers. He didn't seem to grasp that telling something one thing when you're aware that the facts may be otherwise is, by anyone else's definition, a lie.

But the main thing still comes back to the blowing exhaust. The damaged engine. He still evaded the question as to how he managed to drive the car in the test drive "three or four miles" and yet managed to acheive a speed of 40 miles an hour, to find the vibration I told him about.

Fact is, he was just evading my questions, still.

He wants me to take the car back to him so that he can "see if he can help me resolve the problem". But I don't trust him. I don't trust him for the inconsistencies that he's already presented me with.

I'm still pissed...

And frankly, I'm disappointed in AAMCO. Is this all they can do? Refer me back to the guy I've already told them I don't trust?

Pulling the wool over people's eyes is an art, I know. You do a bad job, you appease a customer with a few bits of nonsense, tell him to see if things improve, like "the smoke may just be the oil burning itself out of the system", and then you declare that it's "such a long time ago that you brought it in, I can't remember what we did".

Essentially, you pull the wool over people's eyes by making them wait, giving them more bullshit, and making them wait even further, till they finally give up.

And that, in my opinion, is precisely what AAMCO have done with me.

I wrote in my original email to AAMCO what I wanted from them. Not from Joel, but from the parent company. I don't feel that, so far at least, they've picked up the ball.