Servicing My Son’s 2021 Honda Accord and Our Broken Trust in ABC Auto Service
My son took his 2021 Honda Accord to 'ABC' for routine service—and borrowed his sister’s car the next morning, afraid to drive his own. What happened, and why is our family’s broken trust in 'ABC' so painful to discuss?
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For years, my family trusted an auto service chain with our vehicles. I’ll call it “ABC Auto Service” here.
From the days we drove Toyotas to our eventual switch to Hondas, we kept returning, even with brand-new cars still under warranty. They had earned our confidence through reliable service and honest dealings in scheduled maintenance, tire purchase, battery service, and so on.
As I began seeing more fellow Black Americans in the office and among the mechanics, I felt an added sense of pride. There is something comforting about seeing people who look like you doing well in a business you already trust.
But that is also what made the experiences that followed especially painful.
The first involved a nearly new car my daughter took in for routine maintenance, including an oil change. Afterward, we noticed oil spots wherever it was parked. When I finally opened the hood, the oil cap was missing. Oil had splashed across the engine, including the drive belts, and the dipstick showed dangerously little oil remaining.
Thankfully, the engine had not been damaged. Rather than risk driving it, we had it towed back to the shop. The shop apologized, attributed the error to the mechanic, replaced the cap, and replenished the oil. Mistakes happen, but this one could have cost us an engine in a car that was less than two years.
Later, when I took another new car in for service, a mechanic pulled me aside. He offered to do the work for less than the shop’s price if I paid him cash privately. Uncomfortable with the proposal, I asked whether he would give me a receipt and explained that I needed maintenance records because the car was still under warranty. He said he could not provide a receipt for the private arrangement and would therefore handle the service through the regular process.
By then, however, I was uneasy about leaving the car with him. I had no evidence that he would sabotage anything, but I worried about how he might respond to my refusal. So, I politely postponed the service that day. I called another ABC location and started using them.
Then came the tire rotations.
On one visit to the new location, I realized that I had forgotten to leave the wheel-lock key. Yet the paperwork said the tires had been rotated. When I asked how, the clerk said the mechanics had a way of doing it. I remained doubtful, but I did not argue. I took the car back home.
Before a subsequent visit with another car, I marked the front tires and photographed them. This time, I made sure to leave the wheel-lock key. When I returned, the clerk checked the paperwork and assured me that the rotation was complete. But I had already seen the marked tires still at the front. After I showed her the photographs, she called a mechanic, and the car was taken back in for the rotation I had been told was already done.
By then, our confidence in ABC was gone. We discussed the experiences as a family and stopped using the chain.
Recently, however, my son needed service for his 2021 Honda Accord on a Sunday, when the dealership’s service department was closed. He decided to give ABC another chance. Once again, a fellow Black employee privately offered him a lower price for cash outside the business’s official channels. My son declined and insisted on the proper process and a receipt.
They did the car for him. But the encounter troubled him enough that he was afraid to drive the car to work the next morning. He borrowed his sister’s car instead.
I later checked his car and found clean oil at the proper level, with the oil cap securely in place. That was reassuring, although it could not confirm that every aspect of the service had been performed correctly.
I was proud of my son for declining the offer. Saving a little money was not worth entering into an arrangement that appeared to divert payment from the employer and would leave him with a guilty conscience and without proper maintenance documentation.
What stays with us is the sadness. We had welcomed the opportunity to be served by people who looked like us. Instead, repeated experiences left us questioning both the work and the honesty behind it.
I hesitate to write about this because individual failures can so easily become ammunition for unfair judgments about an entire community. These encounters say nothing about Black workers generally, and the changing racial makeup of a workplace does not establish why its service deteriorated. Still, that caution cannot erase what my family experienced.
We know how damaging racial prejudice can be, especially when someone’s livelihood or opportunities are at stake. We rightly ask that Black employees be judged fairly, on their own conduct. That same fairness leaves room to acknowledge wrongdoing when it occurs, without turning it into a verdict on everyone who shares our race.
My disappointment comes from trust that was repeatedly broken, and from the affection and hope with which I first welcomed those familiar faces. I share this with sorrow, not satisfaction. Caring about our community must leave room for difficult truths, and for the hope that we can do better by one another.
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Nwankama Nwankama, PhD
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