REPAIRMEN MAY GYP YOU-1951
"For six months," says The Neiv York Herald Tribune, "the two authors of this perturbing little volume made a nationwide investigation of the higher nature, if any, of the American repairman. Buying a used car of distinguished make, they engaged the assistance of a lady who looked more helpless than she was, and traveled 19,000 miles, with 1,700 calls on repair shops." "And no one," adds the Boston Post, "could ever pass this book with indifference Whatever your experience with repairmen may have been, you'll find its counterpart here. You will point it out with great satisfaction, and you'll say: 'There! That's exactly what happened to me once.' And you're lucky if it has happened only once. The Post can't think of any subject for research that touches more people. Buy this book, and you will get your money back, over and over, in amounts saved through your wisdom." "There are some amusing stories in it," says the Baltimore Sun, and the Washington Post thinks that the funniest were "the authors' experiences with the Rube Goldberg testing machines used by some shops to impress customers." "The articles in The Reader's Digest were interesting," remarks the Springfield Republican, "but they left room for doubt. The book, however, with details of the almost laboratory caution used by the authors in making their tests, is alarmingly convincing."
"For six months," says The Neiv York Herald Tribune,
"the two authors of this perturbing little volume made a
nationwide investigation of the higher nature, if any, of the
American repairman. Buying a used car of distinguished
make, they engaged the assistance of a lady who looked
more helpless than she was, and traveled 19,000 miles, with
1,700 calls on repair shops."
"And no one," adds the Boston Post, "could ever pass
this book with indifference Whatever your experience with
repairmen may have been, you'll find its counterpart here.
You will point it out with great satisfaction, and you'll say:
'There! That's exactly what happened to me once.' And
you're lucky if it has happened only once. The Post can't
think of any subject for research that touches more people.
Buy this book, and you will get your money back, over and
over, in amounts saved through your wisdom."
"There are some amusing stories in it," says the Baltimore
Sun, and the Washington Post thinks that the funniest were
"the authors' experiences with the Rube Goldberg testing
machines used by some shops to impress customers."
"The articles in The Reader's Digest were interesting,"
remarks the Springfield Republican, "but they left room
for doubt. The book, however, with details of the almost
laboratory caution used by the authors in making their tests,
is alarmingly convincing."
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4 <strong>REPAIRMEN</strong> <strong>MAY</strong> <strong>GYP</strong> <strong>YOU</strong><br />
week he casually mentioned the vague idea to DeWitt<br />
Wallace, founder and editor of that magazine.<br />
Mr. Wallace caught the suggestion instantly, and<br />
with the judgment<br />
of our time, he enlarged upon<br />
it.<br />
"It's got great possibilities,"<br />
that made him the ablest editor<br />
he said. "Let's<br />
get<br />
at it right away. I know a fellow who can help you."<br />
At this point, John Patric came into the story.<br />
He had owned 23 different cars, most of them jalopies<br />
he fixed himself. But he had driven new cars, too, that<br />
others had serviced, and he remembered like incidents:<br />
In a Sacramento storage garage he once had<br />
found on his windshield a bill for $5.50 for a new<br />
upper radiator hose, and had been told that "it<br />
must have sprung a leak just about the time you drove<br />
in, because it was pouring water all over our floor.<br />
Of course we knew you'd want it fixed before you<br />
ruined your motor."<br />
Another time, Patric recalled, he had been checking<br />
over some bills from a Seattle garage that for<br />
three months had regularly serviced his car, and had<br />
found that each time that car was lubricated, he had<br />
been charged for a pound of transmission grease<br />
total of ten pounds in not more than that many weeks,<br />
allegedly pumped into a transmission and rear end<br />
that did not leak!<br />
Yet, Patric insisted, these were exceptions. Garage<br />
men would be found to be "95 per cent honest just<br />
wait and see !"<br />
Though our critics later charged that we had<br />
deliberately set out to find gyps (one garageman<br />
a
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