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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fact is that a photograph<br />
AFTERMATHS 253<br />
of that table is damaging<br />
factual evidence in our favor.<br />
One leading motor magazine the only one<br />
which refused permission to reprint<br />
its comment<br />
went through astonishing contortions to prove<br />
our survey<br />
all wrong.<br />
The editor related how, a year previously, he<br />
had installed in his own car a badly burned valve<br />
and had taken that car to fourteen garages for<br />
diagnosis. The valve, which he keeps in his desk,<br />
was badly burned so that it needed replacement.<br />
Yet, he said,<br />
not a single one of those garages<br />
made any effort to sell him the valve job that his<br />
car really required. When Riis suggested<br />
to him<br />
that this was strange evidence of the competence<br />
of those garages, he replied that it<br />
showed they<br />
were too honest, so honest they didn't even sell<br />
the customer what they should sell him.<br />
One of the strange statements made by these<br />
editors ran to this effect: "It was instantly obvious<br />
to the mechanics you tested that they were<br />
being tested. They spotted the unusual job as a<br />
test proposition and therefore, naturally, they<br />
set out to rook you. That follows irresistibly."<br />
Maybe it does, though it is wholly beyond nor-
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