The easy way to buy a car, a crummy car dealership, an OK dealership, and my New Year's Resolution

Several years ago a friend recommended Heidi the Amazing Autowoman, an auto broker who will find the car you want at a price and list of options that you negotiate with her. All you have to do is meet her for 10 minutes, sign paperwork, write checks, and drive away in your new (or new used) car.

Heidi is terrific and I will never buy or lease a car any other way ever again.

Heidi happens to have a relationship with a local poorly run car dealership: Lee Johnson of Kirkland. This needn't have affected me, but I bought a Chevy Volt in late 2011 through Heidi and this dealership left out a couple of small parts: cargo net and front license plate holder.

They eventually got these parts in and I got them installed. They were a bit slow/sloppy in the way they handled this and I should have stopped going there after this. But I had an issue with the car losing the charge on its 12-volt battery, which runs the car's computer and locks and other systems and which is required to be able to start it. I called a tow truck who helped me jump it and I had them tow it, silly me, to Lee Johnson.

Not only did they no root cause analysis, they somehow goofed up the key fob that you use to get in and start the car ... and sent me off in the car without saying a word about this to me. If I hadn't had the owner's manual on the front seat I'd never have been able to figure what was going on (I thought at first the battery on the key fob had just run down) and get the car started again.

Clearly, this is egregiously bad customer service. (I got the car fixed at Michael's Chevrolet in Issaquah, who have been OK.)

I recently sold the original Volt and leased a new 2014 through Heidi ... via  Lee Johnson. I met Heidi at the dealership, sat in one of the LJ people's cubicle, signed paperwork, wrote checks, and was out in 10 minutes.

I had to go back and pick up my license plate when it was ready (actually about a month after it was ready, but that's my problem.) This was also at Lee Johnson, whose I guess subsidiary goes as Eastside Auto Licensing. I picked up the plates (and a refund check: $154.50; not sure why but I deposited it!)

The woman who gave me the plates said, brightly, "you can get the service department to install them for you!" I replied without thinking, "they messed up my previous Volt and I'll never do business with them again."

She looked stricken. I could have just kicked her dog or something. "That's terrible!" she said.

It was terrible, it was stupid, it was unnecessary. I'm telling you about my experience with the dealerships, but what good did it do to hit this lady over the head with this information? None.

So: (1) I forgive Lee Johnson. I still don't plan to do any more business with their service department, but I'm going to drop the chip on my shoulder and I don't have to broadcast my problem with them to any other individuals in person.

(2) If I have the chance of interacting with another of their employees, I'm going to bite my tongue and instead say "Oh, I'm a computer programmer and this is one of the few mechanical tasks I feel competent to handle and it's satisfying for me to be able to handle this." All true, and I got to dispose of the Lee Johnson advertising license plate frame at the same time.

I learned grudge-holding from my father and let it mostly go on an individual level years ago. But organizations are made up of individuals, many of whom don't have a clue about the running of the organization ... so no more!