Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Wow, just... wow

So this has been one heckuva week! Mostly, it's related to car trouble and the most frustrating series of days ever! We had a lovely weekend at the lake, and returned home Sunday feeling pretty good. I was convinced I'd get to work on decorating the bedroom this week, but boy was I in for it...

Monday on my way home from work (around 7:30 after running some errands) I noticed my car was making a smooth grinding noise, it started at about 40mph and got louder as you got faster. It's quite loud on the freeway. So I made an appointment to bring it in to the shop before work Tuesday. Brian went with me, and took me to work from there. Yes he is awesome, and no, I won't share.

About midday they called and said the noise was because my tires were trashed and my car really needed an alignment which was what caused them to get so worn. I said fine, new tires is a safety thing, go nuts. I drive a 10 year old Saturn by the way, it was also my first car. Then during the day my graphics card in my work computer fried (yay working from a machine without the capabilities I need to do my job for the next 2 days!) and my sandwich I'd bought for lunch was inexplicably wet... so by then I was feeling dandy. When we went to pick up my car at 5:30 they told me a little something while I was paying. Apparently when they tested the tires they noticed my wheel bearing was making some noise and is wearing out, also the tire support on the right side is rusting through and that won't be worth fixing in a car as old as mine. Well, I figured I would be buying a new car in the next year anyway, so I said thanks and left.

Guess what I heard when I got on the freeway? Yup. same noise. It was the bearing all along. So now I had new tires and a car that was still making a crazy noise and was apparently going to fail at some point because the structure is rusting out. Yay.

I called the second I got home but they had already closed, so we went back to the shop this morning and I raised a stink. Why didn't they call me about the bearing/support? Maybe I would have said fix that not the tires? Why would I want to put new tires on a car that apparently, I've got to get rid of soon? Why are you trying to lie and say the tires were causing the noise YOU heard? That last one is totally impossible btw, the grinding is that loud. So after 20 minutes of being angry with them they agreed to see what they could do.

A few hours later they called and agreed to put my old tires back on and refund the money for that part of the repairs they did. Yay! I mean, now I'm going to be driving on crappy tires and have the noise and other stuff still wrong, but I get a substantial piece of money back and now I can go shop for a new car... without emptying my savings first!

Still sad about the whole thing though, I like my Saturn :'(

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