Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The challenge of vehicle ownership

I wrote in an earlier post about how we are having all three of the vehicles worked on this month, it cost about $1000. It has been a real challenge to remain calm in dealing with this issue.

Our van blew a brake line last week. When we bought it we purchased an expensive extended warranty from the dealer. This warranty has almost paid for itself but the company refused to pay for the brake line because the dealer did the repair while he was waiting for the company to call back with the authorization. The company did not call back in the time they had said they would and the dealer knew the repair needed done regardless so he did it.

From what I understand the dealer went round and round with this company and went up the chain two supervisors but they still refused to pay. The dealer told Tanya that he lost his cool and yelled at the supervisor and it really takes a lot to make him lose his cool.

So it turns out this company who shall remain nameless(this is not going to be one of those kind of blogs) decided they would rather lose myself as a customer and my dealer as a representative over a $75 repair bill. So if my dealer is telling the truth he tossed all the warranty sales material in the trash.

In addition to this I had the car in for a new fuel pump and a tuneup. I went to pick it up last night and the battery was dead. So I called the dealer this morning and he put a charger on it and I went to pick it up tonight. Well it wouldn't start unless I gave it gas. It's supposed to start on idle since it's fuel injection. Once I got it started it died every time I took my foot off the pedal. So I took my keys back around and put them in the key drop. I guess I get to talk to him again tomorrow. You would think he would be tired of hearing from me by now.

This is just the latest in the rash of vehicle failures in the last couple months. They have eaten into the budget big time. But that's what the emergency fund is for right?

Randy

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