Hi, friends! How are you? I’m screaming internally but am otherwise fine.
Let’s break things up by having a car repair story. Ah, cars. So useful, and yet occasionally so frustrating. Especially when it’s a silly problem.
Like, on my last car, there were these trim pieces around the wheel wells. And every so often one of the trim pieces would fall off, and I’d have to go get a new one put on. Sometimes I only went a few weeks between having to go get new trim pieces.
In the great scheme of problems, not a big one. It’s not like the trim pieces affected how the car drove at all. But the repeatability of the problem and the number of times I had to go in for it eventually drove me mildly insane.
Eventually I had all the trim pieces taken off for my own sanity, though it turns out they were either holding the edges of the car body together, or maybe the car body was just put together a little unevenly because they knew it’d be covered up by trim pieces. Who knows!
Anyway, so in November, I got a new car. The old one was 10 years old and starting to have weird problems (one of the wheels was slowly dissolving, which was a new one), so I upgraded. And because everything is computers now, it came with a giant touch screen in the middle that controls all the internal things–temperature, music, etc.–as well as shows a map, allows me to make phone calls, and all the snazzy things you expect in a new car, I guess. Also, all those energy graphs cuz it’s a hybrid.
Fast forward to about a month ago. The fancy screen system fails. It works, oh, maybe a third of the time, and the rest of the time it tries to turn on, fails, tries repeatedly for a while, and then just gives up.
Does this affect the performance of the car? No, except that I can’t control the temperature which, well, I’ll deal. Is it annoying? Yes.
So I take the car to the dealership, who is confused, because a new car shouldn’t be having any problems. They tell me they’ll order me a replacement, and to come back in a week.
I come back in a week, hang out for an hour and a half, and then learn that they’ve ordered the wrong part and will have to order the right part. They say they’ve expedited shipping and it should be there any day.
I, again, make an appointment for a week. The night before, my service advisor tells me the part is not in, and that he’ll let me know when it is in.
Another week passes. Finally, Monday, I get notification that the part is in. Tomorrow, in theory, it shall be fixed.
Now, I’m not mad at the dealership. It’s a brand new car with a brand new system that should not be having this problem, and I understand that this is probably everyone’s first time dealing with this particular problem on this particular model. And, you know, aside from the temperature, I’ve figured out work arounds for most of the systems. I can control the radio completely from the steering wheel, for example–change the input, change the channel, change the volume, you’ve got it. Phone calls, likewise, can be controlled from the steering wheel.
But I will be happy when the screen turns on consistently and I can stop hanging out at the dealership.
How are you?