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Bruce the van is back home. Finally, and not without a great deal of travail and gnashing of teeth.
My friend Jennifer (who, as I mentioned last night, is a Hero of the Revolution) drove me three hours to Coalinga, with her two daughters. We arrived to find that the people at dealership in Coalinga and Enterprise Rent-A-Car had screwed up, resulting in us being overcharged by a hundred fifty dollars, and neither party was going to help us.
First of all, you have to understand that they had the van for three weeks. They had the van that long because the transmission basically completely disintegrated. Ford Motor Company refused to authorize more than ten days because that was what was covered under our extended warranty. Yes, I guess it never occurred to me that a) the entire transmission would blow up at 50K (which is pretty much what happened) and the dealership would take three weeks to fix the thing.
We had made a good faith effort to not use any more rental car days than necessary. We had requested that they cover the additional days of rental car, since three weeks is an excessive amount of time for this repair. They grudgingly finally agreed to pay three of the days, leaving us with two days of rental coverage to pay for.
That was not the big problem. The big problem was that the rental coverage under our policy was for $28/day, and Enterprise charged the dealership $38/day. The dealership, basically said okay, we'll charge the rest back to the customer.
The woman at the dealership swears up and down and sideways that she told![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
brian1789 that he would be responsible for the overages. I don't believe her -- I know him too well and have seen how careful he is with travel details to believe that he would have authorized a $38/day rental.
She refused to budge. She had closed the account, so we had to pay her, and then seek reimbursement from Enterprise. We argued about it for an hour. She was "nice" about it, but totally unhelpful. Her boss stepped in and called the Enterprise office, but the manager was out at a training session, and the guy on duty said it would have to wait until the next day.
Uh, no. We had driven three hours, we were not leaving without the van. I was also not simply going to pay the Ford dealership in Coalinga the disputed amount. So I started making calls. Fifteen of them, over a nearly two hour period. Being passed from person to person, and handed to voice mail. A couple of calls before the end, I told the receptionist "I have to talk to a live person. I am sitting in Coalinga with a problem and it is over a hundred degrees out." I started crying. He agreed to hand carry a message to the woman I needed to talk to. She called me right back, and then started working on the problem.
It was clear they weren't going to resolve anything without talking tobrian1789. Bit of a problem, since he is out of voice communications right now. What we worked out is that they would charge his credit card the disputed amount, and we would discuss it with Enterprise when he got back, rather than with the dealership. I figured that was going to be the best I could do, and we would not have to deal with these people in Coalinga anymore.
Whew. I paid the deductible on the repair. Enterprise then faxed over the new contract. So, they are going to refund you the money? Oh, no, we haven't paid them yet.
They hadn't paid them yet. They had not paid them yet. There was absolutely nothing to prevent them from working towards this solution two hours earlier, except they just didn't give a damn. [Edit: they had also promised, since the van had been sitting in their dusty lot for so long, to wash it. They didn't.]
All of this time, I, my friend Jennifer, and her two daughters, are sitting in blazing heat outside the service department, or inside where it is not air conditioned and just as hot. They did not suggest a place where we could go to be more comfortable -- even across the way in their air-conditioned showroom. If I had not been so focused on what was going on, I would have thought to send Jen and the girls over there anyway. How hot was it? After we left, when we were driving along California 33 from Coalinga to I-5, the air felt a few degrees cooler. According to the car thermometer, it was 102. At 6:00 in the evening.
Jen drove me out to Coalinga. She helped argue with the service department lady -- allowing me to be less confrontational than I would have otherwise been. (All my practice in patience dealing with my kids helped: several times I walked away to remind myself that I getting these people mad would solve nothing, and would make things worse.) She stayed there the entire time until it was resolved, and then drove back with me in case anything went wrong. A Hero, I tell ya.
Then there was the drive back....
Driving along CA-33, a two-lane road with no traffic, winding through golden hills and oil fields with the late afternoon sunshine slanting down and my music blaring, was wonderful. As was driving 152 from Los Banos over to 101 at sunset. Sheer magic.
You have to appreciate the good moments, even when everything else is terrible. Sometimes the good moments seem all that much better because of it.
My friend Jennifer (who, as I mentioned last night, is a Hero of the Revolution) drove me three hours to Coalinga, with her two daughters. We arrived to find that the people at dealership in Coalinga and Enterprise Rent-A-Car had screwed up, resulting in us being overcharged by a hundred fifty dollars, and neither party was going to help us.
First of all, you have to understand that they had the van for three weeks. They had the van that long because the transmission basically completely disintegrated. Ford Motor Company refused to authorize more than ten days because that was what was covered under our extended warranty. Yes, I guess it never occurred to me that a) the entire transmission would blow up at 50K (which is pretty much what happened) and the dealership would take three weeks to fix the thing.
We had made a good faith effort to not use any more rental car days than necessary. We had requested that they cover the additional days of rental car, since three weeks is an excessive amount of time for this repair. They grudgingly finally agreed to pay three of the days, leaving us with two days of rental coverage to pay for.
That was not the big problem. The big problem was that the rental coverage under our policy was for $28/day, and Enterprise charged the dealership $38/day. The dealership, basically said okay, we'll charge the rest back to the customer.
The woman at the dealership swears up and down and sideways that she told
brian1789 that he would be responsible for the overages. I don't believe her -- I know him too well and have seen how careful he is with travel details to believe that he would have authorized a $38/day rental.She refused to budge. She had closed the account, so we had to pay her, and then seek reimbursement from Enterprise. We argued about it for an hour. She was "nice" about it, but totally unhelpful. Her boss stepped in and called the Enterprise office, but the manager was out at a training session, and the guy on duty said it would have to wait until the next day.
Uh, no. We had driven three hours, we were not leaving without the van. I was also not simply going to pay the Ford dealership in Coalinga the disputed amount. So I started making calls. Fifteen of them, over a nearly two hour period. Being passed from person to person, and handed to voice mail. A couple of calls before the end, I told the receptionist "I have to talk to a live person. I am sitting in Coalinga with a problem and it is over a hundred degrees out." I started crying. He agreed to hand carry a message to the woman I needed to talk to. She called me right back, and then started working on the problem.
It was clear they weren't going to resolve anything without talking to
brian1789. Bit of a problem, since he is out of voice communications right now. What we worked out is that they would charge his credit card the disputed amount, and we would discuss it with Enterprise when he got back, rather than with the dealership. I figured that was going to be the best I could do, and we would not have to deal with these people in Coalinga anymore.Whew. I paid the deductible on the repair. Enterprise then faxed over the new contract. So, they are going to refund you the money? Oh, no, we haven't paid them yet.
They hadn't paid them yet. They had not paid them yet. There was absolutely nothing to prevent them from working towards this solution two hours earlier, except they just didn't give a damn. [Edit: they had also promised, since the van had been sitting in their dusty lot for so long, to wash it. They didn't.]
All of this time, I, my friend Jennifer, and her two daughters, are sitting in blazing heat outside the service department, or inside where it is not air conditioned and just as hot. They did not suggest a place where we could go to be more comfortable -- even across the way in their air-conditioned showroom. If I had not been so focused on what was going on, I would have thought to send Jen and the girls over there anyway. How hot was it? After we left, when we were driving along California 33 from Coalinga to I-5, the air felt a few degrees cooler. According to the car thermometer, it was 102. At 6:00 in the evening.
Jen drove me out to Coalinga. She helped argue with the service department lady -- allowing me to be less confrontational than I would have otherwise been. (All my practice in patience dealing with my kids helped: several times I walked away to remind myself that I getting these people mad would solve nothing, and would make things worse.) She stayed there the entire time until it was resolved, and then drove back with me in case anything went wrong. A Hero, I tell ya.
Then there was the drive back....
Driving along CA-33, a two-lane road with no traffic, winding through golden hills and oil fields with the late afternoon sunshine slanting down and my music blaring, was wonderful. As was driving 152 from Los Banos over to 101 at sunset. Sheer magic.
You have to appreciate the good moments, even when everything else is terrible. Sometimes the good moments seem all that much better because of it.