Thursday, September 13, 2012

If it Was ANY OTHER Window...

Cory got his first car early this summer, a 2001 Ford Taurus.  The car came with a 30-day 'warranty' - meaning that the dealership had checked the car over and said that it was in good shape, but if anything would need fixed in the first 30 days, we could get it fixed, in their service center, and they'd split the cost with us.  Which sounds pretty good, except for the fact that we bought the car one week, and Cory headed to Door County for the summer early the following week, and he wouldn't be back until the 30 days was up.  And, of course, the car had a few issues, the biggest of which is that his driver's side window sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.  Sometimes it goes down and won't go back up again - until, randomly, it finally decides to work.  Sometimes it just won't go down at all.

Now, if it was any other window, Cory could probably live with it, but the driver's side window?  Toll booths, drive-ups, drive throughs, talking to somebody without getting out of the car, etc.  You don't realize how often you use your window until it doesn't work.

So, Jeffrey reported it to our salesman, and then called him again last week to see if there was anything they could do.  He managed to get us the 50/50 warranty deal, even though our time was up, so today I took Cory's car to get it fixed.  He would have taken it himself, but with classes and rehearsal and all the things he has going on, he didn't feel like he would have time, so he brought me his car yesterday so I could take it.  It's a good thing he didn't try to take it - because I was there all day.

I got there at 11am, told them what the issue was - and the window was not working then, so they could see it for themselves.  They said to give them an hour or so...  So I finished my book, played my turns in Words with Friends, checked Facebook, etc.  I really should have taken my computer and gotten some work done, but I didn't think it would take that long.

Two hours later the service advisor I was working with came to let me know that they couldn't figure out what the problem was because they didn't have the right equipment to read the codes, so they needed to take it over to the Ford dealership where they would have the right equipment.  Did I mention this was at the Honda dealership?  Yeah, that's where we bought the car.  Not a Honda; just a Taurus somebody traded in for a Honda.  Probably.

Anyway, the Ford garage could get it in at 2pm - did I want to wait?  I figured I might as well since I was already there.  So I waited.  Apparently, over at Ford, the window decided to work.  But they did whatever it is they do to get the codes and found out which part was bad - some kind of junction box that controls all the windows.  Good, right?  Except that part has been discontinued.  So they couldn't fix it.  By then it was almost 4pm.

So they're going to look for a used part.  And I'll have to go back to get it fixed.  And hopefully it won't take too long since they already figured out what's wrong and just have to change out the part.   At least I can hope.  Because spending all day waiting for a car to be fixed is not my idea of fun.