Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Screwed

Okay, I know I swore that this blog wasn't going to turn into a rant-fest, but today I'm afraid I must relent.  You see, I am truly pissed and have nowhere to blow off steam so I must lose it here. 

Monday evening I get a call from the Mrs., in a panic.  "I'm stuck dead on the highway" she tells me.  Whaddya mean, dead on the highway, I ask, are you OK?  Are you on the shoulder of the road?  "No, I'm in the center lane and the car is dead and won't start"... 

F**k!  I run out the door, leaving work early and rush out to where my wife is.  Fortunately some Good Samaritans were kind enough to jump out of their cars and push her to the center divide before I got there.  The car won't start and I find some kind of weird "goo" spewed out under the hood.  Now, I've spent my fair share of time wrenching on cars over the years and consider myself pretty knowledgeable under the hood, but I'd never seen anything like this before.  We call roadside assistance and it takes an hour and a half to get a tow truck out there and haul us off to our mechanic.  He takes one quick look under the hood and says "This is not good.  You've got a blown headgasket".  You gotta be kiddin' me, right?

I understand, this kind of thing happens every day and that repairs are just part of owning a car.  In fact, just last month I dropped about $600 in her for new brakes, an oil change and to pay this year's registration.  So why am I so pissed off, you ask?  Here is why:  The car in question was our "dream car", we got it as a lease return, only two years old and we were ecstatic about it when we first got it.  About 6 months into the ownership of the car the motor blew up.  "Faulty crank bearing" they tell us.  Mileage on the car? 63k.  Warrantee on the engine? 60k.  Sorry Charlie, no help for you.  Repair bill? $7,300 for a new crate engine to be installed.  To add insult to injury, Chrysler (this is a Dodge vehicle) was circling the drain at the time on the verge of bankruptcy.  They were closing down manufacturing plants, shuttering dealerships, stopped shipping parts, etc.  We were without our car from October 9, 2008 through January 21st 2009 waiting for these pricks to ship a motor out to us from Detroit.  So on top of the $7,300 for the repair we racked up about $3k in car rental bills as this is our only car and we needed to get to work and school, etc.  Had we known it would take this long to get it fixed we would have gone out and bought some beater p.o.s. car to get us through but they kept telling us every week "it's on it's way" or "it's on the truck ready to head out", so we kept holding on and paying the absurd rental fees.  They told us this shit for MONTHS and didn't give a crap about the situation we were in, no offer to help with a loaner from the dealer, nothing. 

So now, we've paid off all the credit charged rental fees and the cost of the motor replacement and have still another 5 months of payments on the car itself when the head gasket decided to give way.  I pulled out my paperwork from the engine replacement to see about warrantee work and wouldn't you know it - the warrantee EXPIRED IN JANUARY OF THIS YEAR!!  Double F**K!!!  Less than 58,000 miles on this engine and this is what I get?  Well, this and ANOTHER $2,300 repair bill.

My wife is a part-time school teacher and I work in a non-profit retirement home.  We're not exactly Silicon Valley Millionaires.  Our daughter just started college literally two weeks ago.  My wife needed over $2,500 in dental work that our wonderful insurance wouldn't cover back in August and there is more of that to come.  Our meager savings is wiped out and all the credit we scrimped to pay off over the last two and a half years is right back up in the thousands of dollars. 

I am at my wits end.  Fuck you Chrysler.  Fuck you Dodge.  I despise your cars now and not that long ago I was one of your staunchest supporters.  I've been a "Dodge guy" since my high school days.  I will NEVER, EVER buy another one of your piece of shit cars.  I will NEVER, EVER go to your service shops.  You can fucking ROT.  I lament the fact that you DIDN'T go bankrupt - that would have been a better fate than you fuckin' deserve.  Buying this car was the WORST mistake I've made, and I've made plenty.  Unfortunately, I've got so damn much money tied up in this shit heap that I'm stuck with it for god-only-knows how long.  I wish I could drive it off a fuckin' cliff and watch it burn.  Every time I lay eyes on it I want to piss on it at the very least.

This is what I get when I try to be a nice person, to do random acts of kindness, to volunteer to help those in need, to live by the "golden rule".  What kind of karmic shitstorm would I find myself in if I lived like all the assholes that surround me and do their best to "get one over" on everyone else?  The whole thing makes me want to scream 'til I'm blue in the face, not that it would do any good.

Alright, rant off.  Sorry about that.  My brain has been in pressure cooker mode for the last 48 hours.  My last words of "wisdom"; if you are unfortunate enough to own a Dodge, sell it before it ruins your day/week/month/year.  And whatever you do, DON'T BUY A DODGE OR CHRYSLER unless you have money to burn and enjoy being stranded on the side of the road.

Thanks for reading.  Hope y'all have a nice week.
~J.L.