Yesterday I was walking around the house cleaning up some in preparation for the arrival of Brandy’s mother. She is staying with us for a week because at 19 October 2004 09:54:54 UTC Amy will be exactly 9 years old. (Although, not being as precice as I am, the date she considers her “birthday” is a day later.)
Anyway, as I was walking around the house I noticed something wrong with my car. I had just had it detailed last week because it was a mess, and so I saw something. It took me about 5 seconds, then it suddenly came to me when the problem had originated. And with horror I determined it had been there for over a year and a half…
I had been screwed back in March of 2003. You see, back on my 2003 Q1 random trip to Ohio, I had busted up my back right tail light… Click below and check out the picture about 1/5 of the way down of my smashed taillight.
2003 Q1 Random Vacation – Day 3
OK, that was on 15 Feb 2003. On 1 Mar 2003 I went back to Ohio to pick up the car. Check out the picture about 1/3 of the way down of the fixed taillight below…
2003 Q1 Random Vacation – Epilogue
OK, what is wrong here???
Now, I should have noticed it right when I was picking up the car. Or at least sometime in the same year. Or maybe earlier this year. It isn’t like yesterday was the first time it was visible. And yes, I don’t wash my car as often as I should, but it isn’t the first time it has been clean, and I should have seen it anyway…
Do you see it???
When they put on the new back right panel, they did NOT restore the pinstripe!!!! It goes down the right side of my car to the back door, then STOPS. It does not continue through to the back like it is supposed to!!!! In the March 3rd picture of my car covered with snow on the page above, if you look carefully, you can see how the line stops at the end of the door and does not continue like it should.
(In both the 1 Mar 2003 and 3 Mar 2003 pictures there is something that looks a little like a pinstripe, but if you look carefully you can tell it does not match the pinstripe from the 15 Feb 2003 pictures and is really just a reflection from the shape of the car at that point.)
So now, I haven’t even noticed this for a year and a half, but now that I HAVE noticed it, it is driving me nuts and disturbing me. The car is uneven! The left side has the pinstripe all the way and the right side does not! It is all unbalanced!! I now feel self concious about driving the car. It is just WRONG.
It has been a year and a half, and Ohio is a long way again, so I’m certainly not running back to Ohio to complain at this point. But you can be sure when I go to my next regularly scheduled service with Saturn in about 3000 miles, I am going to have them fix this!
Argh!!!! I can’t believe I’ve been driving all lopsided for so long and not even known it!
Why didn’t anybody tell me!!!
Because we were all having so much fun laughing at you.
They did something similar to me with my Buick. I picked it up at night, and couuldn’t tell they had replaced the hand painted pinstripes with that crappy stuicker stuff.
Took a couple weeks to convince them it would be intheir best interest to fix it or I would do what I could to ensure that the local insurances wouldn’t work with them and try to set them as a military no-go zone.