2023-03-18 — Disgusted

I’m angry, and I’m disgusted.

It’s the 19th today, and I just got a phone call from a young woman who seemed to be on the verge of tears because Firestone quoted her $4,000 to replace her radiator some hoses and a rear wheel cylinder.

I just want to go over there, go to these shops, and find some way to put them out of business.

It’s disgusting what they do to people– absolutely disgusting.

It’s funny, I went from not even wanting to take the phone call because I’m so burned out and honestly, struggling a bit today.

But hearing what these shops are doing to people… I’m so angry. I’m so frustrated. so many people just desperately trying to get by, trying to find a way to get a leg up , and they deal with this crap.

I’m angry.

In the last 3 weeks or so I can rattle off, gosh I don’t even know how many cases of issues like this from my customers.

Let’s see how many I can name off the top of my head:

• Fayetteville Honda tells my customer they have a seized engine and need a $10,000, or whatever it was, replacement. Seized engine? I could move the darn thing with my hand. I didn’t even need a ratchet to turn the pulley. Seized engine my eye. Dishonest jerks.
• Lewis Ford tells my customer he needs a water pump, degas bottle, and tee pipe… And I think maybe something else. No, he doesn’t need a water pump. No, he doesn’t need a degas bottle. Yes, he needs a tee pipe. Oh, and you missed that he needs an upper radiator hose. You would have multiple things he didn’t even need, and he still would have had a leak. Thank thanks, Lewis Ford.
• Big o Tires in… Fayetteville? Tells one of my customers that it’s going to take them 12 hours of labor just to be able to diagnose the cause of an oil leak. I went out there, and in 20 minutes, I know because the customer was the one who made the comment, that it took me 20 minutes to do what they said would take 12 hours of labor to figure out.
• Big o tires, the same day, but the one in Bentonville I think, gives my customer a massive list of things that need to be repaired or replaced. Customer calls me to gut check because they don’t trust what they were told. And they were right to not trust. They didn’t need anywhere near as many of the things they were told that needed to be done, and there were glaring problems that took not even more than a mere glance to realize needed to be done that weren’t even on the list. It was like they just made up stuff, threw it down on paper and told the customers they needed it.
• The Dodge dealership in Fayetteville charges my customer 1300 to replace an air intake boot and to clear a check engine code. The air intake boot, even if you replace the entire assembly and not just the damaged part of the boot takes about 10 minutes to remove and install. Maybe 15 minutes. Clearing the check engine code? 4 minutes. Boot it up, run the scan, click the button to clear, done.

Those are just the ones off the top of my head. Add this one to that. So tired of these places ripping people off. It’s not just money. You’re playing with people’s emotional stability, hopes, dreams, everything.

Fu*****.

Please excuse my language.

Every last one of them deserves to be put out of business permanently.

Sorry, just pissed off.

Anyway, it was an absolutely insane day yesterday. I got a late start because I didn’t have the first job of the day scheduled, and people were sleeping in or… Whatever they were doing.

So I didn’t get to the first job until like 10:00 or something I think. I was just sort of waiting around for somebody to reply. Funny because the day was absolutely packed, I just couldn’t get started because I hadn’t properly scheduled the first job.

First job was a 2014 Ford F-150 that had a code for cylinder head temperature issues. The customer had already purchased a new cylinder head temperature sensor, so I went ahead and put it in for him. It was freezing stinking cold outside, and the wind was a killer, which made it hard for my hand to work properly to do it it needed to do next to a freezing cold engine in crazy-cramped quarters.

In fact, it was the customer who was actually able to get the electrical connector disconnected because my hands were too fat to fit in the space and get any kind of decent leverage.

But I got him buttoned up, and I helped him with another issue as well.

The second job was a 2010 Dodge caravan that had a flat tire and the heat stopped working on it. The flat tire was a massive gash, so it wasn’t safe to plug for a long-term. I put five plugs in it to get it to at least stop leaking air and told her to drive it straight to the tire shop. The heat had stopped working because her coolant had leaked out enough to not be able to make it to the heater core. She had a metal coolant pipe, and she was from Michigan, so the coolant pipe had rusted so badly that it was starting to seep out coolant.

The third job was a 2011 Chevrolet avalanche that needed front pads and rotors and some electrical work done. I got the one side done just fine, but the other side had a bad caliper bracket. I just realized as I’m writing this that I need to order some parts so that they are ready tomorrow, if possible. Anyway, I drove over to the O’Reilly’s, but the lady who was helping me was brand new, so though she said they had the parts in stock, and even though she took down the VIN number, me going over at twice, she still ended up looking up the wrong vehicle and not having the parts I needed, except for the one that I actually gave her the part number for.

So I had to go back to the customer and tell them that their truck was not going to be fully fixed that day. I buttoned it up enough for them to be able to drive it in the short term, but it still needs to have parts replaced.

The fourth car was a 2001 Ford excursion with the 7.3 diesel on it. He had a broken battery terminal but neglected to tell me that he also had dead batteries. So I went out there and replaced the battery terminal, and then I tried to jump start his truck, but my jump pack isn’t big enough to handle that big of an engine. So I ended up, though I was way way behind on the day, I ended up driving all the way back to AutoZone, picking up two batteries, coming back, and installing them so he could get on his way.

The fifth car was the 2014 Mazda Miata that last week I tentatively diagnosed with a bad blower motor resistor. Speaking of places where your hands don’t fit and crazy cold, it was dark and very windy.

My hands were so cold that I didn’t have the dexterity to to do what I needed to do in the quarters that were so cramped. Once, maybe twice, I ended up going back to my van to warm my hands up.

Eventually, gratefully, I managed to finally get the darn part out and back in. That… Was a challenge.

The last job of the day was all the way down in Fayetteville. I had two scheduled after that, but both were willing to be rescheduled. One for Sunday and one for Monday I think.

The last one was a 2011 Honda pilot that had a misfire issue. It was a college student trying to get ready to go on her spring break trip, so obviously an emergency that needed to be solved as soon as possible. 🙃

I was able to get her going quickly and simply. Funny, it was the exact same cylinder that was having issues on my nephews Odyssey which has the same engine in it. Apparently, maybe those engines have issues with cylinder 3? I suppose it could be a coincidence.

On a completely different note, my body has not been eating Pizza for so long that I don’t know if it can handle it. I think I’ve noticed a correlation between the diarrhea episodes and the pizzas from Little Caesars. And no, it’s not just because they’re from a dumpster. 🙃 They’d only been in the dumpster for probably 15 minutes when I got them.

Or maybe Little Caesars employees bring a laxatives on the pizzas before dumping them in the dumpster to keep people from doing what I was doing. 😆

I think, more likely, my little body just hasn’t been used to eating cheese and meat and all that stuff all at once?

0 who knows. Either way, I think my little pizza experiment has run its course already.

Not really interested in having to carry around yogurt containers with me.

My Powerade pee bottle is plenty for me, thank you very much. 😁

Anyway, I was fall over dead tired when I got home, so I crashed fairly quickly.

Lift the World

~ stephen