Where to start…
I guess we could start with me having gotten a little more sleep last night. I think I got maybe almost 7 hours? I suppose that’s progress? 🙃 Still definitely in need more sleep.
I got up, and I realized that I had a fraud alert in my email. EHarmony had tried to auto renew my membership for $550. EHarmony has to be one of the biggest scams. I mean, that’s not accurate… They are not a scam. It’s just an absolutely enormous amount of money to pay for a ridiculously poorly created app.
Anyway, at first, I didn’t read the email closely enough, so I thought I actually had been charged, so I spent probably 10 minutes trying to find some way to get in contact with eHarmony because they bury their actual contact information so deeply in their website that it’s nearly impossible to find. And if having to use Google search to figure out how to find their phone email information.
If you’re going to charge that much for a membership, then have the courtesy to provide decent customer service.
Anyway, after finally finding a phone number but realizing they were closed, I went back to the email and realized that the message was that they had declined the attempted transaction.
🥳
Thank you, Chase!!!
That bit of good news fortunately wiped away the adrenaline that had been pumping from my anger with eHarmony.
I hate predatory companies.
eHarmony is definitely one of those. I always immediately cancel auto renew memberships the moment I purchase a membership, so I don’t know what the heck happened there, and not to mention the fact that there was no warning. No email reminder no nothing for a $550 membership!!!
And if it weren’t for my credit card company, even though the bill had just barely been attempted today, had it actually gone through, eHarmony would not have refunded my renewal. They basically say two bad so sad, you can set it to cancel the auto renew for next time. At least, that’s what I gathered from their help section on their website.
Terrible organization. terrible product. Massively overpriced.
Not that I have any feelings on the matter. I tried to get a refund when I first signed up for them because the product was so ridiculously terrible that I was completely shocked. 1 year later, it hasn’t changed or improved at all that I can see.
I don’t say that it’s terrible just for the amount of money they charge and what you get with it being the most expensive of all the singles apps that I’m aware of, but because they were just terrible for any singles app.
I mean, it’s pretty… Ridiculous, but they have this reputation is being the best for people looking to find meaningful relationships.
Not in my experience…
Anyway, as an added bonus, my last experience with eHarmony before being done with it was that the woman that I send a message to I think blocked me without replying.
So, there you go. Apparently, either my looks or my hopes and dreams for life are a little too scary for people.
Either way, I can’t even get replies.
In all honesty, that stings… hurts a bit. I would understand if it were on balance… Some replying and some ignoring or blocking, but all of them blocking? All of them ignoring? Really? I honestly can’t even remember the last person on eHarmony who actually replied to me.
Anyway, good riddance, EHarmony.
I want to build my dating app. Wish I knew how to code. Don’t want to learn.
Wonder if I can use chatGPT to build the app.
Moving on…
Before the crazy-busy work day I had some stuff to take care of on the home front. The lawn mower blades were dull as dull can be from using the lawn mower to bushwack through the super thick vegetation down in the lower field and to mow the pathways through the woods that have become rocky from erosion.
I pulled the deck off, tilted it up, ground the blades so they were decently sharp, put it back together, and headed out to fix cars for the day.
The first job was a lot like yesterday. It was another Ford needing front brake pads and rotors. This time it was a 2011 Ford expedition, and this time again, there were complications. She’s got seized-up, or partially seized-up calipers or collapsed brake hoses.
I was able to get the job done fairly quickly, comparatively to other brake jobs that I’ve done. Still, they take so blast at long. 🙃
After that, I went over to pick up the fuel line for the Tahoe, and then I headed over to the junkyard to get a window for the avenger that I accidentally broke the bracket on. It’s easier and much less headache to just replace the entire glass which has the brackets glued to it than it is to get the brackets, by the glue, and go through the process of putting it all together. Big pain in the butt to do that.
So I swallowed the pill, which was a lot more than I expected, and spent $66 on new window glass.
To be honest, I was actually shocked at the price. I was expecting maybe $30, at most 45, so when they said 60 whatever, I was like, what?!?!
I didn’t make an issue of it, just definitely not happy with how much they charged, but whatever. I probably could have gone to the other junkyard, had them pull themselves, and paid less. 😆
Oh well, it’s done. It’s my fault for not looking up their price list ahead of time and just assuming that they would have a reasonable price for it.
Second car was one that I didn’t have to do, as I said it might be a couple days, but I figured I might as well do it since I just picked up the fuel line for it. I went back to the 2015 Chevy Tahoe, and gratefully, was able to install the line without having to fully drop the tank. It certainly wasn’t easy, in some ways, it would have been easier to drop the tank because the space was so constricted because of the new Chevy design, that it made it that much more challenging to get the line off, but still, I was able to get it done and get it done in a decent amount of time and get that one off my schedule.
The customers were super happy and super complimentary. It’s always nice to have people gushing about me and the work I do.
Car number three was a 2011 Buick Regal. He was having Purge valve issues, so I replaced his purge valve, showed him why it was defective, and chatted with him about what he wanted to do in his life. He really wants to be a detective but he’s been going to business school. He said he was talking about switching over because he’s wanted to be a police officer since he was a little kid.
So I encourage them to just go for it. Go for your dreams. Life is short.
He was visibly excited at the prospect of leaving his business stuff and moving over to the legal side of things.
Hope I made a difference. It’s so easy to get caught up in what’s reasonable or safe.
I’m certainly walking proof.
😕
And now I sort of feel trapped because I don’t want to throw away what’s so successful…
Have I ever mentioned that I hate that this world runs on money? 🙃
Anyway, well I was there, he mentioned that another place had told him that he had to take his car to the dealer to get his headlight bulbs changed. Either they were severely lacking in automotive education and experience, or they just didn’t want to do the job. I’m guessing the former, because his car was probably the easiest of all cars, or close to it, to change headlight bulbs on.
Once again, though, the store had given him the wrong bulbs, having given him blinkers instead of headlight bulbs. Guessing it was O’Reilly’s again since it was them last time and it was the same problem. But who knows…
Though he didn’t have his own bulbs to replace them with, I taught him how to replace them, having him pull out his burned out bulb, and then put it back in after showing him what to do.
He was able to do it without any issues, and he was again excited to be able to be empowered to fix his own car problem without having to pay someone else to do it.
Yay 🥳
Car number four was going back to that 2006 Dodge Stratus way out in the middle of West Fork nowhere. This one is a perfect example of why I shouldn’t be saying yes to cars out in the middle of nowhere.
They call back. 🙃
This poor car is filled with issues, and they want me to quote them, and I don’t want to work out there anymore, but I don’t want to shut them down. I may transfer them over to the other mobile mechanic company that tends to cover a broader area than I do–get them off my plate. They are far out there, far enough that my cell phone reception is pretty much non-existent, which means if I need to look anything up, I can’t do it there. And if I need parts, I have to drive all the way back into town.
Not a good recipe for running a business.
No reception means I missed calls and texts from customers and potential customers. No reception means not having access to the repair data that I need to diagnose and repair vehicles. Being far away from town means more time, which is more expensive for the customer and more expensive for me because I never feel comfortable charging the customer for how long it actually takes to do that stuff that involves just losing my time and gas because I have to drive.
Anyway, the car was overheating, and they thought it had a bad thermostat, so since they had already bought one, I put it in because it was stupid easy on these, and diagnosing it first would make the job take probably an hour longer. Thermostats are cheap, so the lady said to just go ahead and put it in even though it was just a guess, and it turned out to be right this time. Good for her for getting her diagnosis right, even if it was just a guess!
She also badly needs new struts. They’re so bad that the front ones are jammed to the side and digging holes into the strut frame. I’ve never seen that before.
😶
Car number 5 was a 2008 Toyota sienna that it overheated, and I found that it had a busted heater hose where the plastic connection goes. It is just broken in half, dumped coolant everywhere, and massively overheated the engine.
Hopefully, it didn’t cause harm to the engine.
The last car, which was a late add-on, was a 2011 crown Victoria that was stuck at the Walgreens parking lot in Rogers. She had overheated, and she was having lots of weird electrical issues.
She had someone else come out and look at it who said it needed the thermostat, but… they were completely wrong. The thermostat itself was working just fine. The person who had come out had incorrect information about how the system worked. Thinking that if the hose was hot, that meant it needed a thermostat. Nope. You want the hose to be hot. The problem is when the car is hot but the hose is cold. That’s when it’s almost certainly a thermostat. No circulation, means one super hot hose, and one cold hose, and that’s almost always caused by a thermostat being stuck closed, so the coolant can’t pass through it. Other than that, it can be a plugged up radiator or a water pump that no longer can move coolant, but both of those are a heck of a lot more rare.
There are other possible causes as well, but they are all very rare.
Anyway, it turned out that the fan wasn’t working, and after doing some diagnostics, it looked to me like the fan control module was bad. It had power going into it, but the fans still wouldn’t turn on. If I gave power to the fan directly, the fan turned on just fine, so… Power going into the module, but apparently power not going out of the module, generally means… bad module. 🙃
Don’t know why Ford has to use fan control modules. Weren’t relays good enough? 😅
So anyway, I got done about 10:00. I gave them a big discount because I didn’t want to charge for more than an hour for what I had done, but she gave me a $50 tip anyway, so that was nice.
Another long day in the books.
I’m kind of surprised I haven’t had a day that’s been over the edge. I haven’t been doing very well at all with my nutrition and hydration, and being constantly exhausted… Those are all sure fire, or at least were sure fire, recipes for going over the edge physically and having migraines come on.
🤷
Oh! The weather was phenomenal today! Cloudy and breezy. And the temperature was lovely. Those are some of my favorite days, weather wise. 🥳
Love to all. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 