Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Saga of our car ends on a happy note . . .

Yesterday, as I sat waiting for my son to exit his history class at college, I noticed a funny little light on the dashboard of the car. I do not like unexplained, funny little lights because they usually mean something needs attention. When we got home, my husband confirmed that we do not want that little light on our dashboard and set out to find a repair shop to check this out for us . . . before something either falls off the car or starts a fire. :-)

This is one of those times that we sincerely bless the Internet because he was able to get remarks, experiences, and reviews about a number of car repair shops. We gingerly approached the selected shop with eyes darting around to see if anything would set off alarms in our mind. Nope. It was clean, well cared for, and tidy. We went in and the owner said they could do a diagnostic test on the car but it would take two hours. Since I had followed my husband over in his work car, we went home to have lunch and await the dreaded recommendations.

Two hours go by and no word so we call and the owner said they had pinpointed something from the test but they couldn't find a thing wrong with a part called the 'air flow control'. We took our daughter over to college for her class and got back to the shop a total of three hours later. The owner said they reset the light. They could find absolutely nothing wrong. We started to pay for the $80 diagnostic test and he said there was no charge for that since they didn't find any problem! The pouring rain didn't seem quite as bad as I happily drove home!

We have dealt with the car dealerships on repairs before but have several bad experiences. The last time, they informed us that my husband's work car had a leak. Uh, the garage floor was absolutely clean and no guages indicated any losss of fluids in the car. They were willing to 'rush' the job knowing we needed the car and the cost would be over $600. We declined. I'm willing to bet that if we had gone to the dealership for yesterday's non-problem, they would have, indeed, charged us for the diagnostic and replaced the air flow thingy . . . regardless. One guess where we are going for the next oil change?

I remembered my prayers, yesterday . . . you think they helped?

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