Just to remind anyone who forgot (or who never knew), my car got stolen a week and a half ago. We recovered it on the same day in fine condition—except it was missing its hood. You can read about the whole thing here.
A couple days ago, I finally got my car back from the body shop. And I would like to complain about the fact that it was done three days later than they told me it would be, but I don’t really have the heart, because it came back looking better than it did the day I bought it. Mom drove me down to the shop, where all she had to do was sign a form authorizing our insurance company to pay for the work. Needless to say, she had no qualms about signing that form.
I was extremely impressed with the service at this body shop—and I honestly felt a little guilty since I didn’t even have to pay for it. I mean, I knew they were going to give my car a new hood, but I didn’t know they were going to wash it, vaccuum it, dust it, and set its clock to the right time! After I finished admiring the hood’s paint job and the shiny exterior of the car, I opened the door to a new-car-smelling interior and noticed a plastic bag sitting on the eerily-clean back seat. “Oh!” I was thinking, “That must be the goody bag where they left chocolate mints and shampoo and a new toothbrush.” In actual fact, it was the bag in which they had deposited all the CRAP they had pried off the various surfaces in my car. (Including, but not limited to: melted breath mints, empty candy wrappers, and a tube of chapstick that I didn’t even know existed.) That was a little bit embarrassing.
Luckily, though, we had a terrific rainstorm this afternoon, so I was immediately able to begin the long, arduous process of tracking all that mud back into my car. So no worries.
All in all, I have made out incredibly well in this whole “stolen car” ordeal. So, uh, car thief dudes? If you’re listening… first of all, you suck. But second of all, could you please take some part of my car every couple of months? Next time take the timing belt or something. On second thought, that was replaced not very long ago. How about the tires? Or maybe just the door that has a dent in it? That would be good to replace. Thanks!
(P.S. That was a joke. If anyone takes my car again, they will die a slow and painful death. Okay, probably not, but I will look very very sternly in their general direction. Beware stealing my car.)
May 22nd, 2006 at 5:33 am
My goodness that is a GREAT body shop! When my wife got run off the road by a rampant semi driver, we needed her back bumper and rear driver side door replaced. Our insurance company was great in directing us to the closest body shop to our location, so being trusting of the insurance company, we dropped it off there…
After all was said and done… we spent $500 to pay the deductible (and of course the monthly insurance bill) and we got a dust covered car (interior and all) with a brand spankin used bumper and rear driver side door. To add insult to injury, it looked like they sprayed milk all over the back seat. I guess they left the rear door off while they were working on every other car in Texas that week. Ahh my confidence in the collision repair business and insurance business was not too high that day. Buuuuut I have to look at the bright side… apparently not everyone that goes to a body shop gets treated that way. I’m glad that you got a stupendous body shop to fix your car!
PS I hate semi drivers now.
May 22nd, 2006 at 10:55 am
They set the clock to the right time? Very attentive.
Very attentive.
And you noticed that??? (I assume it wasn’t five hours off
May 22nd, 2006 at 3:43 pm
which repair shop did you go to?
May 22nd, 2006 at 9:16 pm
Thank God you have good insurance. Body work is not cheap.
May 22nd, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Vu - Wow, that really sucks! Both that your wife got run off the road, and that you had such a horrible body shop experience! I feel even more fortunate now. Thanks for sharing your harrowing story. =-o
Jotefa - No, no, see… the thing about me and my car is: I leave the lights on. A lot. And then the battery runs down and I have to find some poor soul to help me jump my car. The other thing about me in general (not necessarily just with my car) is that I’m lazy. So when my battery runs out and the clock gets reset, I very rarely take the time to set it back to the right time. (But for some reason I find the time to learn by how many hours the clock is wrong, so I can mentally correct it… hmm…) So anyway, when I noticed that the clock was even in the vicinity of the right time, I knew they must have reset it.
Phil - See email.
Ian - Thank God indeed! The work on my car would have cost us over a thousand dollars… money that I definitely was not prepared to spend on my car just then! =-o
May 23rd, 2006 at 9:50 am
Nothing wrong with being lazy. According to Larry Wall (of the PERL programming language), that’s the first virtue of a great programmer. And if you even use it to regularly practice calculations in the 24/60 system…
The clock in my car has (or have I?) a similar problem. It runs a bit fast, about a minute per week. As there is only a single button to advance it, setting it back a couple of minutes means advancing it by almost a day. Fortunately, somebody invented DST, so I have a chance to adjust the clock twice a year. Also fortunately, I’ve got a wide-area wireless networking device in my car which receives the current time, formerly known as radio.