"Oh, we don't have anything like that; you're gonna have to go to the dealership."
When you hear those words, you know something very very bad is about to happen. Let me start at the beginning...
My generally reliable windshield wiper began leaving an unwiped stripe right in middle of my field of vision. Simple, you say? Just go get a new wiper blade, you say? That is what I said myself. So off I trot to the ever reliable (i.e. cheap) Wal-mart, and $12 later, walk out with my brand new wipers! Problem solved, right? Wrong! Nooooo, I have a shmanshpanshy new car with new-fangled wipers! Back to Walmart, return the wipers, and now for that trusty old stand-by when Walmart doesn't have it: O'Reilly's. They're great, you say? They have everything, you say? But NO! They don't! The guy goes out and looks at my new-fangled shmanshypanshy wiper blades, and that's when it happens. He says, "Oh, we don't have anything like that; you're gonna have to go to the dealer's." My heart falls in my chest. That's trouble. Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with D and that stands for Dealership. Now, there are plenty of reservoirs of evil in our society, places where evil lurks and snatches the souls of the unwarey. Bars, strip clubs, liquor stores, televanglism... but the dealer is perhaps the worst of them all. So with a very appropriate sense of dread, I turn my high-maintence car towards... the Dealership. *scary music* Unfortunately, I know where the parts section is by now (alas, the drama continues!) so I park and try to prepare myself for what's ahead. Now, I don't have any issues with the parts guys. They're just good honest folk trying to earn a living. They just happen to work for the devil himself. They have the wipers in stock, so he gets them from the back, places them on the counter, and reads me the total: $62.79. *dramatic pause* Yeah. That's right, apparently my car requires wiper blades that cost %500 more than normal wiper blades. Are you freakin' joking?!?! But, I have no choice. The Dealership gets it's grubby hands on my hard-earned money. But, not one to put up with such baldfaced extortion, the minute I get home I'm scouring the internet for anything better. Surely I will not be spending $30 a wiper blade for the rest of my life! And then, I find it! $17.88 at Advanced Auto. But wait, if they don't have it at O'Reilly's surely they don't have it at Advanced Auto? My next final isn't until Wednesday, so I jump in the car and head out to investigate. There they are! Right there on the shelf, the advertised product! I pull one out and look at the attachment joint. Darn! Not the right one! Alas! But before I get too far into my lamentations, I am approached by a woman who is with a company doing advertising research. She offers me a $20 gift certificate to give her my opinions on Advanced Auto's potential new lines of commercials. I'm such a sucker for surveys. I'll say yes every time. I'm not sure if it's because I'm flattered that someone would ask my opinion, or if I feel like I'm assisting the scientific community with research or what, but I almost always do them. So yup. I watch the little video, tell them how I feel, and get $20. Then the nice Advanced Auto man shows me that the wiper blade NEXT to the one I picked up, does in fact go on my car. So not only do I get TWO wiper blades for the price of one (well, almost) at the dealer, I also get to use my $20 gift certificate!! YES!! What a very productive visit to Advanced Auto! Whoohoo! And now I get to take back the other wiper blades! So I drive down to the evil Dealership, back to the parts store where I have been once before already today, slam the wiper blades down on the counter, (wait for the guy to notice me... oh wait, he's on break, wait some more until the guy on break finally figures it would be a good idea to mention that their is a customer to the guy in the back who isn't on break) and exclaim, "I'd like to return these wiper blades!" Oh, it was priceless! The look on his face! "But you can't get these anywhere else," he says. "Yup, I got 'em cheaper somewhere else," I reply triumphantly, barely containing my glee. "Really, and they're the right ones?" he asks. "Yup, the guy put 'em on my car for me and everything." Take that, punk face! Hahahahahahahaha, hahahahahahahahah, hahahahahah!! Stick it to the man! That's what I like! Hahah! And then he charged me a $12 "restocking fee." *sigh* That's what I get for walking into the Dealership. I'm just glad I came out with my soul. Even with the restocking fee, it was cheaper to buy them at AdvancedAuto, and that was before the $20 gift card, which was just icing on the cake. Very nice, tasty icing, mind. Ah, it was a good day.
My generally reliable windshield wiper began leaving an unwiped stripe right in middle of my field of vision. Simple, you say? Just go get a new wiper blade, you say? That is what I said myself. So off I trot to the ever reliable (i.e. cheap) Wal-mart, and $12 later, walk out with my brand new wipers! Problem solved, right? Wrong! Nooooo, I have a shmanshpanshy new car with new-fangled wipers! Back to Walmart, return the wipers, and now for that trusty old stand-by when Walmart doesn't have it: O'Reilly's. They're great, you say? They have everything, you say? But NO! They don't! The guy goes out and looks at my new-fangled shmanshypanshy wiper blades, and that's when it happens. He says, "Oh, we don't have anything like that; you're gonna have to go to the dealer's." My heart falls in my chest. That's trouble. Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with D and that stands for Dealership. Now, there are plenty of reservoirs of evil in our society, places where evil lurks and snatches the souls of the unwarey. Bars, strip clubs, liquor stores, televanglism... but the dealer is perhaps the worst of them all. So with a very appropriate sense of dread, I turn my high-maintence car towards... the Dealership. *scary music* Unfortunately, I know where the parts section is by now (alas, the drama continues!) so I park and try to prepare myself for what's ahead. Now, I don't have any issues with the parts guys. They're just good honest folk trying to earn a living. They just happen to work for the devil himself. They have the wipers in stock, so he gets them from the back, places them on the counter, and reads me the total: $62.79. *dramatic pause* Yeah. That's right, apparently my car requires wiper blades that cost %500 more than normal wiper blades. Are you freakin' joking?!?! But, I have no choice. The Dealership gets it's grubby hands on my hard-earned money. But, not one to put up with such baldfaced extortion, the minute I get home I'm scouring the internet for anything better. Surely I will not be spending $30 a wiper blade for the rest of my life! And then, I find it! $17.88 at Advanced Auto. But wait, if they don't have it at O'Reilly's surely they don't have it at Advanced Auto? My next final isn't until Wednesday, so I jump in the car and head out to investigate. There they are! Right there on the shelf, the advertised product! I pull one out and look at the attachment joint. Darn! Not the right one! Alas! But before I get too far into my lamentations, I am approached by a woman who is with a company doing advertising research. She offers me a $20 gift certificate to give her my opinions on Advanced Auto's potential new lines of commercials. I'm such a sucker for surveys. I'll say yes every time. I'm not sure if it's because I'm flattered that someone would ask my opinion, or if I feel like I'm assisting the scientific community with research or what, but I almost always do them. So yup. I watch the little video, tell them how I feel, and get $20. Then the nice Advanced Auto man shows me that the wiper blade NEXT to the one I picked up, does in fact go on my car. So not only do I get TWO wiper blades for the price of one (well, almost) at the dealer, I also get to use my $20 gift certificate!! YES!! What a very productive visit to Advanced Auto! Whoohoo! And now I get to take back the other wiper blades! So I drive down to the evil Dealership, back to the parts store where I have been once before already today, slam the wiper blades down on the counter, (wait for the guy to notice me... oh wait, he's on break, wait some more until the guy on break finally figures it would be a good idea to mention that their is a customer to the guy in the back who isn't on break) and exclaim, "I'd like to return these wiper blades!" Oh, it was priceless! The look on his face! "But you can't get these anywhere else," he says. "Yup, I got 'em cheaper somewhere else," I reply triumphantly, barely containing my glee. "Really, and they're the right ones?" he asks. "Yup, the guy put 'em on my car for me and everything." Take that, punk face! Hahahahahahahaha, hahahahahahahahah, hahahahahah!! Stick it to the man! That's what I like! Hahah! And then he charged me a $12 "restocking fee." *sigh* That's what I get for walking into the Dealership. I'm just glad I came out with my soul. Even with the restocking fee, it was cheaper to buy them at AdvancedAuto, and that was before the $20 gift card, which was just icing on the cake. Very nice, tasty icing, mind. Ah, it was a good day.
posted by Helen at 17:21
2 Comments:
Which is why I like my '92 Chevy truck. I can walk into any Sack-N-Save in America and they will have every part to fix my truck.
Stick THAT to the man!
Matthew
I'm rofl... That's the best thing I've read all week! Cheers to Helen!!
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