an epic day, indeed…. and a renewed faith in customer service
January 27th, 2008 Stephen Lau
wendy and i headed up to tahoe this weekend for a fun, weekend snowboarding. the snow promised to be fantastic with a storm having dumped fresh powder all thursday & friday.
we left saturday morning, and everything was going great until my engine imploded somewhere going up the donner pass. all of a sudden my power sapped, i heard a whooshing sound, and i was flooring the engine going about 30mph up the pass. initially i thought a vacuum tube had broken and i’d lost my turbo or something - but realised that full-throttle going 30mph in 2nd gear was something bigger than that. i nursed it up to the summit of the pass, gave much thanks when i saw the “steep descent/downhill next 5 miles” and brought the car limping into a gas station/mechanic in Truckee.
the service guy there asked me turn the engine on so he could hear what was wrong and had me immediately turn it off after 1 second. “i’ll save you the $95 diagnostic: your engine’s blown, it’ll need a rebuild. tow it to your favourite dealer or mechanic”.
ouch.
he pulled the oil dipstick and showed me metal flakes in the oil indicating something inside the engine went nuts and blew chunks. sigh.
we called some people, checked out our options, and eventually decided to tow the car to Incline Village, rent a U-Haul + auto trailer, and tow my Audi back to Oakland.
so this is normally where i’d be pissed and annoyed; but instead i was actually pretty happy and satisfied. i was expecting people around every corner trying to rip us off, instead what i got was the following…
i called AAA and asked for a tow to Incline Village, the operator said my basic membership only covered 5 miles, and each additional mile was $7. i got off the phone and asked the service guy how far from Truckee to Incline Village. he said about 20-25 miles so that would have been about a $140 tow! he then suggested upgrading to AAA Plus which would get me 100 miles of free towing.
i called AAA back and asked very clearly “my car is dead. i’m stuck and need a tow. can i upgrade to AAA Plus right now and have it take effect immediately for a further tow?”
3 minutes, and a credit card charge of $16.73 later, and i was AAA Plus member being told to expect a tow truck driver in the next 45 minutes. sweet! we were a little worried though because the U-Haul closed at 1pm (by this time it was 11:49).
5 minutes later, a tow truck showed up. 1 minute after that, i got an automated call from AAA saying to expect my driver in 5-10 minutes. 
awesome. @ 12:20, we were on our way - and the tow truck driver got us into the U-Haul right on the dot at 1pm…
… where the U-Haul guy was holding up shop waiting for us, having already gotten the truck and the trailer ready leaving enough room in the parking lot for the tow truck to unload my Audi.
we unloaded, got it secured on the trailer, and went upstairs to sign paperwork where he gave us a discount, gave us his card and said give him a call next time and he’d hook us up with Diamond Peak discount tickets. at 1:34 we were leaving the U-Haul on our way back to the Bay Area.
so, all in all - yes, the day sucked. yes the weekend sucked. my car needs a new engine. we didn’t get to snowboard. and i spent 10 hours driving up to Tahoe and back yesterday.
but because every single person whom we encountered: the mechanic, the AAA operator, the tow truck driver, and the U-Haul guy were so amazingly helpful, and sympathetic… i’m left surprisingly happy with a renewed faith in customer service.
… and wendy’s happy because i think this qualifies as a settlement to our running debate as to whose car we should sell to buy the Audi TT we want as our next car. i think we’re going to sell the A4.
[tags: Car, Snowboarding]
1 Comment Add your own
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1.
Dan Price | January 29th, 2008 at 02:13
Sorry to hear about the car man. Ouch.
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