Long Overdue Updates

A month and a half without an update.  Certainly not for a lack of things to write about.  

Curling

Curling season ended the first week of April, but over Memorial Day weekend, I went down to a summer bonspiel in Hollywood.  It was a nice way to spend the weekend, and my team managed to nearly win, only losing in the A finals for a 2nd place finish.  Not so bad!  But now I'm definitely done curling until the fall.  

Never-ending Car Challenges

This story could be a 5-page blog unto itself, but here it goes.  I loved my car, a 2001 Nissan Altima, built like a tank, over the past almost 7 years hadn't had a single breakdown, no major expenses other than routine maintenance, and most importantly it was reliable.  Until recently.  Back on Christmas Eve, driving home over the horrendously icy roads, my dashboard lights up like a Christmas tree (festive, right?).  I make it home without any trouble, still perplexed as to what the problem was, though by the indicators, it seemed to be something electrical.   Day after Christmas I decide to drive over to Schuck's to get a new battery, assuming that was the problem.  Just as I get a block from the store, one-by-one every electrical component in my car starts to shut down.  As I pull into the Schuck's parking lot, the car dies completely.  I replace the battery in the parking lot, and the car starts up again, but no difference in the dashboard lights.  The guy there brings out his tester and determines that my alternator is dead.  I had enough in juice in the new battery to get me over to the Nissan dealer, and I got the alternator replaced, and thought all was fine.  Then two days later, I'm at home and try to start my car, and the battery is dead.  I get it jumped and go back to the dealer that replaced my alternator, and they claim the problem was the battery (that I bought new at Schucks).  Instead of messing with it, I had them replace the battery and I would just take the defective battery back to Schuck's.  I tried that, and they hooked it onto their tester and said everything was fine.  Something didn't add up, the chain of logic wasn't there to me, but I went with it.  The car proceeded to work flawlessly.  

Fast forward to May.  First free weekend I'd had in months, I decide to get up and drive to Canada in search of some Olympics merchandise and just a nice drive.  Had a great time, start to head home, when I get stuck in stop-and-go traffic getting out of Vancouver.  After about 30 minutes of the traffic, my car starts acting strange.  Next thing I know, one-by-one every electrical component in my car shuts down.  (Sound familiar?)  Moments later, my car is stranded in the middle of a 4-lane street, in who-knows-where suburb of Vancouver in another country.  Resisting the urge to panic TOO much, I call AAA, which automatically gets routed to the CAA offices in Vancouver who take care of me just as if I were still in the States.  Just as I get on the phone with them, a tow truck pulls up behind me, just passing by.  The nice guy reaffirms the obvious that this isn't the best place to be stuck, and he drives onto a side street, unhooks the car he already had on his tow, and then comes back and tows me off to the side street, rehooks the other car and goes on his way.  At least now I'm not in the line of traffic anymore.  Of course, it's 5pm on a Saturday, and every shop in town is closed until Monday.  The best they can do is send out one of their CAA mechanics, who jumped the car and determined that the alternator was undercharging, but if I kept the revs up on the highway, I should make it home.  Lo and behold, that's exactly what I did.  The next week, I took the car back to the Nissan service folks, who proceeded to find ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THE CAR.  

For the next 2 weeks, I don't know if it was just my own skiddishness worrying that my car was going to break down on me or what, but my car did not run happy.  I'd get stopped at a red light for more than a minute or two, and the engine would start to rev funny, or something else would make me think there was a problem.  I just didn't trust my car.  I was constantly feeling sick whenever I got into my car, no doubt having mild panic attacks worrying about whether it was going to break down in a horrible place again.  

I'd had enough.  I'd been considering getting a new car for a while for other reasons, but this was the last straw.  So that's what I ended up doing.  I bought American this time, and got a 2009 Dodge Journey with about 12,000 miles on it.  Never heard of it?  I hadn't either, but our used car guy who hasn't led me wrong before knew it was what I was looking for, and I think it is.  Though I have to admit, I miss my Altima, at least I trust my car again.  So it goes.  

Muppets

I previously mentioned the new Jim Henson exhibition at EMP|SFM this summer.  Well, as it turned out, I obviously needed something more to add to my summer schedule, so I am now volunteering there once a week.  What they have set up is a puppet stage where people can use some of their specially-made Muppet-like puppets (in the style of famous rock musicians, of course) and try their hand at what it's like to be a Muppeteer.  The volunteers are staffing that area and basically having fun playing with puppets and helping other people doing so.  For the most part, I'll just be there on Wednesday evenings from 4-7pm.  The exhibit is pretty amazing, and well worth seeing!  

Well, I guess I'm caught up with the major stuff, time for more random blogs in the future. 

Whatever happened to do-it-yourself car repair?

Last night on my way to the curling club, I came to the realization that it wasn't quite as bright as it should be in front of my car. After I got there, I got out of my car to take a look and sure enough, my front passenger-side headlight was out. Ignoring my past experiences ["All that work for a $10 lightbulb" 11/20/2005 ], I figured "Hey, no big deal. I'll pick up a new bulb tomorrow." And so this morning on my way to work, which just happens to go right past a car parts store, I picked up a new headlight for my 2001 Nissan Altima for the amazing low price of $8.69. After work, I got a screwdriver and wrench and headed down to the garage to replace the headlight. As I recalled from the driver's side headlight just over a year ago, everything has to be done from the inside under the hood. Unfortunately, where on the driver's side I had the battery to contend with blocking my access to the bulb, on the passenger side I had a slightly less movable object, the coolant tank.

After pondering just how much work it would take to wedge my hands in far enough to get at the bulb, then realizing that I'd never actually get the bulb out once I did, I retreated to the assistance of the owner's manual. Despite my hopes to the contrary, the instructions had not changed since the last time I tried to find the instructions to replace a headlight only to ignore the manufacturer's recommendation that you take the car to the dealer, lest you follow their instructions on how to completely remove the front bumper of your car.

For more than a brief moment, I contemplated actually following said instructions and removing the front bumper of my car in order to replace the headlight, and even went so far as to remove one of the supposedly 4 screws holding on the bumper. After regaining my senses in a bout of extreme frustration, I put everything back together, closed the hood and ranted to myself all the way back upstairs. A bit of research online led me to the exact situation I had already deduced from my own first-hand experience. BUT... the suggestion quickly came that there really is only one screw that holds the coolant reservoir in, and after you remove that easy-to-access screw, all you need to do is use, and I quote, "more than a little upward force", and the coolant tank will just pop right off and you can move it to the side. Could it be so easy?

Back downstairs I go, open the hood back up and do a little further investigation. I removed the screw that holds the coolant tank down, and then pulled up on it. No success. Wiggled it a little and pulled up again a little harder. No success. Stared it at glaringly, cleaned it off and reached down as far as I could to get a better grip, and pulled up even harder. No success. Hmmm, did I miss something? Did a little investigative work to figure out just how it was held down there and saw a bit of a clamp on the left side that appeared to hold it on there. Took the end of a screwdriver and used a little leverage to pull up on the top edge. POP! It came loose and I just lifted it right out and set it off to the side.

Now I had easy access to the bulb, just a twist of the locking ring and out came the old bulb, in went the new one, voila! Snapped the coolant reservoir back in its holder and screwed it down, and that was it. All-in-all a 15-minute procedure, 10 of which were trying to get the darn tank off, and now both my headlights work again.

This brings me to the rant of the night, if it's so easy (obviously) just to remove the coolant tank to get at the headlight, WHY does the instruction manual give you the daunting instructions to remove half the front of your car to get at it? I'LL TELL YOU WHY... to convince less-adventurous folk to take their car into the dealer who can charge them an arm an a leg to "remove the front of the car to get at it, because it's so difficult." Of course, once you take it in, they probably just pop off the coolant reservoir and replace it in all of 5 minutes and charge you for 1.5 hrs worth of labor. OK, so I'm probably exaggerating and there's some legal liability reason why they can't actually tell you to remove the coolant tank or the battery or whatever. Like that makes it any better.

Well, that should cover the headlights for a while now. What will go wrong next? I dunno, but maybe it'll be time to get a new car by then.

Persistence finally pays off

In the continuing saga of my car windows and Nissan, persistence has finally paid off apparently. The gentleman from Nissan's executive offices called me back this morning (35 days after my initial complaint) and let me know that Nissan will cover the replacement of the faulty window regulators on my car.

Of course, over the course of the past 35 days, the Nissan dealer in Ballard that I took my car to originally has shut its doors and turned out the lights permanently. As a result, on Tuesday I will be taking my car up to Edmonds to get the repairs done, but for what it's worth, I don't mind too much. I'm just glad that they're finally going to take some ownership in their product and fix my car

It's nice to know that there ARE people out there who care about the consumer... the irony is that those people are NOT the ones in the consumer affairs department. Though the realization that Nissan does seem to care about having me as a customer afterall restores my faith in them, and I will once again consider getting another Nissan

... after my windows start working again.

Another week, another call from Nissan

At least I still seem to be on Nissan's radar, for better or worse. This morning once again I received a call from Nissan, but this time NOT from their Consumer Affairs division, but from their Executive Offices. The gentleman I spoke with called to say that he received my letter, and would be looking into the problem. He just needed to know the dealer I took the car in to be serviced at, and some other contact information. He gave me his direct phone number and said he would call me back next week.

No accusations, no excuses, just a guy who seems to be honestly looking into my complaint. THAT's what I call consumer affairs. Maybe there's a reason this guy is in the Executive Offices. We'll see... at least this guy didn't leave me frustrated when the call was over. Maybe Nissan can save their reputation with me afterall. We'll see.

Nissan strikes again

I don't know if it's good customer service or not, but Nissan tested my patience today.

As an update to my previous reports regarding the defective windows in my Nissan Altima, after the "consumer affairs specialist" contacted me and told me Nissan would do nothing to resolve my problems, I sent a reasonably lengthy complaint letter to their headquarters in California. I must say, at this point I have resolved that Nissan really doesn't care about my satisfaction and going to do anything about it, my only real purpose is to make sure they know that they've made a thoroughly dis-satisfied customer.

After the frustrations with Nissan are all but out of my mind, what happens today? The SAME rep who called me the first time telling me that Nissan would do nothing about my problems, and had an excuse for everything in an attempt to convince me that my problem was not their problem, calls me again! For a brief moment I thought perhaps they had decided to own up to their problem... not so fast. No, this person had the courtesy to call me back and tell me that she "received my letter", gave me more of the same excuses that she gave me the FIRST time I talked with her, and informed me that Nissan has not changed their decision. My thought? WHY DID YOU EVEN BOTHER CALLING ME TO TELL ME THAT NOTHING HAS CHANGED?! Ridiculous if you ask me. She did say that she would forward my letter on to the "executive" level... which is really what the intent of the letter was in the first place. Put it in the hands of someone who actually should know how customers are satisfied or not.

One more thing to add to my collection of "examples of bad customer service".

Nothing's ever easy when it comes to cars

Well, what I hoped would be a simple fix turns out it will take another day to come to some sort of resolution. Where we're at now is:

I took my car to the Nissan dealership this morning bright and early. Dropped it off, got a courtesy shuttle ride to work, no problem. Plenty of nice people at the North Seattle Nissan dealership's service department.

Got one call from them around noon asking for more details of the problem. Explained in further detail the problem, and all was well.

Then got another call around 3:15pm explaining that they'd looked into the problem, verified that 2 window regulators need to be replaced, but that the almighty Nissan corporate warranty folks are denying coverage (because my car is at 62,000 which is over the 60,000 warranty extension). The dealer tried to negotiate with the corporate folks to get it covered, but got nowhere. However, TJ (the service guy) gave me Nissan's number so I could try to fight it out myself.

A call to Nissan got more nice people, who were rather helpful, or shall I say, as helpful as they could be without actually resolving my issue. The first person updated all of the basics, took all of my information, praised my choice of a Nissan Altima since it's the "most popular passenger car in the world", yadda yadda yadda, gave me a case number, and then passed me off to another "specialist" who really did nothing more than told me that a "specialist" (if everyone's a specialist, doesn't that make nobody one?) would talk to the dealer and I would receive a resolution by the end of the day tomorrow. I got no indication whether or not anything would actually be done about it, nor did I get the feeling that anyone I spoke with had any power to actually do anything to resolve it.

I called the dealer back, who were also surprised that Nissan wasn't going to do anything immediately, but agreed that the corporate people will probably breakdown and cover the replacements. So tonight I'm back to pick up my car, with no repairs done to it at all. Hopefully once I get to a person who can actually resolve my issues, the reason will stand out and they'll stand by their product and fix the defective parts in my car. Then I'll make ANOTHER appointment to get the windows fixed and hopefully have it taken care of. Fortunately I'm in a position where it's not a critical problem that "must be fixed now", so I can fight until the bitter end if necessary. I'll say one thing, the longer and more trouble it takes to get this resolved, the less I'll be looking at buying another Nissan.

Windows... essential feature, or optional?

I suspect that 90% of you who read the title of this entry will assume this is going to be some geeky rant about Microsoft Windows and some buggy feature, or perhaps a dissertation on the merits of Windows versus Linux, or perhaps something completely unrelated to windows at all.

Well you're all wrong. The complaint I have is about the power windows on my 2001 Nissan Altima. As anyone who has ridden in my car with me no doubt knows, sometime last fall, just at the tail end of the Seattle heat waves of 2005, my passenger-side power window stopped working, well, effectively. It went down without any problem at all, but had serious issues rolling back up. Obviously something was broken in the mechanism, which I verified by actually ripping half of the door apart to see if it was anything easily fixable, which it wasn't. My conclusion, "hey, these things happen" and I'd get it fixed in the Spring when I actually cared about having a window that opens again.

Flash forward to February, for some reason I had the need to roll down the rear window on the passenger side, and as I was rolling it back up what happened... it was starting to act just like the front one! One broken window, reasonable accidental breakage... two broken windows, something's definitely not right.

After a little research on the internet last night, I find that there is a known issue with the windows on certain 2001 Altimas, exactly the issue that I am having. So this morning I gave a call up to my local Nissan dealer and talk to their service department. They look up the VIN number of my car in their system, and lo and behold, there's a voluntary recall / replacement program for all 4 window regulators on my car. Though in Nissan's infinite wisdom (or at least their lawyers, no doubt), they were covered under a 5-year/60,000-mile warranty extension, which puts the warranty expiration out to... March 30, 2006. Good thing I called when I did.

Of course, I don't recall ever getting a notice about this impending failure of my window regulators, or I probably would have done something the moment I noticed a problem. The minor caveat is that the mileage on my car is I believe about 61,000 miles. If they disqualify my warranty replacement because of that, just watch me go after Nissan's corporate goons and raise a fuss. I've been 100% satisfied with my car, many times extolled the greatness and trouble-free maintenance of my car, and would definitely consider getting another Nissan next time I buy a car... that should be worth far more to Nissan than angering me over silly window regulators that they know are faulty. I don't expect it to come to that, but I'm ready if it happens because no doubt retail price to fix 4 power window regulators probably runs in the $1000+ range.

Long blog short, I have an appointment to take my car in on Tuesday to get all 4 regulators replaced. Hope for the best.

All that work for a $10 lightbulb

What ever happened to do-it-yourself car repairs. Sometimes I swear that manufacturers intentionally design cars just so that it's next to impossible to make simple repairs yourself. Now, I'm not trying to replace the engine, or anything like that... I'm not crazy. I just found last night that one of my headlights was out, so logically, this morning I go to the auto parts store up the street and pick up a replacement bulb. I figured, pop the old one out, put the new one in, piece of cake, right? WRONG. A job that I expected would take no more than 10 minutes ended up taking over an hour.

So I pop the hood, use my trusty maglight to scope around for an easy way to replace it. I can see exactly where the bulb connects to the car, the problem is you basically need hands of a 6-year-old to even reach down in there, plus once you do, there's not enough clearance to get the bulb out anyway, because the battery is in the way.

Plan B: Remove the battery. Easy, right? Sure, just disconnect the battery terminals, and loosen the one bolt that holds the battery down, and it just pops right out. Battery terminals... considering I've never replaced the battery the nuts that hold the terminals on were a little tight and awkward, but I managed to get them off with reasonably little trouble. Then that big bolt way down at the bottom that holds the battery on... not such an easy story. I can get a ratchet down there and it just fits in perfectly. One problem... there's no space to TURN the ratchet. Minor details.

It's at this point I second guess myself just wondering if there's an easier way then taking the battery out. So, after messing with my own intuitional instruction manual, I opened up the glove box and found the owners manual and flipped to the page on replacing head lamps. (At least they still put the instructions for this in the manual.) I call it "How to replace the headlamp in 9 easy steps." The first 6 steps involve removing about half a dozen screws, nuts, and bolts and basically disassembling the front corner panel of the car, followed by 3 quick and easy steps to disconnect the bulb and replace it. The additional caveat, "based on the complexity of the procedure, we recommend taking your vehicle in to an authorized service center for replacement." Taking the car into the dealer to replace the headlight? I think not. Removing half the front end of the car just to replace the headlight? I also think not.

I now return to the original plan of removing the battery, this time with a bit more resolve than the last time. Using a creative combination of the ratchet, vise-grips, and crescent wrenches, I managed to get the bolt holding the battery on loosened. From this point forward things become decidedly easier. I removed the battery, which gave me a wide-open reach at the back of the headlight. A few twists and disconnections and the bulb came right out. The new one went in equally easy. Of course, since the battery was now sitting on the floor of the garage, I had no way of knowing whether or not the new bulb was installed correctly and working, but I had hope.

I replaced the battery, reconnected everything and screwed everything back in (albeit this time, not nearly as tightly as it was in previously, because inevitably next week my battery will die or something). Turned on the headlights and it worked beautifully. The only lasting side-effects: my radio presets were all reset, but I'd been meaning to change them around anyway, so it worked out well. All in all, everything's fine but it was incredibly too much work for such a simple task to replace a $10 lightbulb.