My car is afraid of service.

Now I know this for sure.

Whenever a mechanic tries to approach her, she starts to obey and behave.

When the steel baby was 2 days old (if we can consider signing the purchase contract a bithday), she shaked me hard on any smooth road. That was terrible. In 5 minutes of driving, I was dizzy, I had a headache and I could not look at the cars in the rare mirror: they were jumping all over the place.

I brought it to the dealership for inspection, barely standing on my feet: my brain was almost shaken out of my head. They wanted to see the problem. I moved to the passenger seat for their test drive. And… that was the smoothest drive in my life!

I felt like an idiot.

And the shaking problem never came back!

In a while, we discovered that AC in the car is on all the time, no matter what. In hot summer, it was sort of convenient: you don’t need to press the AC button at all. It was always freezing in the car… But not really “always”. In 2% cases (3 days in 6 months) the blower worked as expected and just blew the outside air. So, the issue was still of a “statistical” nature (98% are – technically – not 100%). Now, cold weather was coming, and my imagination painted scary pictures of exploding AC when it is forced to work together with a heater.

When I approached the dealership for the second time, I was freezing like hell. I stopped in front of the service building, and something inside me whispered: “RUN! Get someone right here and right now and show them the issue BEFORE you enter that Magic Door!!!” Of course, I was reasonable and silenced that voice… Then, we were inside… Tests… Silly questions… More tests… The damn thing worked as it should! I was sure that as soon as we leave the building, the issue would return (it was there 98% of the time for 6 months, right?!) and the Exploding AC Danger overwhelmed me again… I need to pass the message against the flow of the reality they see with their eyes! “Yes”, I said, “I completely agree that it is working correctly right now. It does this in 2% cases, and we are now in the realm of those 2 percent”… Needless to say, I got that unmistakable “This Guy Is Absolutely Crazy” look.

I could not convince them to do any checks. The message was impossible to pass. I felt like an idiot again.

Guess what happened after I left? The AC issue was not returning in 3 weeks now…

So, the ultimate Problem Fixing Algorithm for my car looks like this:

– you bring the car to the service
– they do nothing
– the problem goes away instantly and forever

The only price you pay is being stupidly ashamed.

Isn’t that easy?