• Home
• About Me
• Auburn’s Mascots
• Disclaimers
• Terms of Use

Okay, so what about the car?

Now, for the other “news” from my outburst…

Friday night, after eating dinner with some friends, I go out to my car, turn the key and discover that my battery is dead. Well, I was with the last group of folks to leave. By the time I got to my car, I knew that one other person had already left and only friend left in the parking was hopping on his Harley (no good for jumpstarting my V8, mind you).

So, I start calling people I know in the area. I couldn’t track down anyone who had jumper cables and could come help me. So, I head off to the restaurant and ask for help. Fortunately, they were nice enough to send one of their kitchen staff out to help me jump my car. I get the car running and head home, since it’s late, I couldn’t go battery shopping.

Saturday morning, I realized that maybe OnStar could help me… after all, I only pay them $16.00 a month to keep me “safe and sound”. So, I call them and they send out a guy to jump start my car for me. No muss, no fuss and it was free (well, it was $16/mo for the past two 1/2 years, but ya know).

So I decided to head over to Sears to buy a new battery. They take about two hours to determine that they don’t have a battery to fit my car. They give me another jumpstart so I can head for Wal-Mart, where they were “backed up” and offered to send me to another Wal-Mart. I headed over there, and they “don’t stock” a battery for my car. I then go on a wild goose chase heading to such places as Interstate Battery (closed on Saturday), my Chevy dealer (Service closed on Saturday and Sunday), another Sears (also didn’t have my battery), Pep Boys (no luck), Batteries Plus (nope), AutoZone (”We might could order ya one”), and finally at NTB (yes, Lindsay, I know).

NTB was slightly helpful. The store manager told me “Oh yeah, the group 85 battery that your car needs is only made by AC/Delco (the manufacturer) and you can only buy them at GM Dealerships. I’ve run into that problem before with that car.”

Nice.

Now, let me explain something here. I drive a 2006 Chevy Impala SS (5.3L V-8). It’s a good old regular American car, right? Hah. So, by now I’ve had my car running for two hours (since the last time the first Sears boosted my car). At each stop, I’ve been locking it with the remote and leaving the keys in the car, running… burning my fuel. In a last ditch effort of desperation, I head over to dealership row, where a couple other GM dealerships are. The Caddy/Hummer dealer’s service department closed at noon (by now it’s 12:45), but in a stroke of luck, the Pontiac/Hyundai dealer’s service department is open a whopping 8 am to 5 pm on a SATURDAY. Unfortunately, they didn’t have my battery either.

As it turns out, Chevy made this battery for about six months. My car is one a of a lucky few that got it. This is why only AC/Delco makes it… there are no substitutes.

Nice.

So, I did the only thing left that I could think of… I pushed the OnStar button again and told them that they could either locate me a battery at a place that would put it in today, or they could come jumpstart me about seven or eight more times this weekend, because I wasn’t wasting anymore gas.

And you know what? They helped me find a battery. Imagine that… customer service lives.

Never mind the fact that this battery was in a town 30 miles away… and it cost $240 to put it in ($160 of it was the battery). But hey, it has a seven year warranty on it… (Like I’ll keep this car that long). The service advisor at the dealership that finally had the battery told me that his tech got “third degree burns” from the battery acid that had leaked on the outside of the battery… and that it was “swollen up and ready to burst”. Gee, that sounds exciting… what heppens when a battery bursts in your car?

Most importantly is cost me TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY FREAKIN’ DOLLARS for a CAR BATTERY. Holy crap! I swear with all the trouble I’ve had with this car, the next one will not be a GM product. I should quit using my GM Credit Card now…

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.

Copyright 2004-2009 TheBisch | All Rights Reserved
Theme by DailyBlogTips