Perri Nelson's Website 

I hate being lied to

A couple of days ago I posted about my car troubles. On Monday I took the car into a local shop to have them give me an estimate. Because I wasn't able to drive in to work on Monday I called in and took the day off. I expected them to call back within a couple of hours, but they didn't. So I called at just about closing time to find out what was up.

They gave me the estimate. It was a rather substantial amount of money ($1352.00). I expected that it would be fairly expensive, since the shop rate is typically around $75 per hour and we were talking about a 6 hour job to replace the radiator, the water pump and the timing belt. They told me it would probably be ready at the end of the next day, assuming they could get the parts.

On Tuesday morning I decided to telecommute, since I was still without a car. The shop didn't call me, so I called at around 1:00pm or so. They weren't done, but they had all the parts. They needed a special tool to pull the harmonic balancer from the engine so they could remove the timing cover. I was told at that time that they were replacing the radiator then and there so that that part of the job would be done while they were waiting for the tool.

They told me they'd call before they closed. The shop closes at 5:00pm. At a little after 5:00pm I called them since they never bothered to call me. They told me that they did not have the tool yet, but that my car would definitely be ready by Wednesday afternoon.

Today is Wednesday. This morning I rented a car so that I could drive to work. After I got to work I called the auto repair shop. They told me again that the car would be ready by 5:00pm, that they had the tool and that they were doing the work right then, and putting things back together.

After concluding that conversation with them, I called my wife. She was going to pick up the car after work. She wouldn't be able to be there until 5:30pm at least, and so I called the auto shop again. I told them that my wife would not be there at closing time, but that she could be there sometime between 5:30 and 5:45.

They assured me again that the car would be ready and that someone would stay after hours to let my wife pick up the car.

My wife arrived at about 5:30pm. The shop was closed. There were a couple of people outside the shop talking to a woman. They asked my wife if they could help her.

She told them she was there to pick up the car. They asked "What car?". She told them that she was there to pick up the blue PT Cruiser.

"Oh. That one's not done yet. We need another two hours to put the radiator back in."

My wife told them that the person I had talked to had told me that the car would be ready at 5:00. They told her that they had called me and told me otherwise. That was a lie, because they have NEVER ONCE called me. [Update: Apparently I misunderstood what my wife told me on the telephone. Instead of telling her that they had called me, they asked her "didn't they call him?" This doesn't change the other issues I have with them however.]

So my car will not be ready until sometime tomorrow. And I have to extend the rental car agreement for another day. And I'm further inconvenienced because on Friday, when I will have to turn the rental car in, I have no transportation back to my house to pick up my car.

All of this because the individual that I talked to at the auto repair shop lied to me. He lied to me on Tuesday. He lied to me this afternoon.

I wonder what else he's lied to me about? I wonder how they'd like the dishonesty of their employees exposed nationwide?

I've refrained from naming names so far. That might not remain the case if I don't have my car back tomorrow. Then I'll take the whole thing up with the Better Business Bureau, and if necessary with a lawyer.

[Update 2: I've got my car back. It's running about as well as it did before I took it in to the shop, but so far, no coolant leaks and no overheating. I think I'd like to put this whole episode behind me. I can't believe how irritated I got being put off day after day for what turned out to be a grand total of 6.5 hours of labor.

I won't be going back to that particular shop again. Hopefully that will be the end of it.]

What Be Your Nerd Type

Yet another one of those meaningless, but fun quiz thingies.

Gates calls Vista sales "amazing"

That's the headline on the article from the Seattle Times: 

LOS ANGELES — Bill Gates said Microsoft was "amazed" at the response to Windows Vista, the company's flagship product, which has sold nearly 40 million copies since its release Jan. 30.

I'm amazed at the response too. I'm amazed that people are buying it. The Aero interface is slick, but very resource intensive. It get's annoying when you run older software and have to wait while Aero turns itself off and reminds you that your older software just isn't "with it".

"I mean, we knew that Vista would become the standard version of Windows," Gates said. "... But what's happened in the last 100 days has been beyond our expectations. As of last week, we've had nearly 40 million copies sold and so that's twice as fast as the adoption of Windows XP, the last major release that we had."

When you're the only vendor that makes Windows, and when you can drop support for previous versions pretty much "at will", of course your latest version will become the "standard version". It's a shame that the "standard version" is such a steaming pile of excrement, but there it stands.

As for selling twice as fast as XP did, well... it's quite a few years later isn't it. There are more people buying and using computers than there were when XP came out. That still doesn't change the fact that Dell has actually gone back to selling some of its computer lines with XP installed due to consumer demand.

Gates went on to take a jab at smaller competitors in the operating-system business — notably Apple, which has fielded a series of biting commercials attacking Vista and the PC platform and seen sales of its Mac computers surge. But Apple and open-source operating systems such as Linux still hold a tiny share of the market.

"In our first five weeks, we've matched the entire installed base of any other provider of similar software," Gates said.

Maybe so, but their market share isn't going away. Microsoft's lack of support for developers with regards to existing developer tools, for which Microsoft doesn't yet have a replacement isn't going to win a lot of hearts and minds either.

In an on-stage demonstration, Steven Leonard, senior product manager, showed how a parent could disable access to a child's music as a punishment for leaving a firewall security feature disabled.

Allowing your children to manage your firewall is asking for trouble in the first place don't you think? I suppose being able to disable access to a child's music might work as a punishment for leaving the firewall disabled, assuming you still have control of the system after that little lapse.

Maybe the real reason Microsoft is "amazed" at Vista sales is because they know how badly they've screwed the consumer this time. They're probably just amazed that P.T. Barnum was right.

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