Rants

Down again. Didn’t come back up until nearly 11:00 PM this morning. I surmised from comments at yesterday’s Miata Club gathering that the website was unreachable yesterday…I forget all about checking it until this morning. Then the only reason I notice is I want to link a picture in a Miata.net post. I’ve got a tool called Karen’s Net Monitor that will check if your site is up at predetermined intervals, but I keep forgetting to run it. Go get it, it’s free. If you use That Hosting Company it is an essential.

Washed the car this morning. There staring me in the face when I washed the wheels were the dozens of scratches Andrew the Chucklehead at Firestone presented me with earlier this week. I had been telling people that they were not noticeable from 5 feet away. Well, after washing, I was wrong, they are noticeable from that distance.

Probably only by me though. I hear you out there, “They are just the things that you put tires on already! Deal with it.” So I am going to get over this, right now. No more on the wheels. Promise.

They scratched my rims all to hell, but it is now my problem to fix. I have to take it to someplace to have them repaired. I have to bring in the bill to get reimbursed. They are happy because as far as they are concerned they have apologized and offered to fix problem. They know that it is more than likely that I will not go to the trouble to get it fixed. So they solved their problem, not mine and feel OK about it.

The last thing the manager Carl said to me is, “Next time you come in we’ll take a little something off that bill too.” I didn’t say it, because I’m not that way, but I thought to myself, there won’t be a next time.

The last, because I’m not going back there even if they are the last tire store on the planet. When manager Carl told me $280 on the phone the other day, he meant that is what they were giving me for my old tires, not the total bill. Cost for the tires, $360. Live and learn. They found me 4 matching valve caps and when they asked if I wanted them to put them on, I declined, who knows what would have gone wrong with that simple procedure. As far as the scratched rims, I got the same response I got in December, take then to Master Fabricators in Augusta, they can get the scratches out and then bring them the bill and they will pay for it. There are so many reasons this sucks I don’t have time to write about it now, hence the almost in the title. I’ll save it for another rant….

After my last experience with these guys in December, I went out into the garage latter that evening and checked the lug nut torque, the air pressure and condition of each wheel.

The torque wrench only registers in the tighten direction so I couldn’t tell what they were torqued at, but they did come with about enough pressure as you would expect. I had hoped that they got it right, because when I dropped of the car, I gave them my broken adapter and told them to use this to take the aftermarket wheels off the car. When both pieces of the adapter hit the fellows hand, he remembered me. I then gave him the don’t use the impact wrench speech. He then told me that wouldn’t be a problem this time, as they now use a “torque stick” (I assume that this is some sort of torque limiter.)

The air pressure was even all the way around at 32psi. Using my gage I dropped them all down to an even 30 psi. Curious thing though, when I went in to get the tires, all 4 wheels had those little chrome domed shaped caps, now 2 wheels had them, one had a chrome flat topped cap and one had nothing. Sigh….

Two of the wheels had no scratches on them, that is in addition to the 2 or 3 gouges along the perimeter of each wheel acquired from these folks in December. One wheel had a new inch long scrape in the middle of the polished lip area and the other, yikes, it looked like it was a loser on the BattleBots show. Must be a dozen or so new scratches and dings. While none of these marks are visible from more than 5 feet away, up close they look horrible and I will be reminded of those idiots at the Firestone Store every month when I wash my car.

I had to replace my my 1-year old tires on Christmas eve. All they had in a performance tire in stock in my size were some Bridgestone RE-910’s. After driving with them for about 4 weeks I realized they were not the tire for me. For me the Miata has always handled above my fear factor, but with these tires the car loses traction before I lose nerve. Had the manager, Carl, at the local Firestone Store order me a set of 4 Bridgestone S-03 Pole Positions their top of the line street tire. He said that he could get them for me and on the car for $262. Well after nearly a 2 week wait I had them installed tonite. When I went to pick up my car the fellow behind the counter didn’t know what to do, he couldn’t intemperate Carl’s pricing instructions and he couldn’t get a hold of Carl. His computer showed a “normal” price to me of $655! They finally let me have the car as long as I promised to call Carl in the AM and work out the price. Maybe I should just wait for him to call me. 🙂 The stinking tires ought to be free after what I had to go through on Christmas eve. Read these:
Miata Net Forum Post #1 – Where Did the Air Go, Part 3 and
Miata Net Forum Post #2 – Don’t ever let them use the impact wrench

Stopped in to pay our bill this evening on the way home. We didn’t mail it in because it was incorrect. Several months ago we paid off the loan against our policies, but it still showed that we owed on them on the bill. When we asked about it they said, “Gee, it shouldn’t be on there. Let’s look in the computer.” When they looked they found that when we thought we paid off the loan, we just paid off the principle, which is all their computers show. Apparently the fellow who helped us didn’t know that they were supposed to call and get the actual up-to-the-minute payoff figure. Turns out we owed the interest for the amount of days of the month till the date we paid. $37 for Donna and $800 for me. HUH! The loans were for nearly identical sums, the payments were the same, the pay offs were the same. What happened? One of the friendly State Farm Insurance agents in the office called the regional rep and spent the next 1/2 on the phone with him/her and straightened it out. I only owed $37 bucks too.