Hello Sunny Siders, I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend! Today I’m sharing my crazy car story that happened a few months ago. I honestly still can’t believe this happened that’s how wild the entire situation was.
The story starts when I was taking my car in for a routine oil change. I brought it to my car dealer on a Friday morning and by mid afternoon they had identified some other issues with the car during their diagnostic check that I needed to address.
My car was due for new tires, needed new brakes, and a coolant flush, normal things at the 70,000+ mile mark. What was the most shocking was that apparently my car axel was cracked and needed to be replaced. Obviously the axel on the car is imperative for driving and a hefty sum to be repaired, but I knew I needed to get it fixed.
My car has a warranty and luckily for the first time since I got the car, the warranty actually covered the axel repair! That cut the bill down by over $1500, as I still had tires and brakes to repair.
They go ahead and make all the fixes and I get my car back on Saturday. Sunday, I drive home from visiting my brother to get ready for the next week.
Fast forward a few days to Wednesday and as I’m driving to work I’m stopped in traffic. I go to hit the gas and my car revs to a 4. Now, this felt very weird for barely touching the gas. I tried again and same thing, I’m going about 10 miles an hour and the engine is revving to a 4+.
I pull over and turn off the car, turn it back and now my car doesn’t move at all! So, I do what any girl would do in this situation… call dad. My dad helps me get a game plan together which started with calling a Toyota car dealer near me (my car dealer for maintenance is back where I went to college) to see if I could get an appointment to find out what’s going on with my car. Next I called AAA to get a tow truck and had the car towed to the Toyota dealer that I had just made an appointment with. Finally, I called my actual car dealer and explained how I had just been in for maintenance and now my car isn’t driving.
In the tow truck I am talking to the driver, he used to be a mechanic and he tells me he thinks it’s my cars axel, now as I mentioned a few paragraphs earlier I had just had my axel replaced so I thought there’s no way that could be the problem… right?
WRONG!
The Toyota dealer finds that the spring that holds the axel in place was missing or fell out because it hadn’t been installed properly! They had to fix the axel and run another full set of diagnostics on the car, charges of upwards of $700.
Naturally, I’m fuming at this point because I just had the axel replaced and my car dealer hadn’t installed the axel properly! Fortunately, I was able to get ahold of them and my technician who had serviced my car. He got the manager involved and they ended up paying the Toyota dealership for the $700 of charges caused by their oversight.
While I’m happy they helped to rectify the situation, needless to say that’s not enough to make me ever want to go back there. Time to find a new car dealer for maintenance!
Sunny Side Up With Siri 