I had the worst customer service experience of recent memory last week. This is saying something, as I have had some horrible customer service experiences with Knaack (idiot big company truckers), T-Mobile (idiot Southerners), the DMV (idiot prisoners), American Family (idiot beancounters), Dell (idiot Indians), and SkiPro (idiot Arizona snowboarding posers). But as bad as each of these were, they all were sorta trying to help and be reasonable — they just were incompetent or rulebound. Today, however, the idiot was able and willfully difficult as a matter of policy, based on an utter disinterest in the well-being of both the customer, and if he was clever enough to realize it, in his company too.

The new old truck did not have a CD magazine for its player. The parts run about $20 on Ebay, maybe $45 new online. I didn’t know what the part number was, and had to pretzelize myself to take out the CD player from behind the back seat of the truck to read model. I dug online for awhile, but no luck, for typically obscure OEM parts. So I called Ford.

Ford’s phone rep did not have parts information, so directed me to either their accessory website or a dealer. Website did not go back to ’02, so I called Earnhardt Ford. Get that – EARNHARDT FORD!. I have gone there about half a dozen times over the years, and always found them kinda big and slow, but generally helpful. Ford has always seemed like that – dire warnings of recalls that then take weeks to schedule with the dealer, keys that cost hundreds of dollars to replace, inventory searches that could only be done 1-by-1…getting a mount for the carseat in the Ranger was an amazing act of TPS reporting, as it took 3 trips and no one knew how to install it even though the manual clearly stated it could be done and I should see a technician. They also, in 2006, would not take a credit card number over the phone to order a part.   After all that, no one could figure out how it worked. Only with the kind help of one of their technicians was I able to make sense of it, and she graciously waved the install fee figuring…it was something a company like Ford should do for their customers especially since the manual said the truck supported it.

Well that clusterfuck did not hold a candle to today.

I called EARNHARDT FORD and spoke to the parts dept, explained what I was looking for, and told it was in stock and would be $170.   I said wuh wuh, I don’t want to buy it new, just need the part number to put a used part in a used truck.   The asshole Jim said, and I quote “I’m here to make money.”

I was shocked.   Seriously.   Where to begin with the insanity here – that I can’t get a replacement part number, that he wants to have a 1000% markup on a part requiring no labor, that I can buy a damn nice car stereo for that money and why wouldn’t i instead of sinking the same money into a 7-yr old unit, or the utter disregard for customer service and rewarding brand loyalty?   It was truly amazing.   His attitude that he was doing me a favor just incensed me – you wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for your customer base!   So I hung up on him, after telling him I was hanging up to call his manager.   The manager was at least reasonable and gave me the part number (the wrong part number, since the player in my truck was from the Taurus, not the F150 as per asshole Jim’s manual), then mumbled about how they don’t support non-certified work, don’t want their customers buying the wrong things on ebay blah blah blah.   How pissed am I gonna be for $20 on ebay??   A lot less pissed than paying $170 for the wrong part from you dumbfucks cause Jim is too busy being a dick to listen to the customer (which i would never buy for that price anyway)!!   He sheepishly acknowledged that his employee should not have said what he said to me, but couldn’t bring himself to admit that bullshit like that is simply unacceptable in today’s market.   I thanked him — genuinely and politely — for his help and for taking the time to speak with me, then let him know that I have never had anything even close to this runaround form Acura or Toyota or Saturn, or any other manufacturer in any other industry I can remember, and that it would affect any future decision to purchase a Ford or vote for an auto industry bailout.

This is not one rogue employee.   All my previous Ford customer service moments suggest that something like this is possible.   Its corporate culture, and its pathetic.   Byron related a similar experience when buying a car and being pushed by the salesman towards financing, since it made more money for the company, even though he specifically said he would not finance. I wish Congress had the balls to let these fat out-of-touch companies and their lazy entitled union jackoffs go down.   Let them declare bankruptcy so complacent morons sitting on their seniority (Jim was an old asshole) get thrown out on their asses, so a desperation for customers infuses all aspects of their service like it has most other companies.   Our HOA in Mexico recently bought out 17 union employees who had gone on strike for the 3rd time in 2 years, and everyone I talked to including the Mexicans at our management company and the fish vendors in Old Port said it was the right thing to do.   But our elected officials are struggling with this decision?   These giant car companies are doomed – the unions, the management sluggishness, and the culture that they have created is finally coming home to roost.   Let em die, stop making the people pay for a private sector dirty bomb, and let the transformation begin.

Staind – Its Been Awhile

Instead all I got is a bruised chest, and not even bad enough to hurt when I laugh.   It will stick with me for about a week, but that will have to be good enough.     It didn’t even come from the car wreck i narrowly avoided, it came from going over the bars on 24th St.   It was a sloppy trip down – i got all the hard stuff and was taking drop after drop with skill and technique, but it was ugly.   Not fearful or out of control — just prior i rolled The Spine without either much forethought, or grace — just enough off to go from pretty good to pretty ugly pretty quick.   The wheel got stuck in a relatively easy spot, i endoed, and the bike came down on my head.     The memory and blow to my confidence is worse than the bruised chest.

The ride was going well enough, after another willful effort to get out onto Somo by 3pm. My climbing was tired but effective, and I got all but the very last tiny lift out of the Upper Waterfall.   Just when I headed down, I ran into Landon and talked him into joining me for the return trip.   It was a hoot following him over jumps I did not know existed on National, and humbling watching him pull away on 24th on his 4inch bike with no armor.

I had a lot on my mind all day.

I had to remove my plate holder on the Acura, which after 3.5 yrs is “suddenly” illegal in AZ because it obscures a portion of my plate.   The justification is that the state of origin is potentially undeterminable, due in large part to AZ having about 50 specialty plates. Nice – the state gets their money for your custom plates, and money for it being hard to know where your custom plates are from. Though my default plate design with a frame saying “Acura of Tempe” is ambiguous only if you are retarded.   My suspicion is the change is driven by our newly-fascist state’s love-affair with traffic cameras.   This has been a subject I have gone back and forth on over the last few weeks.   On paper, its a good solution.   On paper, people go too fast. And on paper, people have slowed down.

People also clog more, and slam on their brakes for no good reason.   And people get flashed as a means of revenue generation, for lawmakers who don’t have the balls to raise taxes but have the cowardice to sign contracts with private companies who have made our local government For Profit. Enforcement is discriminatory, your registration as private\corporate and in-state\out determining if the evidence is useful or if a process server will be hired. Big Brother has gotten bigger.   Someone poo-pooed my anger when there is a Patriot Act to rail against, but I wonder if one person losing their habeas corpus is worth the gradual erosion of the freedoms of 5 million of us.   Would there even be a Patriot Act if people haven’t come to accept traffic cameras? All politics is local.

The breaking point for me has become that, technically, my bike rack obscures my plate and can now get me pulled. This is not new, but in the current climate is suddenly more damning. While it is not a criminal violation, the idea that I have a big open window of reasonable suspicion to get pulled is very very unsettling. Made more ridiculous by my having (knock on wood) never been pulled in 3.5 years and 44k in the Acura, 10k of it with the bike rack.   Clearly I am doing nothing wrong and no one cares, why should it be a illegal?

Several people who work in law enforcement posted on MTBR to the effect that you are extremely unlikely to get pulled by a cop for this unless you are doing something to draw negative attention to yourself, and even more unlikely to be cited unless you are being a jackass to the officer.   All of which makes me hate the blanket enforcement of the traffic cameras even more.   Most cops have better things to do and proper discretion to do it with.

The effect of all this drama, and my effort to get home from Somo quickly so Beckie could have a night out with her friends, was I was driving with maybe just a small chip on my shoulder, maybe just a bit too aggressively, maybe just a little faded from sitting for 30 minutes after hopping off the mountain and off a crash…I pushed a yellow light to turn left, doing the speed limit but not much slowing down, and someone coming the other way doing about the same. I really never saw him, maybe he sped up to make the light, it really doesn’t matter…i am not letting myself off the hook…he was mostly doing the same too-aggressive move as me. At least we both hit our brakes in time with only minor fishtailing the result.

It didn’t leave me with the crashing wave of adrenaline. I didn’t hug G any longer than normal after I picked her up. Maybe staring down crashes on my bike has helped put it in context. As typical for me, I over-analyzed it, tenacious to extract from it the kernel of wisdom that may next time save my life. Just like my endo, just a little bit off. I’m not making light of this, but I won’t overreact.

Later at the park, G rolled her tricycle down a small incline. She put down her feet, at first I thought out of panic and just when I thought she would spill, she came to a stop. Taught herself how to brake, G did. It was a good lesson for her to teach me, since all I have is this bruise on the chest.   I can pretend it came from slamming into the steering wheel.