Saturday, November 17, 2012

reunited!

(cue music)

Reunited and it feels so good
Reunited 'cause we understood
There's one perfect fit and, sugar, this one is it
We both are so excited 'cause we're reunited, hey-hey

At long last, I've been reunited with my tiny, tough Honda Fit. I visited the body shop this morning, did a brief walkaround to check out the work that had been done, paid my $250 deductible, and finally asked the nice lady to take a pic of me hugging my car:


It turns out that the left front tire, the one with the pebble in it, was perfectly fine-- no puncture at all. Meanwhile, the car got a new bumper, new wheel-well linings, a new radiator (and struts), a new condenser, a bit of new paint (though not everywhere: the left rear door still has a scratch on it), new alignment and spin-balancing, new wheel covers, and a few other minor tweaks-- all totaling over $3700, of which I paid only the deductible. On top of all this, Collision Experts offers a lifetime warranty on its work.

Later in the day, I found myself celebrating our reunion at Joe's Steakhouse (a magnificent joint, by the way-- blog post forthcoming), and when I left the resto, I took the following two shots of the fixed-up car:



Ah, faithful steed. We're back together again.

Enterprise slyly diddled me up the bum, though: I brought their Honda Civic back with a near-empty gas tank, so they charged me for gas, despite a handwritten note on my receipt that said "Bring back near empty." Thing is, they took this charge out of the $100 refund I should have gotten as a return on my security deposit, and ended up refunding me only $44. In other words, they charged me for fifty-six dollars in gas, and I know for a fact that that car can't hold more than 45 dollars' worth. My colon still feels the splinters from the surreptitious broomstick-reaming. Overall, I'd say that Enterprise's customer service is a mixed bag.

But in the end, it's all been in the service of getting me back with my one true love, and now we're reunited-- for good this time, I hope. No more hydroplaning, yes?


_

2 comments:

Charles said...

Yes, no more hydroplaning is a good idea!

Congrats on being back with your baby. I would probably gripe about the gas charge, though.

Kevin Kim said...

re: that gas charge

The attendant at Enterprise showed me his copy of the rental receipt (I had the carbon; he had the original), on which "Bring back near empty" had apparently been scratched out. But the scratch-out was sloppy, and looked, for all the world, like underlining to me. So I asked the attendant: "Was this an underline or a scratch-out?" He smiled and said it was a scratch-out. Bastard. He may have been right, but it really was unclear. I should scan the document, blog it, and show you what I mean.