Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
New Truck Reveals Consumer Winners, Losers
I finally succumbed to the vague desire I've had for years, and got myself a small pickup truck for heavy errands that won't fit on a bike. It was a surprisingly involved process, including two trips to Bremerton and about three weeks of waiting around for various events to happen.
Of course, once I finally got it back to my house, it was time to start dealing with all the necessary transfer-of-ownership, insurance, and potential repair tasks. This flurry of activity has reminded me exactly why I dislike owning vehicles at all.
First, there was the insurance. My long-time agent retired earlier this year, and my account was transferred (through some alchemy I don't understand) to a different agent, whom I will, for the moment, refrain from identifying in the hopes that things get better once it all settles down.
My first call to this agent was to establish roughly what insurance would cost for this truck. This yielded a figure of $56 and change per month. This was an acceptable number to me, so I proceeded with the arrangements. After this call, there was a fair amount of waiting around for the aforementioned delays with the seller. Finally, I was ready to head over and buy the thing, so I called the agent back.
"I'm ready to start the insurance on this truck," quoth I. "Great," quoth she, "we'll just need a month's deposit to start that up. That'll be $127." "One moment," quoth I, "days ago, the number was $56. What giveth?" "Oh," quoth she, "there's no possible way you got a figure of $56, that's half the lowest rate I can imagine."
I was understandably upset at this development. There's no possibility I'd misunderstood the first call, I had the notes to prove it, and a very clear memory of how it'd gone. Something was seriously amiss, and I went to lunch that day very angry and frustrated. This $127/mo business was way too rich for my blood. I sent a text message to the seller, saying it was off and that I was unhappy with insurance as a concept. I may not have used exactly those terms.
I called the agent back after lunch, after I'd had a chance to calm down a bit. I was transferred directly to the agent (I'd previously been dealing with office lackeys, as far as I know -- I don't recall ever having talked to my previous agent directly), and after a fairly tense, "Calm down, Mr. Johnston, let me see what's going on here," type conversation, it came out that the correct rate for me was in fact $53 per month. Ok, fine. You people need to talk to each other (and she said that's exactly what they did, and gave me the impression that my name was now well-known at their office as an example of how not to handle customers). I gave my credit card number, and asked to start the insurance coverage, as I would be picking up the truck that night.
There was yet another delay with the seller, who'd lost track of the "Yay I paid it off" letter from his loan company, and I called the agent back a few days later to say that I hadn't actually bought the truck yet, and to not start coverage yet. The conversation was somewhat vague, as I didn't know when exactly I could pick up the truck as we waited for the bank to main a new letter to the seller.
Then, when I went to complete the transaction the second time (which went alright, revealing only that I needed an emission inspection to complete the transaction), but in the rush to make the ferry, didn't remember to call and start the insurance. I figured, due to the vague conversation I'd had with the agent as regards "don't start it yet," I was probably covered, and made the trip back without incident. Then it was the weekend, so I waited until Monday to call the insurance agent back and confirm that all was copacetic, and that I had proof-of-insurance cards on the way.
"Ok, we'll just need $107 from you to start coverage." I believe I have never sounded more like I wanted to reach through the phone and remove a person's jugular vein with my teeth than during that conversation. It's probably a good thing there were no witnesses to my actual appearance, as I'm sure it involved the words "red" and possibly "incandescent."
Not only had they not charged my card when I first called and said, "Start the coverage," they'd once again utterly misspoken as regards what the charge would be. So had I gone that first time and picked up the truck, I would have had zero coverage, opening me up for a $500 lack of insurance ticket if anything had gone amiss enough to involve the polizei. And of course, the entire weekend that I was driving around trying to deal with emissions inspections and the like, I was technically uninsured, although the drone on the other end of the phone assured me that they would have covered anything in the event of a collision. That's so encouraging, thank you.
It also developed that the $107 charge was because they needed two months of payments to start coverage. Of course, how silly of me not to have known that. I'd first assumed it was because my coverage premium had changed yet again. Why was I told it would require one month previously? A misunderstanding, naturally. My misunderstanding? Not that I can tell. As I explained to the woman on the far end of the phone call, I don't object to paying the required amount to do it right, I object to receiving false information, repeatedly, with apparent disregard for what effect that might have on my situation. (Such as making me try to cancel the purchase, having determined that the whole situation was beyond my means.)
In theory, I now have insurance coverage for the truck. I have a printed-then-scanned-then-emailed coverage card saying so, in any case. I'm just waiting for the first bill, which I expect to show that my payment is $107 per month.
The second story to come out of this whole situation is much less amusing/complex. The truck's electro-brain hasn't collected enough data to tell the state's electro-brain whether it's polluting too much or not. The state has requested that I "go drive more." As my friend Chris commented, "We can't test your emissions, you haven't polluted enough."
The winners and losers here are much clearer: I called two shops for advice on this situation, after the state-recommended driving didn't come up with enough data. The first call was to Bill Pierre Ford, where the service adviser defaulted to, "Yeah, we can diagnose that, it'll start at $100." He was fairly coarse about the whole thing, giving me the impression I was troubling him unnecessarily.
The second call was to Precision Tune, where I talked to Bob, the general manager. He was extremely helpful, pleasant, knowledgable, and came up with the advice, "No really, drive more." This is to be followed by a free scan of the computer at his shop to see if it's collected enough data. If it fails to pass emissions for any reason, he told me about the $150 exemption: spend $150 or more trying to fix a failed emissions check, and you get the check waived for two years, whether you fixed it or not. Bully for Bob, and I suspect you can guess who I'll be talking to about getting problems fixed.
This can be taken as a lesson, all you business types: your first contact with the customer is important. I will forever more suspect my insurance agency (who has me somewhat locked in) of being a pack of incompetents, and it will take very little to prompt me to initiate the potentially-arduous process to transfer my account to a different agent. A pleasant and knowlegeable phone-talker beats a gruff and knowlegeable phone-talker. Can you afford to turn away business?
Posted at 12:38 permanent link category: /misc
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater