Missives from the 6th Floor

It started out ok - she got on the 8:45 ferry, got the car to the dealer, and then learned that not only did they not have a loaner car for her, but they didn't expect to be done with ours 'till 4 or so in the afternoon.

I realized I was an idiot for not getting more details when talking setting up the appointment, and for not considering that today is the day before a long weekend, so traffic would be unusually heavy.

Around noon Dawnise called me to say that BMW called her and said that they didn't have the part in stock, and wouldn't 'till next week. She could either leave the car with them (not possible, as it's our only car), or take it home and bring it back.

Now I was annoyed - mostly 'cause when I setup the appointment the conversation went something like this:

Me: The driver door doesn't want to open from the outside.
Them: Oh, there's a cable that sometimes stretches past it's tolerance and needs to be replaced. No problem.

Today, of course, they don't have the cable.

So I called the gent who sold us the car and let him know that I was underwhelmed with my first service experience, and wanted to know what could be done to minimize our (mostly Dawnise's) inconvenience. He told me he'd ring me back, and when he did he proposed that next week, when the part arrives, they will valet a car to us, retrieve our car, have it serviced, and bring it back.

Seemed fair, under the circumstances.

Shortly thereafter I got a call from Dawnise wherein she informed me that the leather repair that was scheduled for today - damage done by the previous owners that had been waiting for the car to go in to be repaired - wouldn't be done 'till after 4. I had told Dawnise I wanted to make sure that at least the leather the repair was done before we retrieved the car, so she wanted to know what I wanted to do.

I told her to take the car and go home, and they could reschedule the leather guy.

So Dawnise fought traffic to get on the ferry around 3pm, and got home only slightly worse for wear (though very annoyed).

It's probably good that Dawnise wasn't stuck there for another hour - when I got to the ferry around 5:15, the only thing that let me avoid the half-mile backup to get into the dock was the fact that I was on a motorcycle and can go where no car can follow. (Translation: I can approach the dock from the north and make a right whereas non-carpool/emergency vehicular traffic has to pass the entrance and approach from the south.)

When I called Dawnise to let her know I was on the ferry, she was going to take a bath. Hopefully Calgon will take her (tension) away and let us salvage the evening...