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Anyone want to take responsibility for this car?

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  • Anyone want to take responsibility for this car?

    About a month ago, I was driving off to Sagadahoc County in my battered but loyal 2005 Chevy Spitbox, when suddenly she blew a scoot. Horrible things happened under the hood, and the car coasted to a dead stop on the edge of the Interstate.

    I called a tow truck, which took forever to show up because the driver's unstable wife had just painted her toenails and needed to wait for them to dry before she could come along, and the truck dragged the car's remains to the local Sears Auto Center. After the mechanic examined the car and described the problem as a broken part that had more or less wrecked the engine as it flew around all willy-nilly, I sighed, went across the street to the Nissan dealership, and bought a new one.

    Story of my life.

    Now, this is just the background. Here's where it gets interesting: I got a phone call a couple of days ago from the Sears Auto Center, saying that my car had been sitting in the parking lot of the mall for 27 days now and was there anything in particular I could do about it.

    Um.

    Well, I sold that car beginning of the month. It is not, technically, my car. The dealership apparently took ownership, but not possession, when I signed the title over to them as part of a quickie trade-in. I had long since grabbed all the relevant documentation and identifying materials. Its plates had been riding around on the bumpers of a 2009 Versa for three weeks.

    The guy that sold me the Versa didn't strike me as the brightest wick in the wax, and I could easily see that he might have forgotten the whole "send the dealer's flatbed for the trade-in across the street" part of the process. Still, I was heading in that direction anyway (there's a Best Buy in the mall, and I needed another zillion flash drives for some damn reason), so I rolled up to the Sears Auto Center and I'll be damned if the little blue Chevy Spitbox wasn't still sitting there, immobile as a paperweight, since Fred the Truck Driver and his wife Unstabilia had dropped it off weeks ago.

    The manager of the Sears Auto Center and I had a good laugh about it - it seems that she'd only called me because she had so much trouble getting in touch with the Nissan manager across the street and had no idea what the status of the car was. Compounding our collective confusion was the fact that the disabled car had apparently already been auctioned, and yet was still sitting there waiting for a ride.

    Somebody must have hopped to, because after that conversation, I went to the sushi bar in the food court for half an hour, and when I went back that way, the little blue car was gone at last. I was relieved - while there was no way they could pin 27 days worth of storage fees on me, I was worried that someone might try...

  • #2
    Quoth Ben_Who View Post
    ...because the driver's unstable wife had just painted her toenails and needed to wait for them to dry before she could come along...
    Wait... What?! Why the hell did she need to go?

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    • #3
      Quoth FenigDurak View Post
      Wait... What?! Why the hell did she need to go?
      I have learned a long time ago, "Never ask crazy people for rational explanations". Rarely does it end well, rarer still to make sense.

      OT:
      If the dealership was that "efficient" at moving the vehicle, I would be very concerned about the condition of your new car.

      It might mean that they did not do any checks (engine, oil, fluids). Stopping by a mechanic for servicing might be a good idea
      I might be crazy, but I'm not Insane.

      What? You don't play with flamethrowers on the weekends? You are strange.

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      • #4
        Quoth Ben_Who View Post
        I called a tow truck, which took forever to show up because the driver's unstable wife had just painted her toenails and needed to wait for them to dry before she could come along
        Did the driver actually share this with you? A little bit of TMI.

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        • #5
          Quoth FenigDurak View Post
          Wait... What?! Why the hell did she need to go?
          Depending on the situation, they might have already been out. My husband owns his own lockshop and keeps tools in my van. If we are out on the weekend as a family and he gets a call to open a car, he's going to have all of us in the van instead of taking us home then going back out.

          When you call a tow truck, locksmith, plumber, etc on the weekends or evenings, you aren't going to get them just sitting in their shops waiting around for calls. They're home with their families trying to have normal lives. That's also why it typically costs more for emergency service, because now they're working overtime.

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          • #6
            Quoth sportsmom View Post
            Depending on the situation, they might have already been out. My husband owns his own lockshop and keeps tools in my van. If we are out on the weekend as a family and he gets a call to open a car, he's going to have all of us in the van instead of taking us home then going back out.

            When you call a tow truck, locksmith, plumber, etc on the weekends or evenings, you aren't going to get them just sitting in their shops waiting around for calls. They're home with their families trying to have normal lives. That's also why it typically costs more for emergency service, because now they're working overtime.
            Yeah, I was rousting him from his home on the weekend, but by the time we reached our destination, I had a sense that the reason she was there was because she wasn't mentally competent to be left on her own for the duration of the job. She was a VERY strange lady.

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