Not upward mobility

One more way this year sucks. Yesterday I took my car to the garage to get an oil change, find out why the front tires keep deflating, find out why there’s condensate on the interior of the car and get an estimate for replacing the SID panel, which has lost so many pixels I can’t read the error messages.

When I made the appointment last week, I told the Saab manager that I should probably just replace the tires. He replied that the problem could be corrosion on the wheel, so we should check that first. Fine.

But yesterday, after having had the car five hours, I get a call from Lewis, presumably a mechanic, informing me that all four tires were under-inflated, but that’s normal when temperatures drop, so I shouldn’t worry my little-lady head over that. Me telling him that I keep having to fill the front two tires every week because the pressure drops to single digits just didn’t pierce his now-little-lady mentality. He also got wound up on rotating the tires, because the newer two are on the rear, and it’s a front-wheel drive, so why? Dude—your people did that when I had those two tires replaced two years ago; talk to them.

I swear, we talked for fifteen minutes and all he could do was repeat that all the tires were under-inflated and why don’t I have them rotated? Since that doesn’t solve the issue of why the front ones deflate, I didn’t see the point. But he just couldn’t move on from that.

Turns out Glenn the Saab manager is on vacation and hadn’t left any notes for Lewis, who apparently is on a continuous loop of rotating the tires and under-inflation. Also pushing hard to replace the “cabin filter” and wiper blades. I got the distinct whiff of hard upselling, which I don’t generally get from Glenn.

Latest word is there's "dry rot" on the interior of the two tires I told him were continually deflating, and he has to order two replacements that "match" the tires on the rear. Only now they're on the front, because he insisted on rotation. Only he held off calling me about this until the tire distributor was closed, and he can't guarantee that they'll have the new tires mounted by midday when I need the car today. So I may or may not have transportation today. Deep joy.

I’m putting off the condensate issue, which he said involves $650 and a part that Saab discontinued; ditto the SID replacement, which is $450. Putting them off until Glenn is back. Next year.