Monday, October 3, 2011

Tyranny of Technology

If you read my Blog you know I got a new car at the end of July because my much loved, older (17 years) car had died at the airport, and we knew that we could no longer rely on it.  So reluctantly we sold it to a friend who'll be able to fix it up and get a few more years out of  it.
When we went car shopping I told the dealership that I needed a basic car that wouldn't get driven very often and would probably have about 7,000 miles a year on it.  They leased me a Mazda 3, assured me it was just what I was looking for, and more.
Flash forward to Septemeber 6, 2 days before we're to leave for England, we got in the car to do some last minute shopping and click, the battery was dead, deader than the proverbial doornail.  Mac tried to charge it with out battery charger, it wasn't strong enough, so he backed his Miata out and charged it with that.  It charged, but it wouldn't hold the charge, so we took the battery out and took it to a local tire/battery place and had them charge it.  Can back a couple of hours later and they said the battery wouldn't charge.
I was fuming!  Called the dealership where we bought the car talked to the service department and started ranting and raving, told them I'd got the car so I wouldn't have problems like this, that my old car was still running the road and here I sat with no car.  They wanted me to have the car towed in, they needed to check and see if the problem was the battery or something else.  Mac pried the phone out of my hand before I could crawl through it and choke someone and said he'd charge the car again in the morning and drive it in, and he did.
They charged the battery and talked to Mac about what might have caused the problem, they asked if the car had sat for awhile, and yes it had been about 10 days, I don't drive much.  They told him that there are so many little lights and gizmos on the car that it can't set that long, it would drain the battery, it had to be driven more often.  Mac told them we were getting ready to leave it at the airport for a couple of weeks, what should we do.  They said to take the negative power cable off the battery and then reattach it when we got back.  So that's what we did, and I'm making an effort to drive it more often.  I use to leave my old car for weeks at a time, in fact we had to charge Mac's new car with it once.  I could have used a few less bells and whistles on my car, I like things simple, but carmakers don't do simple any more.

1 comment:

  1. I know what you mean - not only do modern cars have all these bells and whistles but if they go wrong they cost an arm and a leg to put right again.

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