InsaneJournal

Why Not to Buy a Car

Okay, so, as it turns out it’s not as bad as all that.

The NRMA guy who turned up last night gave Yareth a kind of cursory glance over and proclaimed that I’d need to call back again tomorrow to get the car towed to a mechanic for fixing. His theory was that the hose at the top of the fuel tank had disconnected, which was causing petrol to spill over the top when I tried to turn on the car. Very. Annoying.

So Mat drives me out there again this morning. I call the NRMA back and they tell me I’ll have to get into contact with Toyota and notify them that I’ll be bringing it in. So I do that, and Toyota is like, “Has anything happened to the car that could have caused this?”

“Well, I was in a rear end collision about—”

“A-hah! See, you’ll need to take it back out to your insurance agency.”

“…”

I call AAMI and book it in. “Come tomorrow,” they say.

“No. The tow-truck is coming today.”

“Oh. Well, drop it off today and come in tomorrow.”

“…”

I get off the phone with them and the doorbell rings; it’s NRMA Man #2. I tell him what’s going on and what the man last night said, and Man #2 asks if Man #1 looked inside the car at all. I said no, and hand over the keys. He pushes forward the back seat and pulls up a bit of upholstery to expose this kinda lid-looking thing tucked in inconveniently under the seats.

“You got time for me to fiddle here for a bit?”

“Sure, go for it.” I crack out SIWBI and sit on the doorstep while he pulls things apart.

About fifteen minutes later he says, “Turn the engine on for me.” So I do, and — lo and behold — it starts. He brings me around to the boot and starts pointing. “See this yellow clip here? That holds the fuel hose on. I’ve reconnected it for you; should all be fine now.”

I thank Man #2 profusely and we have a bit of a sideways talk about how hard it is to get good tech support. He offers to follow me to the petrol station to make sure I get there, but I declined saying I should be fine and had some phonecalls to make beforehand anyway. So I say goodbye, thank him some more, and go inside to make my phonecalls. The first one is to AAMI, cancelling the inspection. The second one is to the NRMA, telling them to give Man #2 a fucking medal or something.

I’m at work by ten.

And you know what the really funny end to this story is? The first person I see is this guy who works on the Level 2 support team. I tell him about my car, describe Man #2 and he says, “You know, that was probably my brother.”

Small world.

And now, because I’ve had this stuck in my head all morning…

( And tell me this is all good? And you say, I don’t know / I’m very, very far from home )

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