Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for July 04, 2020

I find that mostly it’s the other way around. The warranty hasn’t expired but the company that issued it has

Oh for the good old days when you could repair your vehicle by yourself! But then again… I had one motorcycle shop who would see me coming across the parking lot… and put the needed phish in the machine so I could fill out all the forms with the correct codes for what I wanted. That cycle broke down way too much!

My wife gets several calls a week in Spanish (which we don’t speak) that she believes is someone trying to sell us an extended warranty on our three year old car. She has even gotton a couple of calls in Chinese. This is a strange world we live in.

Planned obsolescence is an exact science.

After three and a half months of lockdown I’ve learned to start up and drive all our vehicles or they’ll forget how to run. And the clocks are set to Daylight Savings Time. And some of our calendars are still on April . . .

And tonight my Sadie admitted she’s been grouchy lately . . . and sometimes I’ve been right . . . so I’m starting to get really, really scared – like the earth is gonna spin off its axis or something . . .

At least it’s not free floating anxiety – but the expensive kind . . .

Time to find a reliable independent mechanic, Bob. They’ll usually charge you half of what the dealership does.

Funny how we get those same calls on our Hyundai-Genesis and Kia cars — which are still almost new and have 10 year/100,000 mile warranties. We know they’re BS but can’t get them to stop calling. We block their numbers, but they seem to have an endless bank of phones to call from and continue to bother us.

I have a lifetime warranty and not worried about it. I’m sure it will cover everything. I also can’t wait for Santa to come this Christmas!!

True story: I had a warranty on my eyeglasses. Less than 12 hours after it expired, they slipped off and broke.

We rented a Vauxhall in England on vacation and broke the plastic shell on one of the wing mirrors. There was still about 10 days to go before we had to return it, so we just got it fixed at a dealership on our own and didn’t give it another thought.

For months after returning home to Canada, we got automatically generated letters from the dealership reminding us that our Vauxhall was due for this or that routine service. I guess the VIN was never matched to the car rental company.

Car dealers and others practice the oldest mantra of all: sell the sizzle and not the steak. And that’s followed by the old carney barker line: yer pays yer money and takes yer chances.

Shop Sears/Kenmore: we’ve NEVER had a piece of equipment that didn’t outlast its warranty. . .and their yearly check is great.

Well, your $29.99 oil change just got a little more expensive.

Before you buy a car, go to the dealership, visit the waiting room for the repair shop and talk to the people there.

I once had to go to a dealership to have my car repaired because the part was proprietary. I asked how long it would take. They told me that it would only be a couple of hours. So I dropped my care off on Tuesday morning and told them I’d pick it up on Wednesday after the call me to tell me it was done.

I called Wednesday, Thursday and Friday – they did not call me and they had an excuse every time as to why this “couple of hours” job hadn’t been done.

I went in on Saturday. My car was unlocked and they lost one of the keys. There was a guy in there who was ripping them a new one because they ruined the engine in his Mustang.

I also had another dealership where I went to have my “glow in the dark” catalytic converter fixed under warranty. They told me it was a carburetor problem which would cost $350 to fix and wasn’t under warranty. I told them that my mechanic said it wasn’t. They told me that he didn’t know what he was talking about.

I brought the car back to my mechanic who temporarily fixed the issue and promptly drove to a competitor’s dealership where we traded it in.

Several months later, I got an ad from the first dealership inviting me to come in and see the new models. I sent a response praising their service department as a profit center for them and that they could be proud of how much money they were making for them. I sent this letter not only to the dealership, but also the the regional headquarters and GM headquarters. Attached were copies of the bills of sales for a brand new Bronco and a brand new Tempo.

Last week I got a robocall (the kind that leave msgs) about an extended warranty for my – 16 yo – van!

The week I turned 65, and steadily ever since, I keep getting offers from every crematory service in town. I must be past my warranty by now!

We went to a place once that took our particulars before they would let us test drive a car. They robocalled us at least once every two weeks for the next 2 years. Finally I called them to say that I was never going to buy a car from them and that I was telling everyone who would listen not to shop there.

A guy takes his time machine in for some repair work. “Sorry, sir, the warranty isn’t in effect yet.”

Most of my warranty spam is in snail mail for a 2014 Focus that was totalled several years ago.

Planned obsolescence is as American as apple pie.

Dealerships are paid by their brand to do the warranty work, and they hard sell extended warranty packages when you buy a car so I’m guessing that the brands pay very well, indeed, for warranty work.

Yeah, we’re getting them too. Somehow it just fits into the kind of year we’re having. 2020

Through the years, I have fielded calls and mail wanting to sell me extended warranties on a Mazda, Nissan, and Lincoln. During the 5 years that we owned an Audi, there was dead silence. They all knew something that we figured out later.

Only reliable cars I’ve had were Volvos starting with my 1959 544, & late many 122s 2 door & station wagons. Now have a ’93 240 SW kept in perfect mechanical condition by owner of the Revolve Store here in Tucson AZ. Knew the owner since I came to AZ in 1996 in a ’84 240 SW & ’73 140 SW.

Warranties used to be longer. See Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem “The Deacon’s Masterpiece or The Wonderful ’One-hoss Shay”: a Logical Story". It was constructed in such a marvelous way that it lasted one hundred years to the day – then fell apart.

When I was an auto mechanic, I bought a new 76 Chevrolet from the dealership (this dates me) where I worked. Back then, American made cars were junk, but the employee and mfg rebate deal was to good to pass up and I needed a car. Warranties were only 1yr/18K miles. A week after the year was up and only about 14k miles, the transmission and brake master cylinder failed at the same time while I was diagnosing another issue. GM would NOT honor the warranty even though I was a dealership employee. Good thing I could fix it myself and got the parts discount. A very short time after that, I walked out of the job and never looked back at auto repair.

I always tell the caller my transmission went out 30 days ago and if we could predate the contract I would take out the warranty with them. No takers yet. Just a lot of stuttering.

I get calls at 4:00 am, 5:00 am Hawaii Standard time, all in Chinese. I guess they don’t know about time zones. Ringer muted, answering machine gets it, I sleep.

Thought I’d add, most of these calls I get, don’t get specific about the vehicle.

As a TV addict, I sense a very hot market for warranty-type “products” – vehicles, major home appliances, house mechanical systems, etc. Looked at in any detail, they seem to offer just another monthly bill, the aggregate of which may exceed whatever savings in actual repair costs. IF the incident is even covered. The house always wins. Might be better to buy things that are durable in the first place?

they wait until your warranty expires to actually find the problem you have complained about for years.

Our TV just went bad on us about two months ago. When we bought it we bought the extended warranty. Yep you guessed it, the warranty expired 1 week before the TV failed on us. Can’t win for losing.

Why would they be happy? They get more for warranty service then they can directly from customers.

The Dealer for my car has two different service bays so that the Warranty cars don’t get cooties from the Expired Warranty cars.

Those who call in a foreign language get a prompt hangup. If you’re going to telemarket me at least have the courtesy of doing it in my language, so I can hang up quicker.

Worked as a GM dealer tech for 34 years. And this comic strip is spot on.