Car woes
So, Nat took a left the other day and the car makes this grinding noise in the right front. I'm thinking constant velocity joint. I'm also thinking "They fucked up the car last month when the fixed it." Well, it turns out the wheel well wall (say that a couple of times fast) came loose on that side. it had enough damage that they replaced it. Of course it did. $104. In mechanic speak that meas it was a $10 part.
I would love to kick off a rant about mechanics. I would like to call them every name in the book and say that someone needs to come up with binding arbitration for mechanic shops. Someone needs to outlaw the BBB's practice of not taking complaints aimed at members (so only crooked companies should be members). I would make some innuendo about actually doing something about the situation. However, you and I know I will not do anything about it. that is why mechanics get away with this crap. I wish I were the kind who would sue. Then again, that sounds like a bunch of effort. If I were that motivated, I would have fixed the damn thing myself.
Nothing is covered by the stupid warranty we got. The only good warranties have done is make car manufacturers fix a couple of chronic issues. For example, Honda had CV joint problems for a couple of decades. Every small car they made would blow the CV joints at 60 - 80 thousand miles. This was no skin off Honda's nose because their warranties only went to 36 thousand at the time. in the nineties, many of the warranties went to well over 50 thousand miles. Honda finally did something about the design of their CV joints. They seem to last longer now. I knew a mechanic in the early nineties who made a very good living fixing Honda CV joints and automatic transmissions. That was all he did.
There were no warranties on cars until the Japanese got into the market. None of the things that go wrong with the care a ever covered. I remember a friend in the late eighties who had an RX7. It had a bumper to bumper warranty that only covered moving parts in the drive train.  RX7 has a Wankel engine. There are only 4 moving parts in the frigging thing. They will never go out. The rest of the car will rot away and the moving parts in the engine will still work. Things like bumper mounts and door handles are not covered.
It's getting to the point of institutional deceit. That is where the lies become so ingrained into the fabric of the business that people don't even call them on it any more.
Didn't I say I was not going to rant? I better stop now.