Fixed?

Wow, okay — well…

At this point, my mom would interject with, “That’s a deep subject.” Took me YEARS to get that one. (Don’t judge.)

The dealership had my car for a week. The Service Manager (SM) got involved somehow, drove my car on Monday and said that it didn’t drift (come to find out he didn’t drive with the Technician). The ASSistant Service Manager (ASM) called to tell me to come get my car and take it to a frame shop. I called  him bad names in my head and wondered how the car could have a twisted frame yet reportedly be in alignment. Since I bought it, with six miles on it. What a piss-face!

Out loud I asked him if the SM drove with Tom, the Technician. He hadn’t. (You could hear the crickets chirping as he sat on the other end of the phone, completely oblivious to his stupidity.) I broke the silence by telling him to make the SM drive with the Technician if the SM needed to acknowledge the problem in order to do the work. He said he’d do that, and would call me on Tuesday.

I hung up, but called back and asked to speak to Tom who was supposed to have called Mazda that day and gotten back to me about whether or not the TSB would fix the drifting problem that he finally acknowledged was a problem. Tom said that he had called Mazda and they said to “follow the TSB.”

He sounded weary, like battling the forces of the ASM and SM combined was almost too much. He wanted to help, but how? If Mazda said the TSB would fix the car, why was the SM getting involved? I hypothesized that the dealership was trying to get away with not having to write this one off as extended warranty work. Tom agreed to take the SM out for a drive on Tuesday.

I never got a phone call from the ASM on Tuesday, so on Wednesday I called Mazda’s Customer Assistance line and got Frank involved. By Thursday morning – March 12 – I had a message from Frank telling me to call the dealership. That they had performed the TSB and that the car was now driving straight.

Wait. How in the hell were they able to order in the parts for the TSB and fix my car in two days, when the original estimate was for a week? I called the dealership, and it turns out that rather than ordering the parts and fixing the car per the TSB, Tom got under the car and shifted the subframe to the right. I shook my head in amazement. Okay… but WHY?! I told Tom and the ASM that I’d pick the car up on Saturday.

That bit of news warranted another call to Frank at Mazda Customer Assistance, who said it wasn’t a big deal at all to shift the subframe. (How would he know, I wondered, but said nothing.) Instead I wanted to know why he didn’t tell me that in the first place, instead making it sound like the dealership followed the TSB. He said, “Shifting the subframe got the same result… the technician says it drives straight now. Go up there, drive it. Let me know how it goes.”

Saturday morning meant another two-hour drive up to Annapolis, and neither Tom nor the ASM were at the dealership. The kid left in the Service Department brought my car around, but there were no notes in my account as to how to check me out — did I owe anything? He said he couldn’t release the car to me unless I gave him some money; I said that Frank told me I didn’t owe a thing, but I had no reference number to call and apparently Mazda Customer Assistance doesn’t think they need to provide assistance on the weekends.

I took the car on the same drive as a week before, and it did seem better — of course, I’ve been driving a car with a drifting problem for almost six years, so it’s really hard for me to read the road. I’m so used to redirecting the car from the shoulder and back into my lane!

I returned to the dealership, where I left my Mom to stare down The Kid. He wanted to charge me something like $130 for an alignment, but I told him that the alignment was necessary after the subframe adjustment that the technician did to fix the car’s problem, which was covered under the TSB, which for SOME UNKNOWN REASON they chose not to follow.

I pointed to the paper that I signed the first day that I dropped the car off. $108 to be paid if no work is done, for “diagnosing” the car.

“I’ll pay that. To drive my car home today, I’ll pay that.”

So, I drove my car the two hours home this past Saturday, marvelling at the fact that if I drive too close to the left-hand side of the lane, my car actually goes left. If I put my tires in the twin tracks worn down into the asphalt my millions of other daily commuters, my car wanted to track straight. And sometimes — whether due to the crown in the road, an unsolved drifting problem or the inability to let an old habit die easily — the car drifted right.

Is this what it’s like to drive a “normal” car? Such inconsistency!

But you will bet your buttons that I’ll be watching my tire tread wear like a hawk, and if shifting the subframe actually ends up chewing through expensive sets of tires I’ll be back up at that dealership where that ASSistant Service Manager, the SM and the owner of the dealership are going to learn that YOU DON’T MESS WITH A GIRL.