The wait begins...

 

Sitting in the waiting area at the Honda dealer where we originally bought the CR-V.  The replacement sunroof glass was supposed to be in Friday morning.  We didn't hear from them.  I called them Monday afternoon - yes, the sunroof is in.  Made the appointment for this morning at 9:30.  As usual, we were about 15 minutes early, and my service advisor, Tony, got me checked in right away.  The time for the job: "An hour and a half.  Two hours at the most."

We'll see.  I did offer to bring the car in by myself, but Joan said she wanted to come along... something about not wanting to leave me without adult supervision.

I joke.  I am prepared for this taking longer than 2 hours.  We had breakfast before we left home.  We have our devices for entertainment.  I'm not concerned with them accidentally putting a scratch on the car.  Yep, another joke.  Someone from the dealership (Tony said it is his boss) looked at our car and said, "That must have been some pretty awful hail."

"Yep, baseball size," I told him.

"I have never seen a car beat up that bad by hail."  No point in telling him that some of the vehicles at Hart Ranch were in worse shape.  At some point, it doesn't matter how bad it is... the car can't get more totaled than "totaled."  Someday, we may even hear from Progressive about this.

Fortunately, the waiting area isn't a place that people want to hang out... I've seen furniture in better shape sitting alongside the road.  There is a TV (on CNN) for some background noise.  I think I'll watch some videos about "how to buy a car in these times" - there are plenty of them on YouTube.  The gist of it: if you can find a car, buy it.  I just overheard a salesman say, "I counted this morning - we have 4 new cars on the lot."  

If you don't hear from me by this afternoon, send a search party.  Be ready to help me out with bail money.  Again, another joke.  I am cracking myself up this morning.

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The words you don't want to hear: "Um, there's been a little glitch."  A bunch of things went through my head, then Tony continued, "It's taking a bit longer to clean out all the little bits of broken glass, so it might be a half hour to an hour longer than we first thought."

Whew!  I was concerned he was going to say the mechanical stuff on the sunroof was damaged... but, no.  So, it took a bit longer, but he stayed with the price he quoted me.  There is a lot of gummy residue from the 150 pounds of Gorilla Tape we put on there, so I'll have a project to work on.  Maybe in a few days, 'cause right now it is hot, humid, and windy (gusting above 30mph).

Of course, they do a "1,000 point check" and tell you what you need to spend more money on.  When we got out of town on the way home, we both noticed that the hood wasn't latched tight... must have been from their "10,000 point check"... and apparently "make sure the hood is latched" wasn't one of those checks.  I got out and closed the hood, came back in the car and said, "Well, that would have really sucked if the hood popped up and this nasty wind flipped it back, breaking our windshield and sunroof!"

Joan looked horrified.  I was only kinda kidding.  On the bright side: we're back home and don't have to go back out in this hot, windy weather.  I feel like we have a bit of "breathing room" with making another car decision.

I am not a fan of this dealership's sales tactics.  I chuckled to myself while in their waiting area, surfing Carvana and some "How not to get taken advantage of at a car dealer" videos.  ;-)