I love my minivan. I think it is an awesome vehicle to own when you have three little kiddos. I do think it is difficult to park in small spaces. I have gotten very good at parking the vehicle in my building, underground and small spaces. I use my mirrors expertly to guide that monster into those small spaces. I also use my rear bumper to 'tell' when I am close to the wall. The minivan is so long and the spaces not that long that I always afraid of someone clipping my nose (or me clipping their nose if they don't pull back far enough) so I 'tap' the bumper against the rear wall.
I was lazy on Wednesday and in a foul mood (work issues ... another post) and my level of parking only had the two short spaces left. Big SUVs do park in those spaces but they always leave their nose out too far which makes parking harder for everyone else (I didn't really care). I inch my dear minivan up ever so slowly until my bumper would hit. What I didn't realize was that the electrical box, high high up on the wall, wasn't that high and was deeper than my minivan.
According to Kathleen and Andrew, I broke the car. I did, I shattered the rear window of the minivan. It popped and then crumbled - there were holes in the window. Who knew rear windows don't have quite the same shatter-proofing as the windshield. Obviously the children were fine (everyone keeps saying that should be my priority) but my gosh, who wouldn't be fine, a snail could have crawled to that wall faster than my poor minivan.
I took the day off work to take the minivan in to the dealer for a 'quick fix' I thought. The suggested I come back in four hours. I was told the bill would be an incredible $900 (+PST and +GST, I think). I gasped and am still in shock given the nature of my 'accident'. I came home and slept off my multi-faceted blueness by napping the afternoon away (despite the cleaning lady being in the house and crying to me that she was so excited about seeing me ... not sure what was going on there!).
I returned to pick up the minivan that afternoon only to be told there was something wrong with the computer mechanism that automatically opens the rear door. This family needs two cars to function so I brought home my window-fixed, but still broken minivan. I took it back today. The computers are now supposedly somewhat working (i.e. the computers don't need to be replaced) but they still aren't cycling correctly (i.e they won't stop opening and closing the hatch - not a perfect scenario). We have the minivan back - it works fine other than the rear hatch is dismantled. I am not sure how we are going to get it back to the dealer next week.
No one at the dealer has been clear on how much this is all going to cost me - replacing the window was $900 (++) but now they have spent from 9am to 4:30pm working on my computers. I am cringing that I may be paying the bill. The minivan is only 2 years old so I am desperately praying that this computer issue is somehow covered. The collision dept manager did infer that he doesn't understand why such little damage to the minivan (my 'paint job' touch-up was smaller than a pencil eraser - I only really took out the window) would cause such a computer fault.
The lesson of the week - don't use your bumpers to 'find' the wall ... bad bad idea.
3 comments:
Oh man, that is a major bummer. I hate paying to fix cars, especially that much! I was toying with the idea of a van if we ever have another kid, but it's looking like we'll be driving our current two cars into the ground instead. I love the gas mileage.
Anyway, hope the bill for all the repairs isn't too shocking!
Insurance won't cover any of that??? Holy cow! I'd have to sell my car to pay for the repairs.
Ann,
What a sucky week. I hope things turn around now.
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