ten billion butterfly sneezes

I wrote about our new set of wheels a few posts back. It’s my little bride’s car¹; I’d have chosen something different for me, but she seems tickled, and that’s all right. I have no complaints about price, terms, or payments. And it is a fine looking rig.

Today at work, I got a call on my office phone. The perky caller explained that she was calling to get my reaction to the sales experience at Saturn of Sterling. I told her I was incredibly busy, and this wasn’t a good time. She said she’d try back later.

Fifteen minutes later, my cell phone rang. and yet another equally perky caller said she was calling to get my reaction to the sales experience. Muttering, I thought I may as well bite the bullet and get this obligatory ritual over with.

Five rankings, rated on a scale of 1-10, on how happy I was. By now thoroughly steamed that a lackluster, frustrating workday had been interrupted, I walked outside to have a smoke, and tell this person what I thought. The highest score SoS got on any of the questions was 4. When asked about the service department, I gave it a 1. I had to recap the story of how SoS “service” failed to notice two brake lights out on a service visit, which led to my getting rear-ended on the Fairfax County Parkway a year or so back. And then their lame excuse when asked Isn’t checking brake lights included in service?, which was Well, duh, if you ask; we get kinda busy. It was at this point that I mentioned it would be a cold day someplace before I’d go back to the service department with the older car.

And then, about the delivery process; I noted the lateness of the hour that the car was delivered, and said that we came back the next day to finish some details. No big deal. I then pointed out SoS’s tragic inattention to detail; e.g.:

• The window sticker said floor mats are standard; we’re still without floormats.
• We received no instructions on how to activate the On-Star service.
• We didn’t get an ID for the XM radio, so we can add that to our existing XM plan, if we so desire.

Based on our experience, would I recommend SoS to friends/family/acquaintances? Answer: 2.

They didn’t ask me how I felt about having my workday interrupted twice. They may as well have asked, “What’s the smallest negative integer?”.

-k-
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