Clean air, my patooey

I'm kind of ticked about something ... just call me a clock, a watch, a digital timer ... wait.

Anyway, it's distracted me so much that I can't think of anything else to blog about, so here goes:

A Rant Blog !!!

Yay!!

(clap, clap)

I took my wife's car to work today for its yearly oil change.

(okay, the gearheads out there are scoffing at me)

But here's the thing, it's two years old and has less than ten thousand very gentle miles on it. It even still smells like a new car ... which is part of the problem.

Anyway, I took it to an oil place that I won't name because I'm sorta, kinda going to accuse them of something.

(Jiffylube)

I pulled in, got ushered to a seat and I sat down to write some of my book.

Just kidding, I was reading a book.

A bit later, a guy pokes his head in the waiting room and says, "Sir, can you come out here?"

Now this is the thing that I hate about Jiffylube, er, I mean, certain oil places. They have you come out, look at some computer saying when the factory says you should be doing things, and then they upsell you to something that the factory doesn't realize still has some life in it.

But it's a nice upsell for Jiffylu...er, oil places, and I'm sure they scare a lot of people into keeping their cars nicely maintained before their times.

I mean, this is good for you too, right? You don't want to break down in front of a strange McDonalds restaurant and have to eat another town's French fries.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about my wife's car and pretty sure that the attempt to add more mechanics stuff to my bill will be easily thwarted.

So we meet at the open hood and I quickly take a peek at the exposed air filter, which looks strangely naked. It's clean.

"Yeah," I thought, "don't need no stinking air cleaner yet."

And then the guys holds up a small plastic bracket.

"You need a new cabin filter," he said, an apologetic look hiding his true look of triumph.

"Huh?"

"A cabin filter."

"What's a cabin filter?"

"It goes under your glove box. It cleans the air coming into the cabin from the air conditioner and vents."

I frowned, "Where's the old one?"

He shifted a bit, "Uh, there wasn't an old one."

"Shouldn't there have been?"

"Yes."

"So, um, you're saying that the factory forgot to install it?"

"Um, yeah."

It's just a cheap, plastic looking thing, I thought to myself. I'll just get new one and forget about it.

"So how much does one of these cost?"

"$49.99."

My eyebrows shot up into what's left of my hairline.

"Fifty bucks?!" I sputtered.

"Yeah."

"Forget it. I'll just go back to the dealer and take it up with them."

"Oh, okay, I guess," he said, looking disappointed.

Twenty minutes later, I was pulling into the Toyota dealership figuring no problem, they will want to take care of me. When I explained my problem to the service manager, he smirked, "In all my days here, I've never heard of them forgetting that filter.

"But, but ..."

"Where'd you get your oil changed?" He picked up the Jiffylu...er, oil receipt and snorted, "Oh, I see..."

"What?"

"We see this all the time from them. They probably took out your air filter and told you it was never there."

"But, but ..."

Then I figured, what the heck, just get the part and leave.

"So how much for ..."

"Seventy bucks installed."

My eyebrows shot up again, knocking off my glasses, "What?!"

Suffice to say, if clean air was all that important, George Bush would never have been elected, so I decided not to replace it right then and went home and Googled it.

This particular air filter, the Googled page said, is specially formulated to keep the new car smell in the car.

"Hmmm..." I thought to myself ... "two years old and it still smells new."

So the question is ... did Toyota forget to put the filter in the car, or did JiffyLu...er, the oil place toss it and try to rip me out of fifty bucks?

This story ain't over ...

Norm

www.normcowie.com

Fang Face (young adult humor/vampire coming Aug. 2009)
The Adventures of Guy ... written by a guy (probably)
The Next Adventures of Guy ... more wackiness
The Heat of the Moment