Hangin' With Toby

Since I have a much needed day off today I am hanging around the house with Toby who lives downstairs. Toby is usually in the house all day while the tenant downstairs is at work so he is having a large day with me. We are cleaning the pool and doing laundry waiting on noon to pop a beer. I promised not to do any thing major on this day off as it's been a crazy couple of weeks. I did go to the bank this morning and stop by to check about the wheel bearing repair on the car, this led to an honest mechanic that I had been referred to by two people. He told me to call my friends in the states and have the bearings and hubs shipped down to save some money. If I can find the energy I might make a quick repair on the timer for the pool pump. It needs to be set up to run from about 11 to 1 everyday so the solar heater can keep it up around 80 degrees so I can stand to swim in it. I have had the pump running for about an hour now with full sun and it is in the high seventies now. I might even go for swim in a little while if it warms up a little more.

Jay

Well the car is much better now. I had the bearings installed yesterday by a local mechanic. The logistics of trying to do it myself just weren't viable. The whole wheel assembly had to be taken apart and then the new bearings had to be pressed in. Which would have ment renting a car and spending the better part of a day of running around the island and working on the car. The shop did a good job and charged a reasonable rate. I was actually referred to them by two different people.

Jay

Bye bye Maria

Bye bye Maria, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Finally the rain has stopped and we're seeing the sun again! Bands from Maria wouldn't go away. That was one large storm but it didn't really live up to the forecasts thank goodness.

We finally got our boat part. Apparently it was delivered last Wednesday but the mail service forgot to put a slip in our box. I had been by several times looking for it but they said it wasn't in. So Jay got the tracking number from the seller and it said delivered 9/7/11. When he called the mail service they found it and just said "oops sorry". It would have been nice to have the part before the storm so that SeaTow didn't have to tow us off the dock to the mooring. Oh well. At least it's on now and running and checked out by a mechanic so if all goes well, we'll be boating this weekend! WooHoo!! :-)

Sea Tow membership

Well, the boat deal is getting closer and closer. Signed up for the SeaTow membership this morning so it's starting to become more real. The new prop arrived yesterday and the mechanic started on the repairs. If all goes well, the boat should be in STT by this weekend. WooHoo!!!

Customer Service Island Style aka None

So in the past week I have had two crazy examples of customer service or the lack there of in the islands. This is a common complaint that the culture here just doesn't get it. I have to say most of the time I love the islands but this just gets to you some days.

First example was last Friday. We bought the new car from Caribbean Auto Mart at their Dodge store last year.

So on Friday I took it in for a "scheduled" service appointment. I had actually stopped in on Monday to try to get the oil changed and the tires rotated but that actually required an appointment you know like to see a doctor. So on Friday I let work know I would be late. I was scheduled to drop the car off at 7:30 am and the dealership was to give me a ride to work. So I showed up at 7:15am and waited around at about 7:35 or so the service writer showed up and a good ten minutes later she set her desk and computer up and started writing service tickets.

There were about six or seven cars waiting. She did have my paperwork for my appointment so that was good. Then she informed me that the guy that was to give rides wasn't in yet but I could wait in the show room with the other person that needed a ride to work. After several I am sorry comments followed by he should be here soon he finally showed up at 8:35 he was actually scheduled to come to work at 8:30 so they scheduled the customers at 7:30 and the driver at 8:30. The fact that I showed up at the appointed time and had to wait an hour for my ride here is the first issue I have for the day but I would have let that pass as island time if it hadn't been for the later part of the day.

So about 3:30 I call the service department to verify that the service has been done. Yes Mr Pennington your car is ready. They were supposed to call me but of course that didn't happen. So I arranged to have a friend take me to dealer to pick the car up, had to leave work a half hour early to get there before they closed. So at this point I have missed almost two hours of work for the day so that I could pay over a hundred dollars for an oil change and tire rotation service. I get there and they send me upstairs to the cashier, nice enough girl, a pay her and she gives me the car keys and head out to pick up the car. It is about five minutes before five now and as soon as I look at the car I can tell the tires haven't been rotated so now I am pissed.

The little things I likely would have let slide but one of the primary reasons I took it to the dealer for service is that I don't have the tools to rotate the tires and the front ones are looking very bad after 5000 miles and the rear ones look practically new. So I go back to the service writer and tell her that they didn't rotate the tires. The first words out of her mouth, I am not making this up, "is you will have to bring it back to have that done as we close at 5:00". OK I stopped her mid sentence before she can finish with a simple statement, this is unacceptable. She was taken aback and simply did not know what to say. I quickly re caped my days events in getting the car there and we walked upstairs to talk to the techs in the shop. She finds an older west Indian mechanic who promptly states that we don't have the tool to recalibrate the electronic tire inflation sensor so we don't rotate tires on cars with those. By the way any US car built after 2008 is required by law to have these. So that means they don't rotate tires according to him.

Again I repeat my previous statement "this is unacceptable" he had a similar reaction to my statement. So I simply asked to speak to the service manager. Well if you thought these too looked confused before you should have seen the look on their faces at this comment. By the way I didn't wait for them to come up with an additional excuse I walked back into the service office and repeated my request in a firm tone to speak to the manager. A fairly pleasant lady who was obviously from the mainland came out immediately I repeated my comments about my day and the fact that I was told by a tech that they couldn't rotate tires. Well she wasn't pleasant anymore. She gave my keys to another technician reminded him how to reprogram the wheel sensor then stormed out into the shop to find the other tech. They did get the tires rotated, I got an apology and that was that.

Alright so the second one was today but since this rant went so long I will write another one about Mi Banco Popular experience today.

Jay

Friday boat pic

Friday boat pic, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Well, sorry we forgot about the Friday beach pic today. It was an early morning going to Puerto Rico to go pick up the new boat. Kudos to Jorge Cintron, the mechanic in PR that did the work on the motor. It ran great.