Wow a lot for 24 hours
I have a bunch of things floating around in my head, much more than normal for a mid-week post.
Last night my cell phone rang and low and behold it was the van lady. I was short, but civil to her on the phone. She gave me more bullshit, saying how she was trying to get a loan from some place but they keep giving her the run around, not returning calls, saying faxes didn’t arrive, etc… I was a split second away from saying “Oh, like you have been doing to me?” I mention how her cell phone was disconnected. She said it was just a mix up, it’s all fixed now. “Yea sure” I thought to myself. Then she babbles about how she has been so busy with this children show stuff she does, she just hasn’t had time to do anything else. “Um yea ok” I reply in as disinterested of a tone as I can muster. Then she said she got the message about returning the deposit. I told her it’s gone on too long and I just want to return her deposit and that is that. She agreed to it but didn’t want me to send a check, instead she said she would stop by my office today to pick up the cash. “Fine, whatever” I said. She said that if she gets things worked out and comes up with the money and I still have the van for sale she will let me know. I have news for her. Even if she walked up to my door with the cash tomorrow I wouldn’t sell it to her. She can eat shit as far as I am concerned. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t stop by to pick up the money today. The woman has done NOTHING that she said she would do since this mess started.
Last night Ali saw there was a Peanuts Xmas Special coming on. It was called something like “All I want for Christmas is a dog Charlie Brown” It was an hour long, double the length of most Peanuts specials. We thought we saw every Peanuts special there ever was but we had not ever seen this one. We were pleasantly surpised, it was quite good and funny. Any of the newer Peanuts specials we have seen (late 70’s or newer) had been pretty lame, they just didn’t capture the spirit of the classic series. Well this special broke the mold, even though it was made in 2003, they did a great job of making it look, sound and feel like the older cartoons. The voices for the characters were pretty close to what we all remember and the animation style looked dead on. We both really liked it. Check it out next year if you see it on the schedule. Nothing matches up with the original Charlie Brown Christmas special but this one is a damn strong effort.
When I was having my argument with the dealer yesterday about the additional registration fees, I told him how they made plenty of money on us and eating the 76 bucks should be a non-issue. When he said they only made 1000 on the deal I mentioned how we also bought the extended warranty which they also made money on. When I said that he let it slip that I could cancel that warranty at anytime and get the prorated balnce refunded, so somehow that didn’t count. Well that little statement got my wheels turning.
This morning I pulled out our paperwork and looked at it and what they charged us for the extended warranty. I knew from past experience that I could buy the exact same extended warranty from my credit union. So I called the credit union today to verify that I could still purchase the warranty for the Camry from them. Yep no problem, it’s easy to do and IT’S CHEAP. It is almost a 1000 dollars LESS than the dealer charged and if you factor in financing charges, I could save about 1500 bucks over the life of the loan. Then I read the paperwork for the warranty I bought from the dealer. In it, it states that if I cancel within 60 days, I get the FULL amount refunded, minus a 50 buck fee. Perfect!!! So once I get the registration in my hand, whether I wind up paying more for it or not, I am going to yank the extended warranty right out from under them and pick it up from the credit union. F them. All because they gave me a hard time about 76 bucks, they will lose 1000. I love it.
I have a couple outstanding Christmas gifts for Ali that have not arrived yet. I am getting a bit nervous, I followed up with the suppliers to apply some pressure. The stuff better get here.