It’s 7:51am on a Thursday morning. On a normal Thursday morning, I’d be at my desk, looking through some test results that ran during the overnight, but today is not a normal Thursday morning. At the moment, I’m sitting in a Tully’s in the Eastgate section of Bellevue, all types of pissed off, and it’s not my fault that I’m pissed off… but it will be the first true test of my self control in a non-east coast setting.
Yesterday, at 7:51am, I was sitting in the same Tully’s happily waiting for my Jetta to complete its 10K mile service and oil change. Why am I back at Tully’s? As I was driving back to work yesterday, I noticed that my car was pulling to the right. At a light, I checked the receipt for the service – sure enough, they rotated my tires. Ah, no worries then… they didn’t align them right, so I’ll just pop back in there. While on the phone with the service department, they tell me that I don’t need an alignment for a rotation and if I bring it back in, they will cross rotate the front two tires.
Now, while I don’t have too much knowledge about cars – I can’t change the oil; I can only change the gas – it seems to me that whenever something changes on a tire, an alignment is needed… even after a certain amount of time and/or miles, I think an alignment might be required, to keep the car from pulling. And anyway, pulling = bad. That much I know.
This morning, I drop the car off. “Oh, we don’t have an alignment rack here…” Um. OK. A service department without an alignment rack? Odd. I’ve had a tire replaced at dealerships before, when they found something lodged into a sidewall during a routine service, so unless they are farming that stuff out to a tire shop, I’m a bit at a loss. Of course, to make matters worse, this was followed up by a “Was it really noticeable?” comment. Up to this point I’ve been smiling. I mean, I have to go back to the dealership, disrupt my day a second time, and have begun to wonder about this service departments competency… Now I’m being mocked or patronized? I don’t think so. I frowned and replied with, “It was enough to make me come back in, eh? Before I brought it in, the car drove straight – now it doesn’t.”
And that was the first test, one that I passed in my opinion. Six months ago, I would have be a bit more pissed off about it all and given some attitude to the CSR that tried to patronize me, before he had a chance to open his mouth. This glass is half full. I answered his question honestly and I’m not holding a grudge. If anything this just sets the stage for the next test.
Three days ago, I pinged my mail-to-home prescription service. Due to my fault WOP genes (and my diet, although changing that hasn’t moved my level of the crap) I have high cholesterol and have been taking pills for it, for a while now. Every six months, I have to go to a doctor for a blood test, to keep it all regulated properly… the joy of being over 30. Just before I moved, I got in to see my doctor for my regular blood test and told him I was leaving the area; I asked him for a six month supply of pills. He wrote out a prescription and I went back to the chaos of packing.
When I went through the benefits enrollment process at Microsoft, they recommend that we use a mail order system for “regular” medicine – things that are refilled regularly. I mailed in my prescriptions, since I fell into this group. When I noticed that I had no refills left – via a web site! how pain free is this system? – I called their customer service department and they checked the paperwork: I had no refills available for the cholesterol medication. Ah, no worries, I said – I’ll call a couple of weeks in advance and they’ll get it sorted.
Yeah, right.
Yesterday, I get an email from the prescription company saying that they haven’t heard back from my doctor. Given my past experiences with CVS (and bad insurance coverage) I know that the office isn’t that quick with return contacts, so I left them a message last night. This morning, I notice a voice mail left at 6:30am, so I return the call.
I ask if they got the fax. “Oh, we don’t renew prescriptions via fax…” ‘Um, huh? The prescription company seems to be OK with it – what’s the issue?’ “We don’t do that as a policy.” [internal thought] Riiight… of course you don’t… even though it’s still fuckin paper isn’t it?! ‘So what can I do?’ “We’ll write you a new one and you can swing by and pick it up at any time!” OK, so because of your asinine policy, *I* need to be inconvenienced by stopping by your office?! Wait a minute, I have an out! ‘Um, except that I live in Washington state now, so I can’t swing by.’ “…”
“Oh, well, we can mail it to you!” ‘I have five pills left.’ “Oh! Er, we can call it into a local pharmacy, if you’d be willing to take on a little of the expense.” Are you fuckin’ kidding me? ‘Are you kidding me? Why do I have do that?!’ “Oh. Um, can you call the company and explain to them that we don’t take faxes?” ‘I work for a company that has 57,000 employees – this is not a small operation where I can call my local insurance rep and talk to them about it and explain that my former doctors’ office isn’t capable of handling a fax renewal.’ I probably could, but why waste more of my time? ‘Can you overnight me a script, if you can’t fax them a copy?’ “Ummmmmmm, no.” !! ‘What are my options then? I could go to a local doctor but I’m not due for a another test until the end of November.’ “Um… I don’t know… I, er, well we keep telling the prescription companies that we don’t take faxes and they keep sending them!” ‘Well, you still have the faxed request there right? As an exception, can’t you send that back to them?’ “Of course not – we throw those out because we don’t do them!”
*snap*
Wait. Must not lose control… must be more laid back… lets review the situation. They have a policy that they never told me about. What’s more is that they get a fax about me and don’t bother to call me to follow up on it, even if it was a valid request. Not to mention that they want me to come out of pocket for a mess that wasn’t of my making. And then there’s the whole prescription snafu, where I asked for a refill and didn’t get one months ago… like I’m going to go deal my 90-day supply of Lipitor?! The worse part about it is that I’m running out of medication! Wait a minute…. waiiiiit a minute. This is an east coast office… I… don’t have to be nice! Hah!
*snap resumes*
When the dust cleared, they’ve decided to fax me a new script “as a courtesy” since the doctor thought that I would get checked out locally in early October, instead of late November. Whatever… They seem to forget that the net effect of their job is to get me the medication that they’re making me take… and they screwed the pooch on this job, big time. And I guess I sorta bombed that part of this “test” today, but I think I just reflected the attitude that was being shoved at me, through the phone… angst begets angst, and god knows that there was a lot of it there… they just brought it out of me, I guess. Now I have to worry a bit: I’m so wound up, and I do not want to verbally napalm the VW dealership that I have to walk back into…
Although if the car pulls to the left after this visit, I’m not responsible for my reactions.
It’s not uncommon for auto service departments not to have alignment racks. They’re not required when you rotate tires and are a pretty specialized and expensive tool — in fact, many *tire stores* don’t even have alignment racks. If your tires are so unevenly worn that you would need an alignment, it’s time to get new tires.
It sounds to me like the service department must have done something more than just rotate the tires if you ended up out of alignment — maybe they didn’t intend to do it, of course, but just rotating tires isn’t going to have any affect on the alignment.
Really? I’ve been lucky then – I’ve even replaced just one tire (a cardinal sin for a car, but since I lease, I didn’t care much) which definitely required an alignment. Also when I got tires on my Jeep, they had to align them there too.
Anyway, the swapped the tires and the car is happy again. However, I never did get a fax from the Dr. office, so I have some phone calling to do tomorrow morning… Sneer.
You have a condition called tire pull,usually the results of an internal problem w/ the tire,also usually not detectable to the eye,,When I rotate tires on a vehicle and have a new pull,verifacation
is made by swapping the front tires side to side.
If the pull then goes the other way,,then you know one of the tires is bad-but wich one??Who knows,I usually recommend to replace both.Although sometimes the cross swap will make them go straight-in wich case you have happy customer,,,how nice Chip H.
Maybe the problem is that you’re sitting in Tully’s?
Maybe the problem is that you’re sitting in Tully’s?
Well, it would seem that I found the only place in WA that doesn’t have a ‘bucks within seeing distance! :)
It could be that they didn’t properly balance the tires. That could cause them to wobble and it might make the car pull in one direction. That might be why they said you didn’t need an alignment. Rotating your tires SHOULDN’T cause a mis-alignment, you’re just taking them off and putting them back on, but not balancing them could cause the car to pull and is bad for the tires and the alignment.
However, the doctors office snafu is asinine. My wife is a pharmacist and says just about any pharmacy will give you a small amount of almost any drug, except narcotics, to get you by until your prescription gets worked out. That kind of crap happens all the time. Imagine that happening with your insulin prescription? There are ways built into the pharmacy system to handle doctor screwups.