Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Car Trouble and a Sale!

The thing about just barely getting by is that things that are seemingly small when you have savings and a little extra money become nearly insurmountable challenges when you just don't have the cash to pay them off.  Or they sit on your credit card (as could possibly be the case with this small family emergency) and collect interest for a year or two).  The last example of this was the hospital bill from last year.  The majority of it was forgiven, but the $1000 bill that was paid before the "forgiving" happened is still there, waiting to be completely paid off.  

On Saturday the car started acting a little funny.  On Sunday they changed it's oil and said it needed a new water pump, but that we could bring it back.  We were planning on bringing it back yesterday afternoon (the next day).  However, apparently sitting in the parking lot between Sunday and Monday caused some major new problems to be discovered.  Now it needed a new regulator and another new part that involves ball bearings that I can't remember the name of.  $400 morphed to over $1000 very quickly (wait, how much is our car worth?!?!?!  It's a 1999 Town and Country!  Is it even worth that much?!?!  It's going to have to be since we won't be able to replace it reliably for that price...).

Still I've come up with a kind-of solution.

A sale on my shop!  The coupon code will stay valid until I've paid off the car bill!  I'm hoping this works!

And now, presenting the coupon code:
Car15

Car15 will give you a 15% discount at A Snood for All Seasons and has been activated so you can use it now!

Happy Shopping!

3 comments:

  1. Cam, I'm not sure where you took your car, but if it's one of the National chains that do lube jobs, brakes, etc. you might want to get a second opinion before springing for repairs beyond the water pump. I took our car into one, one time, just for an inspection and they told me we needed struts, shocks, wheel bearings etc. I called my husband and he said to tell them to just do the inspection (since he was pretty sure that it was an attempt to inflate the bill). I had them do that, and we didn't need to have the additional work down (as in we did eventually need new shocks) until well over a year later. My daughter's college roommate ended up trading her car because of the amount of work one of those places told her she'd need done. Same sort of stuff has happened to my daughter and her husband when they've taken their cars to those kinds of joints. They're okay if all you're getting is an oil change, but they are very aggressive about pushing for additional work. My daughter brings her car to our mechanic (and hour and a half away from where she lives) because he does only the repairs that are actually needed and he gives fair assessments. Ask around for who the best independent mechanic is. The national chains are to be avoided if you are having to be careful of your pennies. The way they can afford the cheap oil changes is by talking people into expensive repairs.

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  2. I totally agree with Liz. Having a good well-recommended mechanic really does help, that's how we were able to buy our Jeep, which coincidentally had a 1k in repairs needed, but at least we knew that from the start and were able to get the asking price lowered a bit.

    I bought some "California" snoods for Susi and I. Looking forward to wearing them in the hot weather :)

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  3. I concur with the other opinions; any time you hear the words "bearings" or "ball joints", alarm bells should go off. Now, I'm sure that a car will occasionally need them, but these places are notorious for trying to rip folks off (particularly women).

    Try to get a referral from friends to a good, honest independent mechanic; they are worth their weight in gold.

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