Yay!

I wuv my car.


Oh, how I've missed my car.


It's so nice to have it back.  Now I'm thinking that maybe I don't need to go car shopping.  Maybe I need to run this thing into the ground because I really really enjoy driving it.


(Two and a half days in the wrong rental will do that to you.)


Amazingly, I have nothing but happy news to report.  Nelson (eventually) called me back to report that after $310 worth of electrical testing, they'd decided the problem was the battery.  (Never mind that this is what I thought it was when I first brought the car in.)  When he told me how much the new battery would cost, I pointed out that I'd just replaced the battery a year or two ago at the other Ford place.  Nelson called the other Ford place and discovered that, yes, my battery was, in fact, under warranty.  This meant I would not be charged for the new battery.


Or the $310 diagnostic.


Or the rental car.


The entire experience (save $15 worth of gas the Eclipse drank) was free, thanks to the battery still being under warranty.  Indeed, my crappy battery got me a free full electrical tune-up and a car wash.  I kind of stopped being annoyed at this point.


(I even let the rental car place off the hook.  I'd taken the rental agent's business card and she confirmed that the address on the card was where I was, as I figured I'd need to plug that into my gps to return the car.  Imagine my surprise when my gps guided me to ... the Fresh & Easy.  Luckily, I found the correct address on my rental contract and it was only a few minutes away.  Still, when rental car guy asked me if I was totally satisfied with my rental car experience, I said, "well, there was this one thing," and pointed out the agent's out-of-date cards, sitting in a stack on the desk.  Dude was mortified.  Totally apologetic and said he hoped this wouldn't stop me from saying I was "completely satisfied" when I get that "how did we do?" phone call from Enterprise.  I assured him that it wouldn't -- of everyone I've dealt with in the past few days (including Verizon, and this other business that will not return my damn phone calls) these guys were the only ones genuinely trying to deliver good customer service.  When I left, I'm pretty sure the guy started ordering new business cards for the agent.)