When dealing with old beaters, something I’m all too familiar with, there’s a catch phrase that’s applied to warranty work done on such a vehicle, “Five-Years or Five-Miles, whichever comes first”. After having said that everyone laughs and hopes for the best knowing it was a joke.
That
changed today when we took my 2003 Dodge Dakota into the local mechanic’s shop
to figure out why the driver’s side window wouldn’t go up and down. I’d gone to pick up our mail, pushed the
button to let the window down and reached into our rural mailbox. It was about to rain so I pushed the button
to roll the window back up; nothing happened.
This wasn’t
the first time I’d had issues with the electric window function, so I slapped
the door panel a couple of times to jiggle the connection as this had worked in
the past, still nothing. I opened and
closed the door a couple of times, a bit harder and with enthusiasm,
nothing. Since it was about to rain, I got
back home and took a handy-dandy kitchen trash bag, along with some tape, and
did what I could to block the opening to keep the rain out. It was the weekend so there was no sense
trying to take the truck down to the local mechanic’s shop until after the
weekend.
That
brings us to this afternoon. I got a
call from the local mechanic’s counter representative saying the truck was
ready to be picked up; but that they couldn’t find anything wrong with the window. “The window works fine, Sir. He took the door apart, checked all the
connections, made it go up and down all day long without any problems. That
will be Fifty-Two Dollars, Sir.”
I had Lucy
drive me back to the mechanic’s shop where I made sure to test the window; it worked
the way it’s supposed to work. Lucy
wrote them a check, and I joked that this repair came with the standard, “Five-Years
or Five-Mile warranty, whichever comes first?”
There was a lighthearted laugh from all of us, knowing my truck was over
twenty years old.
Lucy
mentioned that it would be nice to go into Centerville and get a Blizzard at
the Dairy Queen. That sounded good so I
agreed to follow her in the truck.
Looking at the time, it being close to dinner, I suggested we get
burgers, and maybe a Blizzard afterwards. We enjoyed a quick meal, and it was
time to head home.
Lucy
walked over to my truck, “I want to see if it still works”, laughing while at
the same time remembering we had just paid Fifty-Two Dollars to have the
mechanic tell us there was nothing wrong with it. I turned on the key, pressed the button and
the window went down, pressed it again and the window came up; but only halfway
and no more, then nothing.
We were only
about a mile from the mechanic’s shop, so it was a no-brainer to drive back and
show them the window wasn’t exactly working.
It was a few minutes after five o’clock and they were in the process of
locking the place up when we drove in. I
saw the owner inside the shop and smiled while asking, “Is that Five-Mile or Five-Year
warranty still good?”
He hadn’t been the one who’d worked on my truck; but he was familiar with the issue as he summoned a young mechanic to check it out. I handed him the key, and the window worked perfectly for him; but only once. It stopped halfway up and he couldn’t get it to move either way for a while. He then was able to make the window go nearly to the top, enough to where I wasn’t concerned about the possibility of rain getting the seats soaked.
We left the truck with them, and,
for some reason, I don’t feel as dumb as I did earlier in the afternoon. There really was something wrong. Thank goodness for the Five-Mile or Five-Year,
whichever comes first warranties; and we still have Three Miles left on that
warranty.
