Monday, April 21, 2014

The World of Men

Don’t you just love good service?  I sure do, especially when I have to deal with those things that generally Grizz tends to, and I enter the ‘world of men’.

Grizz right now isn’t allowed to drive, needs a couple more weeks of healing after his knee surgery.  But it was time to get our snow tires put on, just in case we needed to go over the mountains to see my parents.  So off to the tire shop I went.  No problem, tires on, everything checks out – we do need to think about doing a brake job soon.

Three days later, headed out to the vehicle and the wonderful electronic monitoring system displayed a message on the dash that the left front tire was low.  Hmmm…..so I got out to take a look.  That tire looked okay, but the left rear looked a little sad.

So I got Grizz, and we checked the pressure on both tires, filled up the rear tire, and I added another stop at the tire store to my list for the day.

The service rep was more than happy to arrange to check the tire out, and in the end they replaced the valve stem thinking it might be leaking, but otherwise couldn’t see any problems.  Okay, good to go!

Two days later, the same tire is low again (but the monitor still said to check the front tire????), so back to the tire store – this time they decided that there was a little bit of corrosion around the rim, so they cleaned that out and put everything back together again.

Another three days, and a trip to Costco and back, and now the monitoring system says the left rear tire is low.  Again, checked the pressure manually – I’m getting really good at this! – it looked okay, but stopped at the tire store anyway to ask them to double-check the pressure for me.  They were, once again, more than happy to do that and I pulled the van into the service bay.

A nice young man checked the pressure on both front and rear tires on the left side, which were all okay, then said he’d check the other side.  Wouldn’t you know the right front tire was obviously a little low.  Hmmmm…..so why does the monitor say it’s the left rear.  Solution, maybe the sensors need to be reset.  Oh, who knew?!  So after testing to ascertain that in fact when the right front tire is low, the system thinks it’s the left rear, this fellow did some fancy-dancy playing with an electronic gizmo, then retested the system by letting air out of a tire to see if the monitor displayed the message for the correct tire, he’s happy that all is fixed.

That was two days ago.  The tire pressure seems to be holding.  When I go back for the brake job, they’ve assured me they’ll check all the tires once again while they have them off the vehicle.

Through all of this, I never once felt that any of these men thought that I was just a ditzy broad who didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.  Never once felt condescension or neglect from any of them.  They all seemed concerned that I would be safe on the road, and treated me respectfully.  It was, all in all, a happy experience.

So, now I know for sure how to use a tire pressure gauge,

know what the pressure is supposed to be on my tires, know where to find that information – and know where to go to get service when I have a problem.

Lessons learned, and so happy to have found a great tire shop with fabulous service – and they never once groaned when they saw me coming!

Happy service!           Blessings, Peg

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