DING! DONG! THE WITCH IS DEAD!
Er, maybe not dead, exactly, but SHE'S GONE!
::happydance::
Yeah, so, that really loud sucking sound you heard Saturday? That was the closing of the giant black hole of money suck that was Audrey, my 2003 Audi A4. SHE'S GONE!
Thanks goodness.
For months now everyone within a fifteen mile radius of me and my interwebs reachy places has had to listen to me whine about that stupid car. For that, I am sorry. Also, you're welcome that it's done.
Now that I'm wearing my fancy 20/20 Hindsight Goggles, I can tell you that there were two major problems going on with that car. For one, the dealership where we had been taking it for service can BITE ME. Ahem. Let's just say they weren't exactly providing the services as one would like them to be provided. For example, we paid for a state inspection and 80,000 mile (read: EXPENSIVE) service earlier this year and they kinda sorta forgot to tell us we needed new brakes. And, of course, that was a fact we discovered the hard way.
The bigger issue, though, relates to that little $2600 repair we paid for about a month ago. We took the car in because it was shaking violently whenever I pressed on the accelerator. Which, uh, I kinda need to be able to do that. The check engine light had lit up, they replaced the torque converter claiming that it would fix the shaking and the check engine light, and it MADE ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE.
So, there's that whole thing where I have no idea whether that part actually needed replaced, but also had the bigger issue of the car still shaking. We were too chicken to take it anywhere to try to figure it out because we had already spent an insane amount of money on that car this year. (My personal favorite was the time the power steering went out when I was driving down a windy road. AWESOME. AND EXPENSIVE.)
My handy dandy 20/20 Hindsight Goggles tell me that the shaking was likely the result of something that happened during that little stop sign incident earlier this year. Getting to the bottom of that mess was going to require a ton of money, and even more time. I didn't have the time to fight with insurance companies and car manufacturers and repair shops and dealerships. It was one just black hole of money suck, and there was no way we were ever going to win that war unless Luke Skywalker showed up to save the day.
I have no faith in men named Luke.
Now I have a brand new Nissan Rogue. We managed to a great price on it (read: below invoice) but got completely screwed on the whole Audrey part of the equation. I'm signing that off as her taking one last swipe at my wallet.
At least now she can't hurt me anymore.
::knocks on wood:: ::crosses self:: ::prays to every deity ever named:: ::throws salt over shoulder:: ::considers deleting this post::
