That sounds like a harbinger post of something really fabulous that’s going to happen to me in 2008. But quite literally, I got some new turn signals for my car this year.
Either they’d stay on without blinking, or blink a few times and turn off, or not turn on at all. I tried to get through this for a few days till the weekend when a friend could fix it for me, when finally, it got to be too unsafe and too scary. I took it to the local dealer whom I dislike because of their class-action discrimination lawsuit for charging non-white customers higher interest on car loans. (I only heard about it as a potential person in the class, not because it happened to me. I bought my car in Maryland, not Virginia, but it doesn’t make me look favorably on that business.) I have avoided them for the last 4 years because of this but my own safety is paramount and usurps any other greater principle I might have. (Hence also my comment around MLK Day about there still being a lot of fixing to be done. There are still bad things that happen to us because we aren’t white, male, perfect English speakers, etc.)
In my desperation, I went to this shop anyway and they were able to fix my car as a walk-in at 4pm. I was able to pick up my car by 7pm, but I paid quite a lot for the work.
It was about $70 for the new assembly pieces for the signals themselves. Then it was another $150 for the labor, and an additional charge for the new Virginia state auto repair labor tax. Yep. Because my genius of a governor, for whom I voted, cannot get a steady stream of revenue for the state, he got creative and there was the stupid penalty tax on driving unsafely and some other new taxes like the auto repair labor tax.
If only my car aficionado friends had free time earlier in the week, I could have picked up the assembly piece and had someone install it for me for free or the price of dinner. I spent about $250-270, but my reasoning in not waiting any longer for someone to be available was that ~$250 is cheaper than $1000 deductible on an actual accident and any other increase to my insurance rates. Your own mileage my vary on this kind of thinking, but there you have it. One repair in 2008 that is still far less than a car payment.
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