I have to write a major nasty-gram...

Kind of a long story...

October/November-ish - My car starts to act funny. The radio will just die when I'm driving. It starts weird, sometimes. Or takes forever to start. The remote starter doesn't work at all...It just clicks. One night I think I'm going to be stranded and hubby just happens to be far away and unreachable...

I take my car to Honda to get an oil change, get new brakes, 2 new tires, and find out what the hell is wrong with how it starts. I spend a shit-ton of money at this damn place. I specifically bought a Civic because I absolutely HATE dealing with car problems and everyone says these things run forever with little issue. Honda has my car for a day and a half and they can't figure out the problem. They say it's probably my non-factory remote starter system and they tell me to have the installer check it out.

Fuck that - Ultimate Electronics is nearly tits-up so I just go to Best Buy to replace the Remote Starter. I mean, if Honda has my car for an entire day and they say they've looked at everything I have no reason to believe otherwise, right?

Best Buy - I pick out my new remote starter, get it installed, they go to demo it for me and it has the same problem. WTF!! I ask them to look at it further. They re-used some of the old starter's parts so I think that might be the problem.

Nope - The Best Buy dude opens the plastic cap that covers the battery terminals and they are FUCKED. They are covered in corrosion which looks like blue sugar caked everywhere. Even my non-mechanical eyes know immediately that this picture is so very wrong. Best Buy kindly cleans off the corrosion the best they can and tell me to get it looked at. The car starts perfectly. I'm pissed that I didn't really need to spend $300 on a new remote starter and that Honda is a bunch of assholes that couldn't find the problem because they clearly didn't even look for it. And their oil-change inpection sheet includes a battery test - which they obviously didn't do. But whatever...What's done is done, so I have a new starter and my car isn't having problems anymore.

Back to Honda for my next oil change and by this time there's more corrosion building up. Yep - I should have brought it in right away, but I didn't. I very kindly explain how utterly-ridiculous and unacceptable this situation is to the service guy. I even said something to the effect that "you should be ashamed that Best Buy found a problem that you couldn''t." Dude agrees that it's piss-poor and tells me that he's going to have the service manager give me a call to talk about it. Well, it's been about a month and nobody has called me. And - on this oil change they said my two back tires are fine, even though the last time they told me they need to be replaced. Those fucking assholes.

So I'm going to write a nasty-letter. Except, I'm not even going to send it to the service people. I might cc them...I'm going to send it to the Sales Manager. Because ultimately, I won't be buying a Honda for my next car because of this - so really, it's the Sales department that is getting screwed. My letter will likely end up in a trashcan, but that's okay. I'll feel better.

Happy Friday punks.