Centre of the Universe

I follow the tweets of @RyanOConnorSA, who is a breakfast show DJ on KFM, a radio station in Cape Town. Well, he retweeted a story posted on www.overdrivetv.co.za. The tweet rang a bell of an incident which happened to me several months ago, so checking out the link, I was most surprised to find that the incident was the exact same incident which I was witness to.

It all began on a blisteringly hot summers day in Johannesburg, in mid-December 2008. I was up there for the day, for a business meeting with some clients for a software project, and so, Mark, my boss at the time (who is also a good friend), his wife, another colleague, Greg, and myself left his house, which serves as his office, and drove up to Sandton for the meeting in two cars. Mark and his wife in one, and myself and Greg in the other.

We each went different routes, and a few block from our destination we got a phone call from Mark saying that he had been in an accident, and within a few minutes arrived on the scene.

It seemed like chaos there. A top of the range Aston Martin DBS had crashed into Mark and in wife in their Chevy Spark, and 5 other cars while they were waiting a red traffic light coming off the M1 highway.

There was loose gravel on the road, and the Aston Martin was coming too fast and skidded.

The real twist in the tale is that the Aston Martin was out on a test drive. Someone’s insurance was going to be rather peeved about this little accident.

Fortunately no-one was seriously injured in the accident, although things could have certainly been worse. The back seat of Mark’s Chevy Spark was quite compacted, and before we left I toyed with the idea of driving with them. If I had I would have been sitting on that compacted back seat.

I just had to had to take my car in to get fixed, because my wheel was about to fall off. Literally. One of the wheel lug bolts (the bolt that holds your wheel onto the hub) had broken off, and another was on its way out, so off I went to the Tableview Tyres, a tyre fitment centre nearby.

Well, fortunately for me, the guy there told me is a pretty routine affair to replace the lug bolt, but he did not keep stock of it, so I would have to get it from the dealer. I thought I would try a spares dealer first, since they would be sure to be cheaper than the authorised Hyundai dealer, but after questioning a shopkeeper or two, I discovered that the only place to get those lug nuts was at Hyundai.

Well, at the Hyundai service centre, I got the shock of my life when I saw the price of a new lug bolt (with nut, since half of my old bolt was stuck in the nut still with no way to get it out). A single lug bolt and nut costs R50 – and I needed 2. How on earth are Hyundai able to charge such an exorbitant amount for a bolt! I expected to pay somewhere in the region of R20-30 but this was just plain ridiculous.

The sad part is that I was pretty much held to ransom. I had no choice but to pay up, since I could not get them anywhere else.

After getting the bolts and having them fitted at my tyre place, my car is running fine again, but I am just absolutely gobsmacked at how car manufacturers can take consumers for a ride with spare parts.

This afternoon I took my car to a place in Maitland, and got the best darn news a guy can get. It is going to cost me less than R3000 to do the steering rack.

This would of course constitute bad news on any other day, but not today. For you see, last Friday, I took my car into the Hyundai dealer to determine what the problem with my steering was, and they told me, after keeping my car there the whole day, that my steering rack had to be replaced and was going to cost about R9000. And did I mention that this was the third time my car had been there and each time they changed their mind as to the problem.
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