Things Fall Apart
Back when Cornell was choosing a book for all incoming freshmen (and the entire rest of the Cornell community) to read each year, they selected Chinua Achebe’s 1958 African classic about pre-Colonial Nigeria called Things Fall Apart. The novel tells a story of Okonkwo, a local village wrestling champion as he deals with the advent of white colonialism and Christianity into Africa and how that affects his family, village social fabric and life as he knows it. The title is a universal concept that the way life operates in most cases is that things as we know them change and that usually means we see change as more bad than good. To us, it is all about the perception that things do, indeed, seem to be falling apart all the time.
Take yesterday for example. I jumped in the Mercedes (2021 GLS450 that has 14,700 miles on it in nine months of use) to run a few errands at the supermarket. Carolyn was up, so she came with me on the errand. When we got back in the car, it gave me a “Stop Engine!” warning and would not start. The electronics on new cars are such that they occasionally go wonky, so I went through several iterations of starting and stopping and nothing seemed to work to clear the system. The interior lights and dash…even the A/C were working, but the car refused to start. So, finally I pushed the Mercedes SOS button to call Mercedes Roadside Assistance, a service I subscribe to and pay a fairly hefty price to have available to me when needed. Note that I am also a AAA member, but that is mostly to have a place rather than DMV to go to handle car-related paperwork. I know AAA is my fall-back, but I am anxious to see how well Mercedes does with Roadside Assistance.
When the SOS operator answers, she tells me that she cannot help me and that I need to speak to Mercedes Roadside Assistance. I was tempted to ask her what exactly qualified as an SOS, but decided not to start messing with the system just yet. The Roadside Assistance person was basically no help whatsoever. I was hoping she might say, “Oh, when that happens you just push this and turn off that and everything resets”, but no such luck. SHe wanted to know if I wanted a jump start or a tow truck. Now, it seems to me that diagnostic Mercedes representatives should understand at very least what sort of assistance they needed to dispatch for what types of maladies are afflicting the car, but again, no such luck. I explained that the message implied a battery problem, so she dispatched a roadside technician who she indicated would call me and likely be there in 30-45 minutes.
While I was waiting, I had Kim come in the Tesla and pick up Carolyn, since there was no use in having two people wait and get frustrated. That reminded me that two days earlier a funny thing had happened to Kim with the car. She had been at a gas station and after pumping the gas, she had put her wallet, phone and keys in the car with Betty (who was along for the ride) and use the restroom. Immediately, the car locked itself with the keys inside and Kim was suddenly locked out. She too called Mercedes Roadside Assistance, who at first told her they could remotely open the car door (something I know I can do from my app), but for some reason that did not work and they agreed to send out a person to open the car within an hour or so. Meanwhile, Kim was frantically calling me, but I was on my motorcycle with my phone in my pocket and blissfully unaware of her predicament. Finally, after 90 minutes of waiting and getting frantic about Betty locked in the car, both Roadside Assistance and I found her after both of us drove around trying to figure out exactly where she was. Given her lack of a cell phone, this was made much harder.
I don’t know if that unusual car-locking-by-itself experience is in any way linked to the current no-start incident, but it does seem coincidental by most standards. Meanwhile, while waiting for the Roadside Assistance person, I called the Mercedes dealership, which is only a few miles away. They said they were not in the business of roadside assistance and that I should have the car towed to them and they could deal with it then. Just then, the Roadside Assistance guy showed up in a car (as opposed to a two truck) and quickly determined that the battery jump was not called for. Instead, he spent ten minutes fiddling with the key fob and trying to do what I had unsuccessfully tried to do to reboot the system. When that didn’t work, he tried to call a tow truck for me. The dealership service people told me that was the best course of action, so once I had heard from the tow service and been told I was an hour away from their arrival, I decided to walk over to the nearby IHOP and get some breakfast.
As soon as I sat down and ordered, the tow guy called to say he was there. Damn. Luckily, where the upscale and high-priced Mercedes services were not terribly accommodative of my needs or inconvenience, IHOP was totally cooperative. They told me to go and deal with my car situation and they would keep my breakfast warm for me. That is the working class approach versus the upscale approach I suppose. More empathy about things falling apart and less unwillingness to accommodate. Meanwhile, I trotted back to the car.
The tow truck driver took my keys and for the third time that morning, he tried fiddling them into submission to no effect. He then tried to put the car into neutral and could not do it due to whatever was causing the problem for the car. He said he had no way to put the car on the flatbed if he couldn’t get it into neutral. I called the dealership and they gave me a big, “Duh, we don’t know”. SO I called Mercedes Roadside Assistance Central and did my best to explain the predicament. They seemed flummoxed. Back to the Mercedes dealership who told me to lock up the car and take the key with me and drop it off for them. Meanwhile, the special tow truck with the car dolly (which was apparently called for) would arrive in two hours. As I wandered back towards IHOP for my overdue breakfast, the Roadside Assistance people called to say I had to stay with the car so thier tow guy could get the keys from me. As I blew a gasket over this conflicting message, they quickly regrouped and said I could leave and take the keys to the dealership after all.
While they offered a free $50 Uber ride, I had Kim pick me up and take me to the dealership after I had finished my IHOP breakfast. There they told me I could indeed get a loaner, but that not until the car got there with the tow. Kim had already left and I told the manager that I was not waiting two hours there. Logic finally prevailed on him and he took the car keys and finally (after a 30 minute wait) gave me a Toyota pick-up trick as a loaner. I found it funny that Mercedes uses Toyota and Jeep vehicles for loaners in a blatant acknowledgement that their vehicles are either too overpriced or unreliable for the task.
I finally had acknowledgement from the dealership in the late afternoon that they had my car (not without the new tow guy calling me up for a credit card, to which I had to refer him to Mercedes Roadside Assistance. What a nightmare. I only hope that changing out the supposed 48V battery that died can be done easily on Monday so that the gang going to Disney on Tuesday can do it in the Mercedes rather than the Toyota truck. But then, who knows what things may fall apart by Tuesday.