Wednesday, December 20, 2006

A Day With Saturn

AUGH!

Yesterday was one of those days when NOTHING goes right.

I took my car in for an oil change and the state inspection. Should be easy enough, right?

Wrong. Poor Glerrts needed about $540 in repairs to be streetworthy by Virginia's standards.

So, fine, I"ll take the tire, the brakes, do what you have to do, just make my baby run!

And do it early, I have a doctor's appointment.

Ok, so it's all done, and I'm invited to the back room to come and pay for it.

So I whip out the old checkbook, and write a check. The woman runs it through a machine, and the machine beeps, and she gets a message prompting her to make a phone call.

She makes the phone call, and talks to someone, and when she hangs up, she says, "Your check has been declined."

Uh, excuse me!?

Me: "Can you tell me why?"

Her: No, there's nothing wrong with your account, everything seems to be fine, but they won't accept your check. Your account came back with no negatives, but they won't take it.

Me: Who did you talk to?

Her: I don't know. You'll need some other form of payment.

Me: Did you talk to the bank or someone else?

Her: I'm not sure, I'm not the regular cashier.

I hand over my Visa check card. BEEP! It's soundly rejected. Ok, this is ridiculous.

Her: Well, don't you have some other form of payment?

Me: No, I have a checking account, which is full of money, because Mr. Man got paid Friday. I don't understand this.

Her: Well, I don't know what we can do about this situation.

Me: I'll go over to the ATM across the street and bring back cash.

I drive to the ATM. I do a balance inquiry. As expected, everything is A-OK. Plenty of money in the account. I try to withdraw the money to cover the car payments.

ATM: Sorry, this amount exceeds your daily limit for withdrawal."

Me: GODDAMN IT!

ATM: Would you like to try again?

Me: *Sigh*

Finally, I deduct my limit of $400 and go back to the dealer.

Me: Here's $400. Now, you run my card again and see if it'll accept the other $140.

Her: (whipping out calculator) Ok, so I'll be charging... *crickets chirping*

IT'S A NOT-SO-ROUND ROUND DOLLAR AMOUNT MINUS A ROUND DOLLAR AMOUNT AND CHANGE. YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO THIS IN YOUR HEAD!!!!!!!!!

Why can't people do simple arithmetic??

So she runs the card, and lo and behold, it works. Saturn has their money, I get my car and my license back.

AUGH!!!!! And don't you know, I was late for the doctor?

1 pearl(s) of wisdom:

Lesley said...

How annoying! And you had to shell out $540 to boot!