Today as I was driving home from a vet appointment with Little Puppy a big cement truck threw a rock up at my windshield and cracked it. It didn't do the star thing that a rock chip usually does where you can quickly get it filled so it doesn't spread. It just instantly spread. Figures, doesn't it? I've never had that happen before, so it makes sense that the first time it should happen I should be driving a brand new vehicle.
I called the dealership when I got home to ask (dejectedly and already knowing the answer) if my warranty might cover a windshield since it was SO new and the receptionist told me no. She also suggested calling Honda Canada and asking for a "good will" gesture. I hate doing stuff like that and so I phoned Shawn instead hoping he would do my talking for me. He said I should call myself because it would be good assertiveness training. I hate being assertive. I am mousy by nature.
I called - and the woman I spoke to at Honda said she couldn't do anything either and that her best recommendation would be to speak to the service manager back at the dealership and gave me his name. I told Shawn it wasn't going to work since I'd already called the dealership and spoken to the receptionist. Shawn said to call again anyway and ask for the service manager by name. I hemmed and hawed, and finally did it.
The service manager said right off the bat that there was no way he could help me out and that the ease with which the windshield broke was a symptom of the vertical positioning of it and not because of a design flaw. I believe he is right about that, although I heard Bad Lisa in my head asking if the vertical positioning of the windshield itself was the design flaw. Instead I thanked him for his time and asked if he could quote me a price on a replacement windshield. For some reason that made him soften and he said he would talk to some people in the office and see if he could get me a discount on a replacement and then call me back.
He called back about a half hour later to tell me he was giving me $250 off the total price of a windshield with no charge for labour and no markup. The total he quoted was $440. I thanked him profusely.
Then he called back about twenty minutes later and told me the total was actually $400 so I would owe him only $150. I thanked him even more fervently and hung up to report my success to Shawn who said several wise things about how it was better to ask than to wonder and how being assertive paid and blah blah blah.
In another half hour, my new friend phoned again and told me that the price he'd quoted, $400, was actually the price of a windshield for a Honda CR-V and that my Element without markup or labour would actually only cost $219. He said, "So what I'm telling you is that I'm buying you a new windshield."
I decided it would be pushing my newfound assertiveness too far to ask him for a gift certificate for the extra $21.00.
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