Highway Robbery

For the past several months, the glove box on my car has been giving us some trouble.

It has only been opening when it felt like it, which made it quite difficult to access the iPod cable located inside. Through much fiddling some time ago, Daniel was able to figure out a nifty way to open it, by pressing his left thumb against the left side of the handle, and pulling on the right side of the handle with his fingers. Still, I wanted to take it in to determine if there was an inexpensive way to fix the annoyance once and for all.

I went to the BMW dealership, as I figured they would have stock of any parts that would be needed. Normally, I take my car to a local performance shop for all its work, but I wanted a quick and easy fix to this issue. The dealer seemed like the logical choice.

Boy, was I wrong.

In the hour and a half that I spent at the dealership, they did a full inspection of my car, and even washed and vacuumed it. That, in itself, was greatly appreciated, along with the strong coffee and availability of wireless Internet. What I did not expect was their estimation of the cost to fix my glove box.

$430.

That's right. $430 to fix a glove box, over $200 of which was parts.

They also quoted me several thousand dollars for some other repairs that I know needed to be done. I declined, because I can have those done much cheaper at my regular shop.

I thanked them profusely for their time, and left, shaking my head in disbelief. I simply could not believe that replacing something so simple as a glove box would cost that much. That money is better suited to my bank account than with the dealership, thank you.

Later on that night, my trunk wouldn't open. And neither would the glove box.

What the hell ?

Through much fiddling, I managed to figure out that the dealership had locked my glove box after inspecting it. The box has a cool feature (that I never use) whereby you can use your key to lock it. And when I went to inspect why it wasn't opening, I found out that it had been locked by the dealer.

Why did they lock it ? Did they expect that I would be dumb enough to think it wasn't opening at all, and then come back in for the $430 repairs ?

I unlocked the glove box, which also allowed me to open my trunk. And in fiddling with the handle on the glove box, I noticed that there was a screw loose on the left side of it.

Using my manual screwdriver from my trusty work toolkit, I tightened the screw.

And the glove box opened perfectly. Without even using the special trick.

Son of a bitch.

That dealership can suck it. Conniving thieves, all of them.