(originally published June 5th, 2005)<\/p>\n
About three weeks ago now my car stopped on a bridge on the way back home from an out of town assignment. As of this past Wednesday, the warranty company has decided that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not going to cover the cost of the repairs, and this means a big chunk of cash coming out of my pocket, not only for my own car, but for the rental I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been driving. By the time it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all over, because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m having my car repaired, there will be an out of pocket expense of close to $8,000 total, including the rental.<\/p>\n
On first thought, I believe I would have every right to complain. I still have miles under my warranty, this is a big expense and will be the biggest out of pocket payment I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve made since I purchased my house, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something I feel could have been prevented four weeks before my car tanked because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d heard a noise and taken it to the dealership, and they told me they couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find anything wrong with it.<\/p>\n
On second thought, however, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve decided that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s much better to attack this event with clarity of thought and positive purpose. After all, when I first wrote about this incident some weeks ago, I told of how thankful I was that no one got hurt, and how, within 45 minutes to an hour, I was on my way home. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had fairly reliable transportation for the past 3 1\/2 weeks, and except for this bump in the road, so to speak, things haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t gone badly overall. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m very lucky to have the money to pay for these repairs, as well as the rental, and I credit having an open spirit and not dwelling on the bad things that can happen in one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life. There are much worse things in this world that happens to other people, and I know there are much worse things that could come into my own life.<\/p>\n
Of course, there are some lessons to be learned here. One, make sure to always keep every single receipt for every single thing you ever do to your car! Two, planning ahead for the possibility of bad things eases the pressure when bad things possibly come up. Three, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s much easier on your psyche if you can remain calm, and let things that don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t physically or emotionally touch your life kind of roll off your shoulder.<\/p>\n
Oh, and one more thing; number four, smile and be courteous. By being courteous to the people who are repairing my car, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re waiving all early fees and just charging me for a brand new engine, plus the labor for putting it in. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re helping me because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve tried to be gracious, even though I probably have good reason to complain. Grace under fire; seems I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been doing a lot of that lately, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(originally published June 5th, 2005) About three weeks ago now my car stopped on a bridge on the way back home from an out of town assignment. As of this past Wednesday, the warranty company has decided that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not going to cover the cost of the repairs, and this means a big chunk of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motivation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}