So those of you that do not know, 'Drew is now fully and legally mobile, having earned the grudging respect of the Mass. Registry of Motor Vehicles and being granted a license to drive. You also may not know that he is fully equipped with the new Drew-mobile, a 1998 KIA Sportage. All in all it is a pretty slick set-O-wheels, but being a used car, it has a few small issues that we need to address. One of those is that it has an ever so slight leak in the fuel tank. To call it a "leak" is giving it a bit too much credit, it is what some mechanics call a "weep", in that it does not drip, it just sort of gets slightly damp on the exterior of the tank and smells a bit of fuel. But being well a seasoned used car owner, I know that these sort of things only get bigger and then you have to deal with them. Chaz just wanted to crank up the ol' acetylene torch and weld it up, but Mrs A. stopped him. I'm not sure why. So with that option nixed, I scoured the web and ordered a new tank from a place on the west coast called, amazingly enough, Kiaparts.com. The nice lady there took my order and got the tank shipped out in a jiffy, via DHL shipping. Seems simple enough, but the adventure was just beginning. The odeysey begins on 9/22/2005. My package is picked up from the sender, it travels maybe 25 miles then vanishes in their "sort facility" for 11 days, before showing up again. And it only re-appeared after I called them to ask where my package was, 3 days after the "estimated delivery date" that THEY gave me. Sheesh. A woman from DHL named "Trinity"(!) called back to reassure me that my package was not lost, they were "tracking it". Mrs. A thought that it must have "entered the Matrix", and Trinity had to go get it for me. I was sort of expecting her to appear out of the earpiece of my telephone, holding my fuel tank, but NO! Anyhow, it then followed a most unlikely route from WA state to Mass, via Utah, Ohio, PA, RI and finally Stoneham, MA. Huh? Guess they missed that part in school about the shortest route between 2 points and all of that.
So today, after much waiting, the big yellow DHL truck pulls up in front of the house. A crowd gathers. Mrs A. suggests clapping when the driver comes to the door. The driver, a woman who most certainly was not Trinity (or if it was, she has certainly let hersef go), flings the back of the truck open and says, "was this thing used?"
"no" I reply, "why?"
"Well, it looks pretty beat up."
I look at the box. It is 6" larger on each side than the tank, crumpled and torn, the end is ripped off, and except for the fuel tank, it is empty. The driver says to me, "You ought to call the sender and tell them that they should put some packing stuff in the box to protect the tank!" Nope, no way is this Trinity, she thinks much more quickly on her feet. Cleverly, I answer that they likely did, but we can be pretty sure it fell out when DHL ripped the end off of the box, sometime during the 11 days it spent sitting 20 miles from where it started. That remark went right over her head, and she suggests that I tell them to ship it next day air next time. Right. OK.
"It's up to you, but if this were mine, I would refuse the shipment, and we'll send it back."
WOW, she is just FULL of helpful advice! As she seemed so clever and knowledgable, I opted to take her advice and refuse the delivery. I'm thinking, "I'm so sorry, I mistook you for a shipping company..."
So I still have no fuel tank. I call the lady at Kiaparts.com and say "Hi, my name is Al A., a while back I ordered..." She interrupts me and says "I remember, a fuel tank for a Sportage!" Pretty bad when I have called so many times that they recognize me by name.
A new tank is on the way.
It shipped via UPS...
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