Thursday afternoon, my daughter and I were leaving my work/her school (same place). I put my key into the door lock of my 2002 Toyota Corolla and turned twice. It opened my door, but not the rest of the doors. I knew then that my battery was dead and I wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.
Apparently I left my lights on.
I found Custodian Ken, whom I get along with well and asked him to jump my car. So he did. Well, it wanted to start…It turned over for several seconds. The daytime running lights came on, but then it just stopped.
My next step was to call AAA. They said a tow truck will be there in an hour or less. Ha! I waited and waited. An hour went by so I called them. They talked to the towing company…All Points is what it’s called. And were told they were very busy and had a lot of calls. I called AAA several times to check because it was getting late and I really didn’t want to be in the parking lot of my school for hours. in the dark.
Finally AAA switched me over to another towing company who came in a reasonable amount of time. (I was almost in tears.)My daughter and I had waited about 3 hours for them. I was suspicious. It’s still summer. People aren’t driving into snowbanks,or sliding into ditches on a regular basis.
The guy towed me to the Toyota Dealer. The driver told me that the original company–All Points doesn’t like to go way out to where my school is…about 20 minutes from town. His company comes from Truckee, California and he was in Carson City when he got the call. Much farther away.
I got to the Toyota Dealer–it was 8:30…left my keys in the night box and worried that this repair was going to be extremely costly.
Toyota didn’t look at my car until about 2:00 pm on Friday. Their diagnosis? Apparently Custodian Ken had hooked the wires up backwards when he jumped the car. It blew out some fuses. They were replaced and the car runs fine. ($130.00 later)
I 've learned my lesson. I need to watch when someone jumps my car.
My husband got me this fancy little gaget that jumps my car for me. It weighs a little over 5 lbs. It has to be charged after 30 uses.
He tends to leave the trunk of my car ajar, draining the battery. He got it so, I’m not stranded, when he’s at work.
$130 bucks for some blown fuses? Sorry to add insult to injury, but those things are like 99 cents for a pack of them.