Car Toys.
So there I am, looking to buy an MP3/CD player for my Saturn. As I enter the store, I notice a sign on the door advertising CD players for $50. I walk inside and all the drones are busy selling cell phones (to people who are presumably going to yap on the phone while driving). Long story short, there are no $50 CD players, but they happily try to sell me an $80 CD player. I choose a $200 MP3 player instead, marked down from $300.
Flash forward a couple months. I’ve now sold the Saturn and I want to put the MP3 player in my new Corolla. I go back to Car Toys and ask if they have an installation kit for a 2003 Corolla. The drone goes into the back room and comes back with nothing. He doesn’t know when they will have the kit or whether it even exists. He tells me to come back next week and talk to Ted, who may possibly be able to tell me when Car Toys might have the part. “If I bought a CD player today, would you tell me it can’t be installed?” I ask. The answer is yes.
So I go across the street to Aspen Sound. The guy behind the desk looks in his stock and tells me he doesn’t have the kit. He brings an installer outside to look at my car, and the installer tells me he can custom-make a fiberglass housing for $200. That was more than I wanted to spend, so we went back inside and the guy calls the kit manufacturer, finds the part number (it does exist!), then calls another store down the street, and they have one in stock! I buy a wire harness from him and an installation kit from Circuit City.
Here’s the best part. Flash forward another month. The motorized face on my MP3 player has jammed shut and I can’t access the controls or remove the disc. I take it back to Car Toys, where I’m told that it’s no longer under warranty, but they’ll remove it for free and send it back to the manufacturer. I walk around the block while they’re taking it out, and when I get back, I see my MP3 player on the counter. With the face open. “Is that mine?” I ask. “Yes,” she says, “but there’s still something wrong with it. We’re going to send it back, you should have it again within three weeks.”
So I give her my name and phone number, taking care to let her know that the phone number they have on file was disconnected, and I don’t live at that place anymore anyway. I give her my mobile number and watch her write it down next to my name.
Flash forward three weeks. I haven’t heard back from Car Toys so I go back to the store. I give the first drone my name, tell him I brought an Aiwa stereo in three weeks ago, and ask if it’s ready yet. He looks in the back and says, “There’s an Aiwa CD player back there, but it’s not yours.” Does he know when it will be ready? No. Disappointed, I walk toward the door, when someone else calls me: “Hey! Did you bring in the Aiwa stereo?”
It was the very same woman I spoke to when I brought in the stereo. “There you are. I’ve been trying to call you for three weeks.” Funny, I thought it’d take at least one of those weeks for the stereo to go to Japan, get fixed, and come back. I ask what number she was calling, and she reads off the exact same number I told her not to call. Grr. So why was my stereo sitting in the back room for three weeks, apparently without my name on it? “There was nothing wrong with it. It must have been installed some way that it was pinching the face.”
Sounds fishy, I mean it was working for a month before the face jammed, but OK. I take it home and put it back in my car, making sure to follow the directions exactly. A week later it jams again, I look the model up online, and I discover that a jammed face is the most common complaint about this model. Wonder why it was marked down a hundred bucks, hmm?
