Seriously, Lansing?

We decided to stay the night in Lansing on the way home so we wouldn’t have to drive the full 6 hours at night…plus we’d get a chance to stop and visit with Beth and Jim and shop at our favorite Horrocks in the morning.

And then we noticed this when we were heading to dinner. Ughhhh. It wasn’t like that when we left Reese… So in the half hour we were in the hotel room, this happened in the hotel parking lot.

AND THEN! I realized that someone stole my unicorn magnet, too! Like, seriously?!

Christmas lights on my car!

I saw these on Amazon and had to try them. They are reflective — which is cool but obviously I can never see them because I’m in the car. And there was only enough to do this on both sides (unless I wanted to add more “string” between each bulb). Also, can’t wait to see if they stay on as the magnets aren’t that strong. But it’s cute, right?

Holy crap I’m 49!

Yes you bet your ass I’m wearing my crown!!

No fun errands or escapades… We were on our way to Michigan for my cousin’s wedding (technically like second cousins – whatever my cousin’s kids would be to me!).

Birthday dinner at a super yummy Chinese restaurant in Saginaw.

And a birthday margarita, because of course. The waitress guessed it was my birthday – telling me her mom wears a crown, too. Hey, it got me $1 off. LOL

And then we realized we wanted water for the hotel room so stopped here.

Tom’s new ride!

He’s waited 20+ years to have a truck and he certainly went all out! (I’ll just be over here choking on the monthly payments.) He put a deposit down in February just to get on a waiting list and it finally came in! Happy 50th birthday—you get no more presents for a few years!!

Goodbye!
Hello!

P.S. I guess I should tell you what it is (if you’re not a car person and have no idea)—a Toyota Tundra TRD Pro.

And we’re off to the UP!

It’s time to pick up the kids from grandparent camp!

First, my traveling face. LOL

We had to drop Olive off at the sitter’s (we’ll take her next year once she’s more potty trained). She loves car rides!

Stopping for lunch at a gas station! They opened the side of the RV and we had a quick non-fast-food lunch!

The last 15 miles looks like this.

We’ve arrived!

And Lin had bought Thimbleberry margaritas so that happened first thing!

We’re Illinois official!

It’s official! We are full-time 100% residents of Illinois! We own a house, transferred our plates and registrations yesterday, and got new (temp) licenses and voter registration cards today! (We haven’t had to do this the last 20 years in all the states we’ve lived in since being military lets you keep your home of record for those things.) We waited this long because Tom needed his VA disability confirmation and they have been a shitshow since the beginning.

The best news, though? We were in and out of the DMV in 30 minutes! And we didn’t have to take the written test!

Tom’s looking at trucks!

David recently got a new truck and the boys are just totally geeking out over it. It has totally refreshed Tom’s want of a truck and he’s been researching so when he’s ready, he’ll know what he wants.

Well we were out today and drove by a dealership so I made him stop. And I had to take a picture of me next to the bed to show just how ridiculous the size of this thing is.

This thing is so high it has running boards that pop down when you unlock it—except the battery was dead so it didn’t work so I had to practically pole vault to get in. Still being in recovery I probably shouldn’t even have tried but I thought I could do it easy.

Ha ha. Ha ha ha. What a joke. I barely pulled myself up and crashed into the seat. I just can’t imagine having a vehicle that high and hard to get into (I know it would have running boards but still—yikes). So time will tell.

I was excited for a hot second.

Anna and I went shopping in Copper Harbor and while she ran back into a store I looked down and saw my odometer said 9999.9 and I was suuuuuper excited that I caught it! So I was taking pics of it so I’d remember where we were… And then realized that that was the TRIP odometer and the actual odometer was already past 10,000. Lordy.

More Hyundai fun! Are you ready? 😡

We bought the car 12/7. Two weeks post sale they hadn’t yet sent the registration transfer info to Michigan so they did it the next day (12/24). I called today to check on things and Michigan tells me we owe another $830 because the taxes were figured wrong!! So finance screwed that up.

They actually took out Illinois taxes (7%) vs. Michigan taxes (6%) so I figured fine, we’ll just register it in Illinois. Easy, right? No! Since Michigan is a reciprocal state they’ve already electronically deposited the funds… I imagine it will be a nightmare getting the money back from Michigan.

After talking more with the title lady, apparently she has to call the state of Michigan tomorrow to see what can be done because Finance says the deal is done (already funded) and would have to be fully redone from scratch?! 😳 That as far as they’re concerned the car is registered in Michigan… (Yes, even though they screwed it up?!) FFS.

So our temp Illinois tag expires today and we have no legal tag or registration–and they can’t extend it or give us another one. So they dragged their feet on things (Michigan is partly to blame, too) and we’re left hanging.

Since the title lady I’m talking to is nice I’ll wait for her call. Then it’s up the food chain at Hyundai because this is just insane.

Oh, and we go in Thursday for our actual car issue. I’m assuming that will be a nightmare, too.

Doctor Who is back in place!

So one thing I didn’t think about when getting a new car…my beloved Doctor Who decals!!

Since we now have a Cricut I thought I’d just make them, right? Well that turned into an hour plus Google project because I couldn’t find the exact graphics—free or paid! So then I decided to just go buy them again…except the online store is long gone. Not on eBay, Etsy, Amazon…or anywhere else either. So back to Cricut it was.

So I present to you the finished project. I actually upgraded my Doctor and Weeping Angel a bit and I like them more. I also had to rethink placement due to the wiper blade.

This will make my car MUCH easier to spot in a parking lot now!!

What a disappointing start to something that should have been much more happy.

OH FFS. So if you’ve been following along…we dropped off my new car to be fixed because they screwed something up between our test drive and when we drove off the lot a few hours later. It had 40ish miles on it when I dropped it off. Tom just picked it up (because I refused to go) and it now has 110 miles on it. 😳😳😳

When Tom questioned it, they were all 🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️ well we had to fix it. Yes, obviously, but will they at least fill the gas tank? Nope. (Oh, and did I mention the loaner they gave me was on E when I got it.)

And they had to replace not only the tire but the rim as well. Seriously?! The invoice lists “parking lot damage” and they replaced the “WHEEL ASSY-ALUMINUM” and “STEM-TPMS.”

I posted on Facebook and a few people said to return it. Well I know that sounds easy but it’s definitely not—it’s not a lemon and they are taking care of the issue—they just aren’t handling it like we hoped they would. A simple We screwed up installing X. We are so sorry and we’re fixing it would have gone a looong way. But to claim a flat spot on a nitrogen tire on a brand new car that was only on the lot a week (at most)? And drove fine 3 hours earlier? 🤔 That’s really fishy.

Also, when questioned about the mileage, the service guy said “It said 105 when I saw it this morning.” And the mileage in/out on the invoice says 105/105 which is obviously from today when they input the info when they finally fixed it—not from the time I brought it in two days ago. How does the service guy not know they put 70 miles on it while they diagnosed it?

Again… Really? That’s the story you’re sticking with?!

And also!!! While Tom was dealing with this, I was trying to get our account set up online. While we were doing the sale, our sales guy asked what I wanted our PIN to be—I assumed it was for our account or something in the Hyundai app (no, he never told us or showed us anything and to be honest I forgot). So I try to login and… nope, no place for a PIN. And I never set up the account so I don’t know what the password is. Did he do it? Did he create some generic password like Hudson? No idea. So I had to reset the password. Annoying but fine, whatever. But then I tried to use the app and it needed a PIN…and my PIN (the one I gave him) didn’t work. And I couldn’t change it because I didn’t have the answer to my secret question…because I never created one. And I couldn’t add or change it because I didn’t know it. See the catch-22 here? So I had to call Hyundai and the rep couldn’t even get it working and it took three tries to reset everything. So what on Earth did the sales guy even do? I’m guessing nothing? But who knows because he never told us.

And did I mention that they also forgot to give us our second key when we left?! When we discovered it we called and our sales guy was adamant that he gave it to us. Turns out it was still in his pocket. We also realized when we got home that we didn’t have the any of the paperwork and so we asked about that and they swore they gave it to us. We absolutely positively did not have it so they made copies of everything for us and then later we discovered it in the glove box where they obviously put it and didn’t tell us.

I am just so damn frustrated with everything. So you know the surveys we get after a sale that they want 10s on? Not happening. Too many stupid little things and too many big things. They are going to get an earful.

STILL NO CAR.

You won’t believe this. They told me they had to order a new tire because…there was a flat spot on one of the tires. I said that’s odd, no? New car and all. Service guy said “It depends how long they sit on the lot, etc.” So you mean to tell me this brand new car that just arrived on your lot late last week…has a flat spot from possibly sitting too long? Really? That’s the story you’re sticking with?

I would more believe I picked up a nail in the parking lot or on the drive home than that load of BS. (But if that was the case, I’m sure they’d tell me it was my fault.)

So, in trying to be positive, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt that something abnormal happened and this is an odd case. The negative side of me says they screwed something up and just don’t want to admit it so they are just fixing it under the guise of a bad tire.

And I don’t like it.

Oh and I forgot to tell you.

One of the other reasons I had to come back was because we discovered they took my Doctor Who license plate frame off…and didn’t give it to me! But you can believe they put their own advertising frame on it. So it’s not like they just added theirs—they had to remove MY frame to get to the plate, move my TRAVCTY plate to the new car, and then…throw my personal property away? Toss it aside? Who knows what with it, but I didn’t get it back. So while I was waiting, I talked to my sales guy and he came back with it in about 10 minutes saying I was lucky because they were just getting ready to take the car for detailing.

So wait, what? I was lucky? No, I think you were lucky that you didn’t lose my personal property because you either A) didn’t care or B) weren’t paying attention. I mean it was only a $10 frame but it’s the principle of the thing.

And then! I asked the sales guy about the $50 gift card we were supposed to get…because we didn’t get anything in our paperwork. And he tells me—while buzzing through the service waiting area, pretty much without stopping—that he just needs the code and to go to their website and look up the inventory (?) and then find and send him the code…and then he was off.

Um…okay…what?! I’m guessing since the deal was done it felt like he didn’t really have any time for me so that was nice. But I had time to kill so I tried looking for a code on their site and couldn’t find anything after like 10 minutes. So when I managed to grab another sales guy I asked and…are you ready? IT WAS A GIFT CARD FOR TEST DRIVING A HYUNDAI. Soooo not really any extra special bonus for us like we were led to believe. It was something anyone could have gotten FOR FREE yet the manager offered it to us during negotiation as a bonus. Yes, technically it was a bonus since we didn’t know about it…but sorry, that just feels slimy.

So I was not really in a good place when they told me they had to keep my car. I was told it should be done later that evening or tomorrow morning. I said I’d just come back in the morning.