Jinxed

Have you ever felt like you were jinxed? Well, maybe not so much you but something that you owned... I knew a girl once who bought a cute little car and loved it at first. And then all of the incidents started... someone broke into it, someone hit it while parked, someone hit it while she was driving, etc. None of it seemed like it was her fault really. Stuff just kept happening to it until she gave up and got rid of it.

I was always a little skeptical of her theory that the car was jinxed. Well that is until now. I'm convinced my car is jinxed. Bad stuff has been happening to it since the very beginning and I'm just about over it!

It all started out good. About 3 or so years ago the hubby and I decided I needed a more practical car. He was traveling a lot and I was often having to haul around the teenager and her friends. This is not easy to do in a Miata and I was always nervous driving around his behemoth of a truck because it was his baby.

We started looking around and I was leaning towards a Volvo C70 because if I was going to have to drive a practical car, it was at least going to be a convertible. Then the gas prices shot up to $3/gallon and we didn't know if it would stop going up... Suddenly going from a car that got around 30 miles per gallon to one that only got 21 seemed like a bad move. So we were back to the drawing board looking for practical cars with better fuel economy.

I had never been a fan of the Mini in the past but it fit all of my qualifications. Backseat... check, fuel efficient... check, fun to drive... check, convertible option... check! So we went to the Mini dealership nearby and test drove a few cars. Here is where things really started going wrong. I didn't realize it at the time but looking back it's obvious. While I was drooling over the Mini Cooper convertible, my husband kept dragging me back to the Clubman (no convertible).

Him: Look honey... there is so much space! It's so much more practical!!
Me: But there is no convertible.
Him: But we will be able to travel in it and save money on gas.
Me: But there is no convertible!!

Then there was the color. I was naturally attracted to the red and black Clubman but someone (I think it was the salesman) talked me into the blue and silver one. Certainly not an ugly car but not what I was attracted to. Basically this purchase wasn't right from the beginning but I didn't think much about it and was happy as I documented here.

I have a new car and I'm pretty happy... and then it happened. A rock hit my windshield hard and the first rock chip occurred on my windshield. It was only about month into my ownership. A week later the second one happened. Only about a month later another one happened but I didn't know about it because it was behind my rear view mirror. As I was considering getting the first two fixed, a long crack developed. I priced a new one and decided that at $600, I would live with rock chips and cracks in the windshield. There have been two more develop since then.

After several of the rock chips happened, I was driving home from meeting my friends after work. The car in front of me drove over a large piece of tire rubber and it flew up. It was the kind of big object flying at your head that makes you instinctively duck and briefly close your eyes to wait for impact. It smashed into the windshield on the passenger side with a loud smack. I opened my eyes back up fully expecting the windshield to be smashed in. It wasn't... WHEW!!! I looked to my passenger side mirror change lanes... where's my mirror??? It was GONE. Not hanging on for dear life but completely missing! I documented my experience with Mini service center in this post.


OK, so we got all of that craziness over with. Surely I've been through enough, right? Ummmmm.... spoke too soon apparently. I am accustomed to cars with trunks. I put my groceries in the trunk and all is well. This car doesn't have a trunk. It has a little space behind the backseats instead. Most of the time this little space is sufficient but sometimes I need more room so I drop the seats down and I have a massive area to carry groceries. Sounds great, right?

It is great right up until you have to make a sudden stop and all of your groceries come flying and hit the back of the front seats. It had happened several times and I had become used to this. So when it happened after a big grocery trip, I just did what I always do and picked everything up from the backseat floorboard and take it in the house. Or so I thought... Do you know how bad chicken smells when left out of the refrigerator for 3 days? I do! Oh and I also know that it takes well over a month for that smell to fade away.

It happened again with laundry detergent that flew to the front. Not a bad smell at all but when the container breaks open and spills in the other floorboard, it's not good. Do you know how hard it is to get laundry detergent out of your car's floorboard? I do (or actually my hubby does)!

So far I've had really bad chicken smell then good but overwhelming laundry detergent smell in that car. We have covered inappropriate smells in the car, right? Nope! Just a few weeks ago some sort of awful dead animal smell would occur when the air conditioner was turned on. It's Houston in July/August. Turning on the air conditioner is not optional. It's a requirement for survival. Great! Another new and exciting smell!! The smell seems to be gone now so the animal that decided to crawl into my air conditioner and die has taken it's little zombie butt somewhere else thankfully.

Adding to all of the above... the rear door inside panel falls off randomly (the dealership doesn't see any reason why), the cigarette lighter tries to disassemble itself when I remove my phone charger, the metal piece on my parking brake falls off when I engage the brake, and one tire wears funny (the dealership also can't find a cause for this other than the tire is being run low which I recently took the car in to have them check and they can't find anything wrong with the tire either).

My car is jinxed!

Oh how I hate Mini of the Woodlands!

I have commented previously on my dislike for the Mini service department. Now I have a beef with their salespeople. When I bought the car I had no intention of getting any of their special or extended warranties.

Somehow we were talked into one that covered the tires and rims. The nearly exact quote from the salesman was that you could slash your own tires and they would replace them no questions asked. Sounds pretty darn good! I'm really not so gullible as to believe that I could really slash my own tires and have them cover that. What I did take that to mean was that if I accidentally clipped a curb that they would replace the tire. This was important since I seem to have a knack for destroying the passenger rear tire often.

Lo and behold! I managed to clip the passenger side rear tire only about 6 months into owning the car. My husband had been on my case to take the car by to have that tire replaced and to get the 13000 mile oil change (my first because they said it could make it that long!) I had been putting this off mainly because I kept forgetting so the hubby kindly took the car to have all of the work done.

This visit did not go well at all. I should back up a little and tell you that the hubby does not trust letting a car go 13000 miles without an oil change so he has changed it a few times over the last year. So when he asked to get the tire and rim replaced and the oil changed, they refused to do both.

The tire and rim, they said, had been damaged by a curb. REALLY Mini of the Woodland? REALLY? I could have told you that but you MIGHT want to talk to your salespeople who are telling people that this $800 warranty will cover that and tire slashings!

Then they refused to do the oil change even though I have gone over 13000 miles over the last year. Why? Because the car says it's not time yet! THE CAR TOLD THEM! Apparently my husband changing my oil in between has negated them changing the oil so I have to wait even longer to get a real oil change (not that they hubby can't do it... just that he hasn't been able to find one of the filters in the car so that he can change it.)

Now my husband really hates all things MINI. He has threatened to sell my car if I don't. Thankfully the car is solely in my name and I don't believe he can get rid of it without my consent.

Oh did I mentioned that I have sent several emails to MINI USA about our dealership and not once have gotten a response? Can these car companies really afford to ignore customer complaints? I for one will never buy another MINI! So on the year anniversary of buying my MINI, I'm looking at new cars. We shall see how that turns out! I will keep you posted!