I picked the wrong line.<\/p>\n
I went to Pep Boys to get my tires rotated and the front end aligned. You’re supposed to rotate every 5,000 miles, and I adhere religiously to that, since this car wears out tires long before the warranty expires, I want to make sure I dot every “i” and cross every “t” so that I’ll get a discount on the replacements. As for the alignment… I bought a lifetime one, most people don’t, figuring they won’t have their automobile that long, but I do. And why not get it done while the car is in the shop, it’s always off by a bit. As for buying the tires at Pep Boys, whenever I say this people go wild on me, tell me to go somewhere else.<\/p>\n
Now as a result of the internet, tires are essentially the same price everywhere. So it becomes about the service. I originally bought my tires at Globe, on La Cienega, a legendary shop, but it ended up taking all day, never mind not being close if I needed rotation, etc.<\/p>\n
So I ended up going to the Discount Tires right around the corner from my house in Santa Monica, I’d drop off the car and wait for the call that it was ready. And then Pep Boys bought Discount Tires (there are multiple chains named Discount Tires, this is the one in Southern California), and I stayed with them, because they honored the lifetime alignment! Now in reality, after a number of years, they wouldn’t honor it, and I had to buy it again, but I wasn’t going to protest that much, you have to pick your battles.<\/p>\n
Now of course I could buy my tires at Costco, a seamless experience, BUT THEY DON’T DO ALIGNMENT! Which might warrant barely a shrug from most people, but if you’ve been driving fifty-odd years you or your friends have experienced issues with alignment, wearing tires out, and I don’t want to risk it.<\/p>\n
Now of course, I could buy the tires at Costco and get them aligned at Pep Boys, but as I referenced, these tires are warranted at 40,000 miles, and if you get twenty, you’re doing well. These are Michelin Pilot Sports. If you’ve got a performance car, you want a performance tire, and I’m a Michelin man anyway (figuratively, not literally). And since they always give me credit at Pep Boys for the tires that didn’t reach 40,000, I keep buying my tires there.<\/p>\n
So I had it all planned out in my brain. I found a window of time within which I could do this. And I drove all the way to Pep Boys and…<\/p>\n
Turns out I needed an appointment.<\/p>\n
Who knew? This never used to be the case.<\/p>\n
This is great for the future, but right now… Turns out appointments are not hard to get, but I’ve got an hellacious schedule, I don’t know when I’ll be able to do it, I was frustrated, however…<\/p>\n
Now that I have a Costco credit card, I decided to get gas at the Costco station on the same lot.<\/p>\n
Yes, I have a Costco credit card. I couldn’t qualify for years. Even though my credit rating is 800. And after applying a number of times and wasting so much time in the process, I gave up. But back in August, I was at Costco and they had a kiosk, well, really just a table, with banners and other displays, trying to get you to sign up for a Costco credit card.<\/p>\n
And if you tried, you got a reward. A hat, a Stanley-style cup or a duffel bag.<\/p>\n
But that still wasn’t enough of an enticement. However, I had to go into the store to go to the bathroom and I ultimately got a flu shot, so I had to come back out to get a cart, and there was no one waiting at the table and I asked the girl, and she was a girl, how long this would take.<\/p>\n
She said a couple of minutes.<\/p>\n
I didn’t believe her, but I decided to take the risk.<\/p>\n
Now the good part was that just by scanning my Costco membership card most of the information filled itself out instantly. I still had to answer a few questions, and then I handed the iPad back to her, starting to think about my reward, but in a matter of seconds, she said YOU’RE APPROVED!<\/p>\n
I was stunned. What was different today?<\/p>\n
But I didn’t want to argue.<\/p>\n
And she wanted to give me this slip of paper so I could qualify for the discount that very day, but I didn’t want to waste any more time, it wouldn’t be that much money, and isn’t time money, or so they say? So I took my duffel bag, placed it in a cart and went into the store.<\/p>\n
The day after the card arrived in the mail, I filled out the form to lease my new iPhone via Klarna. It wouldn’t take my Amex, but it also wouldn’t take my Costco Visa, which really didn’t add up, I thought it was a glitch. So I went to AI, which of course told me Klarna takes Costco Visa, but after it continued not to, I went back to Google and found out that no, Klarna does not take the Costco credit card. So if you’re depending upon AI…don’t.<\/p>\n
I ended up using my debit card for Klarna, since it’s associated with Visa, even though I don’t like to use my debit card for stuff like this, since there are fewer protections, but you can’t win them all.<\/p>\n
Now when the Costco credit card finally arrived, I found out that not only did I get 5% back on gas at Costco stations, but 4% at other stations. And there were paybacks for other purchases, like at restaurants, but what is better, Amex points or a 1-3% discount? I don’t know, I figure I’ll just go with the Amex points, to keep it simple, I don’t want to do the math every time I buy gas or go shopping elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Now if you’re living in California, you know that gas prices are through the roof. I’m not complaining, it’s a privilege of living here, I’m down with clean air, which is why it’s so expensive, there is extra refining involved (yes, as well as a lot of taxes, save your replies). And my car needs premium gas. This ain’t one of those automobiles where you can use regular and the computer will adjust and you’ll just get a bit less performance, they make a big point in the manual if you don’t use premium, you’ll cook the engine.<\/p>\n
In addition, my car has a small tank and gets horrible gas mileage (but like I told you previously, it’s paid for). If I’m in town, stop and go traffic, I’ll get in the 17s. If there’s a decent amount of freeway driving and cruising… Let’s just say I get 20, occasionally more, but not by much. Your jaw might drop, but this is the price you pay for performance.<\/p>\n
And I pay the price.<\/p>\n
And I’ve learned not to nickel and dime, because there was a robbery in the middle of the day when my friend was filling up at the Shell station on La Cienega. I used to stop in an even worse neighborhood, but not anymore. And especially since I tend to buy gas late at night…I do so in safe neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
But I don’t want to be ripped-off.<\/p>\n
And driving back from one of my umpteen eye appointments yesterday, I saw the price per gallon at the 76 station was $6.95. But that’s an expensive station. And then my regular Chevron, which is a bit cheaper, last night it was $6.99! I’ll pay the freight, but really, psychologically, I didn’t want to cough up seven bucks a gallon.<\/p>\n
But now I was by Costco! With a cheaper price and % back.<\/p>\n
So I moseyed my car over near the pumps and…<\/p>\n
It was the longest line I’d ever seen.<\/p>\n
Now let me see, how many pumps are there? At least twenty, they expanded it only a couple of years back.<\/p>\n
But for the first time ever, you couldn’t even get in one of the lines in the main area, no, the line snaked all the way into the parking lot. But I decided to wait, as an experiment, to see how long it actually took.<\/p>\n
And I’m thinking how everybody is trying to save money. I did see a couple of German cars, but in truth, if you can afford a truly expensive automobile you don’t want to waste your time to save so little money.<\/p>\n
And the line is barely moving and then…<\/p>\n
Everybody is waiting to get into the first few lines, no one is going to the lines further down!<\/p>\n
So thinking that I’m brilliant, when I finally can, I squeeze my car past those trying to get into the closest lines, and I go to a marginally shorter line further down. I figure this is like parking ramps\/structures, makes me crazy how people are always slowing down, trying to get a spot on a lower floor. Especially today, when there are signs telling you how many spots are available above. And they want to make use of every available space in these structures, so there’s no room to pass the person waiting for the shopper walking towards their car… So you wait and wait and finally the person in front of you pulls into the space after the shopper leaves, and you’re so frustrated you mash the gas pedal like you’re at Le Mans and…<\/p>\n
I’m feeling satisfied.<\/p>\n
But I am not moving.<\/p>\n
I accept this, but then time is going by, what is going on?<\/p>\n
And then I figure out the system…<\/p>\n
At every row of pumps, there is an electronic sign. When I first looked, they were all covered with red X’s. I couldn’t figure out what they meant, did not think they were significant, but then one of the X’s would occasionally turn green, and that’s when I realized these X’s represented available pumps. And the reason everybody was going into the initial lines, the ones I scooted past, feeling victorious, was because those had three pumps a side, and where I was there were only two!<\/p>\n
Everything is a learning curve, and then you die.<\/p>\n
And I can see way up front, this guy in a black pickup truck, filling his tank, he never seems to move, I mean how much gas is he buying…I guess it’s worth it for him to buy fuel at Costco.<\/p>\n
And it’s in the high eighties, so you’ve got to have the engine running with the A\/C…in the old days, this would make your car overheat, but mine was fine, however I did burn gas.<\/p>\n
Took me over fifteen minutes to reach the pump. But I was doing an experiment, I tried to rationalize it.<\/p>\n
And when I got out of the car and stood in front of the pump, I suddenly felt guilty. I didn’t already have my credit card out of my wallet, I was wasting people’s time, I’d be frustrated if I was behind me.<\/p>\n
But I insert my Costco credit card, using it for they very first time, and it’s not instant, but it is seamless, and then I go to push the button for premium and I see it’s $6.29 per gallon.<\/p>\n
Okay, and then I fill up with 10.28 gallons. So I saved seventy cents per gallon over the normal brand name station (and you can’t risk an independent, odds are they’re not selling Top Tier gas). Okay, that’s seven dollars. But I get an extra 5%. So that’s another three dollars. So I spent the better part of twenty minutes to save ten dollars?<\/p>\n
I won’t quite say I felt like an idiot, but I wouldn’t do it again.<\/p>\n
Then again, if I’d picked the right line…<\/p>\n
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