Yesterday, they called to say my car was ready. The original battery was dead and the alternator was fine. I went to pick up the car and they claimed to have found no damage from the towing. Nice. I paid for my oil change, done at the same time, and hopped into the car, started it, and saw the ABS idiot light on. You're not supposed to see that.

I marched back in and inquired as to how nobody might have noticed the idiot light and, perhaps, maybe there was some damage done after all by the towing. You'd think that, when they inspected the car for damage, that they'd inspect the freaking idiot lights, much less what the OBD computer might have to say. Yeesh. I'm now driving a loaner car while they sort it out. (And, even that was a challenge. My service advisor didn't have any loaners. I asked if any other advisors might have one. Sure 'nuff, we scared up a car for me. You'd think they would have a centralized pool of loaners rather than preallocating them to advisors, some of whom will need more than others.)

In other news, I found out that my warranty was somewhat non-standard. Apparently, my car was "bought" three months before I paid for it, yet I got it with all of ten miles on the odometer. I now understand this to be a standard dealer tactic for meeting factory sales quotas. The dealer "bought" it with their own money, but still hadn't sold it to anybody until I came along. When I got it, I effectively purchased a "dealer demo" with three months of the 3 year/36000 mile "complete coverage" burned, but with an extended bumper-to-bumper warranty going out to 4 years/50000 miles. None of this, not one word, was told to me when I bought the car, even though I think it's a reasonably good deal. It means I've now got until February '04 before I absolutely want a new car.

Did I mention that my next car will be something other than a BMW?