Did Stoney Trail Mazda Scam Me?

I don’t know much about cars. I’m one of those guys that, if something goes wrong with my car, I’ll call the AMA and let someone smarter than me figure it out. The most complicated thing I’ve done on my own cars is replace a headlight. So there’s the context for this story.

On Friday I took my 2003 Mazda Protege 5 to Stoney Trail Mazda in Calgary for an oil change, and after 30 minutes a woman came back to tell me that they were suggesting the following procedures for my car beyond the oil change:

  • Replace air filter ($30)
  • Injector flush ($170)
  • Power steering flush ($90)
  • Replace broken fog light ($270)

I was expecting to walk out spending under $50, and they were suggesting I spend more than 10 times that much! I felt a bit overwhelmed at first, but I started asking questions because it seemed curious that so much needed to happen at once. The broken fog light, she said, wasn’t just a simple blown bulb – the entire assembly needed to be replaced. The car has 61K KM on it, and had never had any of the fluids replaced/flushed beyond the oil and wind shield wiper fluid, but did that mean that both the power steering and injector systems needed to be flushed? I ended up saying yes to the air filter and power steering flush, but said I’d decide later on the injetor flush and fog light.

After she walked away I started searching online for articles related to the topic, and found a good one on injector flushing. I also found a bunch of forum threads where people were discussing the same topic, and the general consensus I found was that unless there’s a suspected problem with the injectors, there’s no need to flush them. It seems that telling customers that their vehicle’s injectors need flushing is an easy money-maker for the auto shop. I’m glad I said no to that. As for the power steering flush, that seems to be more of a mixed bag – some people say it’s good to have it changed every five years or so – which means my car is due – but in general unless you’re having problems with your power steering, the fluids don’t need to be touched. As someone who does computer consulting, it looks like most fluid flushing is right up there with me telling someone the SATA ports on their computer need defragmenting, or their WiFi signal needs cleaning because it’s dirty.

Here’s what ticks me off about this: I took my Mazda back to a Mazda dealership rather than taking it to Mr. Lube or another quick-change shop because I wanted, and expected, by-the-book Mazda maintenance. Meaning that unless Mazda themselves recommended a certain procedure in the owners manual, the Mazda dealership wouldn’t recommend anything different. When I went up to pay for the procedures, I told the woman at the desk I wasn’t sure I’d ever come back to this dealership again for servicing. I wasn’t rude or angry when I said it. She asked me why, and I explained that after some research I didn’t believe that they were giving me sound advice about what really needed to be done on my car. She replied that merely relays what the technicians tell her.

The kicker? When I drove home and pulled into the garage I turned all my lights off and on, including the fog lights, and they all work just fine. I find it hard to believe that Stoney Trail Mazda would be so bold as to tell a customer a light isn’t working if it is, but on the other hand I’m baffled as to why they thought it wasn’t working.

So, any car experts out there care to weigh in on this?

The Sweet Ride We Rented Last Week: 2010 Mustang

Mustang-2010-red-convertible

I was in British Columbia last week, more specifically in Tofino, Comox, and Nanimo. We flew into Comox to travel to Tofino for the wedding of Ashely’s sister Chelsea. We had rented a car to drive from the Comox airport to Tofino, a drive of about four hours or so – and I’d heard the last led of the journey had some pretty twisty roads. We’d had a Ford Taurus lined up for rental, but when the Budget representative asked me if I wanted to upgrade to a 2010 Mustang convertible for $25 a day, it was hard to say no. Back in my early 20’s the Mustang was my “dream car” and I’d made a goal for myself of buying one by the time I was 25. That didn’t quite work out, so renting one for this trip seemed like the next-best thing. What a fun car to drive! Oodles of power, and it handled really nicely on the roads. Definitely a car I’d rent again!

Swoopo: It’s Like eBay Designed by Satan

“Imagine for a second that you set out to come up with an online shopping site that would take advantage of everything we’ve come to know about consumer behavior to separate people from their money in as efficient a way as possible. What would you do? Well, you’d probably try to lure buyers with bargain prices. You’d pit them against one another in an auction. You’d ask them to make snap decisions without taking much time to figure out just how much money they’re spending. On top of that, you’d ask them for only very small amounts of money at any one time, letting payments of a few cents build up to hundreds of dollars. Still trying to figure out how you’d put all that together? You can relax. Someone’s already beaten you to it: the folks at Swoopo. It’s an online auction site that fiendishly plays on every irrational impulse buyers have to draw them into what might be the crack cocaine of online shopping sites.”

That’s a quote from an article on MSN Money, and it’s the best article I’ve seen yet on Swoopo. Despite my earlier success with Swoopo, and a successful cheap acquisition of a 16 GB SD card, like any gambler I rolled the dice and lost: I was bidding on a set of pots and pans, and after using 18 bids I didn’t win, so like a degenerate gambler I bought another bid pack for $27 and blew ALL of them and still lost. The most idiotic part? I kept one bid, decided to bid on something else, and when I checked the pots and pans auction, it had ended – exactly one bid after the person who outbid me. So if I had used that last bid, I might have one – or it might have gone on for another hour. Swoopo is just too problematic – avoid it.

Do You Have the “Brain Faster Than Eyes” Problem Too?

brain-faster-than-eyesite

When I first looked at that sign, I thought it said “Ecoli”, which is of course a horrible name for a store. I find that this happens to be fairly often – I’ll glance at a sign and before my eyes can finish reading the letters, my brain flashes an interpretation into existence…and it’s often wrong, with comical results. Does this happen to anyone else?

The Desk of a Geek, The Life of a Geek

july21st-2009-workspace

The Coolest DVD Case Design Ever

watchman-best-buy-special-edition-boxed-set-rorshach-mask

This is what the case for the Watchmen movie looks like if you get the special edition from Best Buy. Sweet eh?

Watchmen Cartoon Spoof

лаптоп

Watchmen comes out on DVD today, so to celebrate the release of this amazing movie, I thought I’d embed this very hilarious spoof video that someone created. If you haven’t seen Watchmen yet, don’t worry, it’s nothing like this cartoon. 😉

Misty Coastline

misty-coastline

Taken in Hilo, Hawaii, November 2006.

Some Thoughts on Facebook and Twitter

I’m a member of a group called Mobius – it’s an invite-only conference that Microsoft holds once or twice a year, and it focuses on mobility. There’s a private mailing list for Mobius, and it’s always full of interesting discussions. Yesterday there was a discussion about Google Wave and it spilled over into talking about Facebook and Twitter. One of the people mentioned the idea that as long as people use social networking in a professional manner, they’re good things. That triggered something I’ve been pondering for a while now, so I thought I’d share here what I wrote on the list.

“Ah, but there’s the catch! There’s no consensus on how tools like Facebook and Twitter are used – it’s like email, how do you decide the “right” way to use it?

You mention professional purposes, but I’m of the exact opposite viewpoint. Facebook for me was great in the beginning because my friends on there were really my friends. Then Facebook got really popular, and suddenly business aquiantences wanted to be added as “friends”, PR people I deal with wanted to be added as “friends”, and visitors from my sites wanted to be my “friends”. It completely changed the dynamic, and even the meaning of the word “friend” in an online sense. Sites like LinkedIn are social networking for businessses, yet most people seem to prefer to use Facebook for that because it has such momentum.

Then there’s the whole issue of person vs. site. It’s not my place to tell peole how to use technology, but when people on my “friend” list started to import their RSS feeds from their technology sites, I un-friend them. Maybe I’m weird, but if I’m friends with someone on Facebook, or following them on Twitter, I want to see what’s going on with them as a PERSON. If I wanted to know what’s going on with their Web sites, I’d open up my RSS reader. Mixing the two just makes a bit of a mess…

Twitter is a whole different ballgame – but it has the same type of problem when you want to follow a person and instead get a news feed from their site. I created Twitter accounts for each of my sites that I feed an RSS feed to, then I have my own personal Twitter account. Twitter for me is really useful and interesting – I was initially very much against it, having seen a lot of what I’d call “Tweetbuse” (haha!) where people would tweet everything they were doing. “Eating dinner”. “Going to the bathroom” (I kid you not, I saw that once). Thankfully, you can easily unfollow people like that.

One thing I really like about Twitter is how I get connected to opinions from people all over the place – I posted about trying to watch the movie “Day Watch” and only getting through 25 minutes of it, and within a few hours I had four strangers sending me messages telling me that the books were much better, and I should check them out. That’s really valuable to me – and I get a lot of interesting feedback about technology as well.”

OutsourcingRoom.com Stole Customer Data From Elance?

One of the reasons I use unique email aliases for my jasondunn.com email is that it enables me to control and track who’s using my email address, who’s sharing it, etc. Once I start getting spam to a certain alias, I block it. It’s not a perfect system; there are still people who take my “real” personal email address and share it with online services (greeting cards, etc.) and people who have virus/spyware problems on their PCs, so I still get spammed now and then. But I get perhaps 3-5 per day, so it’s easy to manage.

I was surprised then when I received an email from a site called “Oroom” and it was addresses to my unique Elance email address. Here’s what I sent to Elance:

“I use unique email aliases, and for Elance the email address on file is *******. Imagine my surprise when I received an unsolicited email message from Oroom, promoting a new service/site. I didn’t give Elance permission to share or sell my email address to any other companies. Please explain how this happened.”

And here is their response:

Dear Jason,
Thanks for contacting us.
In the last day or so, we’ve learned that OutsourcingRoom.com and its parent company CyberBionic Systematics has illegally obtained and posted information about Elance members and sent out unwanted solicitation emails. We have confirmed that no financial information such as credit cards, tax id numbers, or other financial records were compromised. The stolen data was limited to name, city, state, phone number, and email address.
Elance treats the security and privacy of our community members with the utmost seriousness. We have already mobilized an international team to investigate and respond to this issue and have demanded legally that they cease and desist. We have taken immediate steps to remedy the cause of the security breach, and have secured all areas that were discovered to be vulnerable. We are also in contact with the parent company and are pursuing all avenues available to us to have the data removed and destroyed.
Elance has made demands on OutsourcingRoom.com and its overseas hosting services. We have filed an international criminal complaint. And we are contacting the law enforcement officials in the relevant countries presently.
We continue to take this issue very seriously and will update you when we have more relevant details to share. We extend our sincere apologies for any inconvenience or disruption that this has caused anyone. If you have a specific question, please contact Elance by email at [email protected], and we will attempt to answer with whatever information we have.
Best regards,
Steve
Manager, Customer Relations
Elance

“Dear Jason,

Thanks for contacting us. In the last day or so, we’ve learned that OutsourcingRoom.com and its parent company CyberBionic Systematics has illegally obtained and posted information about Elance members and sent out unwanted solicitation emails. We have confirmed that no financial information such as credit cards, tax id numbers, or other financial records were compromised. The stolen data was limited to name, city, state, phone number, and email address.

Elance treats the security and privacy of our community members with the utmost seriousness. We have already mobilized an international team to investigate and respond to this issue and have demanded legally that they cease and desist. We have taken immediate steps to remedy the cause of the security breach, and have secured all areas that were discovered to be vulnerable. We are also in contact with the parent company and are pursuing all avenues available to us to have the data removed and destroyed.

Elance has made demands on OutsourcingRoom.com and its overseas hosting services. We have filed an international criminal complaint. And we are contacting the law enforcement officials in the relevant countries presently.

We continue to take this issue very seriously and will update you when we have more relevant details to share. We extend our sincere apologies for any inconvenience or disruption that this has caused anyone. If you have a specific question, please contact Elance by email at *******, and we will attempt to answer with whatever information we have.

Best regards,

Steve
Manager, Customer Relations
Elance”

Seems that the outsourcing industry is quite competitive if one company is willing to risk getting caught hacking into another company’s customer database.