The other day, I went out to my car and found the left front
tire was low on air. So I drove to a nearby gas station that I frequently get
gas at. I’m have been a loyal patron for a long time, but that all may all
change.

I pulled into the station and told the attendant my tire was
low. He got the air hose and tried putting air into the tire, but none would
stay in. It came out as fast as it went in. I figured it was because the tire
was so low that the tire was no longer sealed to the rim. So I asked him to
take the tire off so we could wet the tire and find the hole.

He went and got the air tools, took the tire off and sprayed
it with water, but because no air would go into the tire we couldn’t figure out
what the problem was. So he went back into the garage to look for something,
what I still don’t know. In the meantime, I played around with the tire. I
bounced the tire to hopefully seal it around the rim and then tried to put air
in it. And would you believe, it worked. The tire filled up with air. We
couldn’t find any holes in the tire so that was the end of that.

The next day, the tire was low again. But I was on my way to
work, so I could only stop by and fill it up with air.

Later that afternoon, when I returned from work, I stopped
by the station and asked him to check the tire. This time it was a different
guy helping me. He turned the tire and sprayed it with water to find where the
air was leaking out and found the hole. It was a piece of metal, shaped like a
nail, but not. He dug it out and plugged it up with a tire plug.

Tire plugs can be purchased at auto shops like Autobacs or
at home centers like Nikku for a few hundred yen. Unfortunately for me, I
didn’t go there and buy a kit and fix it myself, even though I know how. I
figured that it would cost a few hundred yen more than the price to buy the kit
at a shop. That’s how things are back in America. But boy was I wrong!

It took at total of 15 minutes to do everything from pulling
into the station and paying. And the total cost was 2100 yen! My mouth dropped
open when he told me how much it was! I couldn’t believe he was charging me
that much to do such a menial job.

I felt I had just been taken advantage of. But that was the
normal price. He rang it up at the register and gave me a receipt and
apologized for the high price. The apology didn’t help, but I knew that it
wasn’t his choice. The owner set the price, not him.

If I ever get a flat again, I can assure you that I will do
the fixing and use a kit I will have purchased from somewhere.

When I purchase a kit, I’ll post the cost and where I got it
in another blog.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2006 at 7:22 pm and is filed under Customer Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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