Mechanical misbehaving

To try and rid us of frustration, the shop where our van (a Fourth Gen Caravan) was taken was told to go ahead with the repairs; a (successful) $850 "make this problem go away" bid.

I'm sure that the brakes are as good as new, but I find the price to be a little high for changing front discs and pads!

Grumble grumble murmur murmur....

The place we took our van for repair had been very nice to us when we took our old van in, not charging us anything when they found major engine problems that were non-economically repairable.

I think they just made up for that.

They called shortly after lunch to tell my wife that the van was ready.  I'm guessing they used standard parts, so about $250 worth, and about 2hrs labour at say $50/hr so they should have made about $500 profit on this one.

I know, "where on earth could you find a mechanic for $50/hr?!?!"
I'm looking at what they might be paying the workers, not what they charge for shop time.

$500 isn't bad profit for maybe 3hrs of work.

Of course, now we have to pay them before we can get the van back.  This should be interesting.

Pay-day isn't until next Wednesday.

....The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round,.......

It will make getting to my class this weekend interesting.  I'll have to plan out how exactly to get there on the bus.I'm sure we can cope.  It's just frustrating.  It increases our travel time by a large margin and limits out activities to places close to home.

Not that we have lots of things a long way away.  But even grabbing anything from the store will take 40min (20 min each way) of walking from the house instead of the 5 minute drive.

Ah, poop.  If it isn't one thing, it is another.  Do we really need to feed of of each other like this?  I don't mind paying reasonable amounts to get things done that I need done.  To pay someone $250/hr to do something I could have done, that just doesn't seem reasonable.

Maybe I will think of it as paying them $250 for checking out the old van and $250 for fixing this one.  It may make me a little less grumpy towards them and everyone else and let me be more gracious.  We did, after all, agree to the work at that price.

OK, time to check on some of the equipment here.