Dodge Journey
Part of the fun of business travel is the opportunity to test drive various new cars. This last trip was no exception as I was given a brand new Dodge Journey. It is a cross between a car and a minivan. Overall it was an excellent vehicle, and if I had one less kid I would consider owning one.
The downside is the new keyless starts. Basically you stick the plastic key fob into the ignition and start it that way. All was well until 10pm in a HyVee parking lot when I pulled out the key fob from my pocket and all the alarms on the car went off. This included the horn sounding of for 3 minutes and the lights flashing another 15 on top of that. When the car finally calmed down it would not let us in, it had locked up tight and the remote was nonfunctional. So giving up we hiked the 1/2 mile back to the hotel so I could go on-line and look up the service number for the rental car company.
I called the company only to get a operator in India, which wasn't that bad as growing up in England made the accent easily understandable. The problem was they had a script which they would not leave, or maybe it was could not.
ME: I am locked out of my rental car.
India: What is the rental agreement number?
Me: I don't know as it is locked in the car.
India: Where did you rent the car?
Now this gets interesting as my company is large enough to have a private lot at our corporate office, but technically they rent it from somewhere else. The problem is I do not know where that somewhere else is.
ME: I tell them the town of our Corp. Office.
India: We do not rent cars from there. Where did you get the car?
And so the circle went. After several rounds of this game and several operators I was finally transferred to a service department in America and they shared that there was a hidden switch on the key fob and an emergency key would pop out. I could manually unlock it with that. Another 1/2 mile hike and we were in. Bedtime was after 1am.
The downside is the new keyless starts. Basically you stick the plastic key fob into the ignition and start it that way. All was well until 10pm in a HyVee parking lot when I pulled out the key fob from my pocket and all the alarms on the car went off. This included the horn sounding of for 3 minutes and the lights flashing another 15 on top of that. When the car finally calmed down it would not let us in, it had locked up tight and the remote was nonfunctional. So giving up we hiked the 1/2 mile back to the hotel so I could go on-line and look up the service number for the rental car company.
I called the company only to get a operator in India, which wasn't that bad as growing up in England made the accent easily understandable. The problem was they had a script which they would not leave, or maybe it was could not.
ME: I am locked out of my rental car.
India: What is the rental agreement number?
Me: I don't know as it is locked in the car.
India: Where did you rent the car?
Now this gets interesting as my company is large enough to have a private lot at our corporate office, but technically they rent it from somewhere else. The problem is I do not know where that somewhere else is.
ME: I tell them the town of our Corp. Office.
India: We do not rent cars from there. Where did you get the car?
And so the circle went. After several rounds of this game and several operators I was finally transferred to a service department in America and they shared that there was a hidden switch on the key fob and an emergency key would pop out. I could manually unlock it with that. Another 1/2 mile hike and we were in. Bedtime was after 1am.
1 comment:
I think I talked to the same guy when he worked for the Honeywell Digital Thermostat company and told me to look for a "sqwuire" and after I had him repeat about three times we both gave up. sigh
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