I Went Looking for Southern Charm and Found the Opposite: A Toyota Dealership

While the world slept, okay, maybe not the whole world, but certainly my neighbors on Morphy Avenue in Fairhope, my car alarm started...well...alarming.

Luckily, I’d already been awake since 2 a.m.

It was now 5.

We’d had a thunderstorm the night before, the kind where the bloated, angry sky unleashes torrents of rain as if it has a personal grievance against the earth.

I ran down the stairs of my Airbnb (22 stairs, my birthdate) and stepped outside. The hot, humid air clung to my skin like Saran Wrap.

I shut off the alarm.

Then I tried to lock the car.

Click.

Locked.

And a split second later:

Click-click-click-click.

Every door unlocked itself.

Oh no.

I walked around the car. The security lights from the garage illuminated everything well enough for me to see that nothing looked disturbed. No broken window. No sign that anyone had tried to get inside.

I tried the locks again.

Click.

Click-click-click-click.

Same thing.

Oh no.

This had to be electrical.

And then I remembered the rain.

I opened the passenger door and discovered the front floor was wet.

Really wet.

My car had been parked overnight on a steep driveway, nose pointed downhill, resting in what I can only describe as automotive downward dog.

And now the panic rushed through me like its own electrical malfunction.

It was Friday.

I was supposed to leave Fairhope Sunday.

I was more than 1,000 miles from home.

I didn’t have a trusted mechanic here.

I knew enough to know I needed to get the wet area dry, but I didn't have quick access to a shop vac like I would have at home.

Looking back, I probably should have called one of the people I’d met: Sandy, Stacy, Betsy, Mike, Lila, or my Airbnb hosts, Wanda and Larry.

But it was five in the morning.

And I have this me problem of not wanting to bother other people with my problems.

So I waited.

At 8 a.m., I headed straight to the place where I’d recently had my oil changed.

I loved this place, by the way. You sat right in your car while they worked. Fast, efficient, no fuss.

During my oil change less than a week earlier, they had pulled out my engine air filter.

It was disgusting.

They showed it to me, then replaced it while I watched. Out came the filthy old one. In went a brand-new, blinding-white filter.

Remember that part.

It becomes important.

That morning I spoke to Jake, the manager. He told me they couldn't fix my current problem, but he had worked on Toyota and Lexus vehicles for more than twenty years and suspected water had gotten into the electrical system. He even knew where the security components were located.

He recommended Eastern Shore Toyota in Daphne, about ten or fifteen minutes away.

By the time I got there, my imagination had produced approximately 147 different scenarios involving my inability to get home Sunday.

At that point, I would have been thrilled just to make it back to the Airbnb.

Then came the good news.

Mark, one of the service advisers, said he'd make room in the schedule and get me right in.

He checked the sunroof drains.

Clogged.

Did you know sunroofs have drains that can clog?

I did not.

My husband did not.

My daughter did! Someone smart had told her that somewhere along the way!

Apparently she is now the family sunroof authority.

They took my car back.

I stumbled inside, enormously relieved.

Maybe my dad in heaven was looking out for me.

My father had worked as a service manager for years before opening his own auto-parts store. My dad could fix practically anything. More importantly, he was the kind of mechanic everyone wishes she had: honest, helpful and incapable of selling you something you didn't need.

And once inside, I discovered this Toyota dealership had a café in it.

A café!

Wow, I thought. This is really nice.

I was looking for positives.

Unfortunately, the positives were about to acquire price tags.

Mark returned with a list of things my car needed.

A new battery.

Okay. Maybe?

A brake-fluid flush.

Okay. Maybe?

A cabin-air filter.

Hmm.

And a new engine air filter.

Wait.

What?

That was the moment my own internal security system started alarming.

I knew that air filter was new. I had watched them put it in. Less than a week earlier, and I hadn't driven more than about fifty miles since.

I called my husband.

Now both of us were suspicious.

The cabin-filter recommendation bothered us, too. We'd had mechanics warn us in the past about unnecessary maintenance add-ons, so I began declining some of the additional work.

That's when, as I remember the conversation with Mark, the warnings became considerably more frightening as Mark took on a concerned look:

There had been water in my car.

What about mold?

What about mold spores?

Didn’t I care about what I might be breathing into my lungs?

Well.

I happen to be rather fond of my lungs.

Suddenly I wasn't simply deciding whether I wanted an optional maintenance service. I was standing more than 1,000 miles from home, preparing for a multi-day drive back to Pennsylvania, wondering whether declining something could jeopardize my health.

Then I brought up the engine air filter.

I told Mark it had been replaced less than a week earlier.

His response surprised me even more.

He told me they'd already replaced it, but he'd give me a coupon so there would be no charge.

Well.

How generous.

Except I couldn't get past one question:

Why had a service I hadn't authorized already been performed?

The original repair to address the clogged sunroof drains, wet electrical connections and malfunctioning locks was $475.

By the time all the recommended services were added, my bill had ballooned to roughly $1,470.

And that was with my complimentary replacement of my practically-new air filter.

Then there was more good news.

I was told that Evan, the mechanic, had replaced a broken hose free of charge, and that this had caused my check-engine light to go off.

This would have been considerably more exciting if I didn't already have a longstanding relationship with my check-engine light.

We're practically family.

Every time that light is reset, it comes back on.

It passes it’s inspection and emissions.

But dang if it doesn’t love to shine brightly.

We’ve made peace with each other.

At this point, something had shifted for me.

The man I'd initially been enormously grateful to was now someone whose recommendations I couldn’t trust.

Maybe every recommendation was legitimate.

Maybe some were.

Maybe none of this was unusual dealership maintenance.

I didn't know.

And that was precisely the problem.

I wasn't home.

I couldn't call my regular mechanic and drive over for a second opinion.

I couldn't leave the car overnight and figure it out tomorrow.

I had to leave Sunday.

I knew that, Mark knew that, and Evan the mechanic knew that.

And now another thought crept into my head.

What if I irritated this man by continuing to question him?

Was that rational?

Maybe not.

But I have worked in restaurants, and I'm also the woman who doesn't send food back to the kitchen because some tiny part of my brain imagines an angry cook rubbing my replacement hamburger across the floor.

Rare?

Of course.

Impossible?

I've worked in restaurants.

So now my imagination had moved on to my car.

What if somebody got angry because I questioned the recommendations?

Would my car be treated carefully?

Would something be overlooked?

Would I discover the consequences somewhere on an interstate in Virginia?

Again, maybe completely irrational.

But fear doesn't require supporting documentation.

And I needed that car to get me home.

Mark was the rock and the hard place.

And I was more than 1,000 miles from home.

So I finally said:

“Fine. Fix it all.”

Then I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

More than four hours after I'd been told it would take about two and a half.

My husband offered to help pay for the repairs. He wasn't happy about the situation either, but from Pennsylvania there wasn't much he could do.

Eventually, I got my car back.

And I made it home safely.

That's the good news.

My check engine light (that he fixed for free!) came back on the morning I left the cutest Airbnb in North Carlolina.

“Welcome back.” I laughed. Because at this point, it’s all I could do.

But there's another part of this story that has bothered me ever since.

I had loved Fairhope.

My Seeking Southern Charm Book Tour had given me so many of the things I'd gone looking for: friendliness, warmth, conversations with strangers, people willing to help one another.

And this experience left a little bruise on the memory.

Which isn't really fair to Fairhope.

The dealership wasn't even in Fairhope. It was in Daphne.

More importantly, what happened wasn't a Southern problem.

I live outside Philadelphia.

Believe me, dealerships and repair shops capable of turning one problem into twelve recommended services have managed to migrate north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

This isn't a Northeastern problem.

It isn't a Southern problem.

It's an industry problem.

And looking back, I keep wondering what I could have done differently.

Maybe I should have called Sandy or Stacy or Betsy or Mike or Lila.

Maybe I should have called Wanda and Larry.

Maybe one of them would have said, Birdie, take it to Joe over on Such-and-Such Road. He'll take care of you.

Maybe the better lesson isn't that you can never trust a mechanic.

My dad was proof that you can.

Maybe the lesson is that fear is expensive.

When you're far from home, short on time, dependent on an expert and unable to tell for yourself which recommendations are essential and which aren't, peace of mind becomes something people can sell you.

And I bought it.

For roughly $1,470.

Except the funny thing is, it didn't actually buy me peace.

It bought me a wish and a prayer that my car had been treated carefully and would get me all the way back to Pennsylvania.

It did.

And I'm grateful for that.

But as I sat in that dealership waiting for my car, I kept looking at that beautiful café I'd been so impressed by when I first walked in.

Wow. This is really nice.

By then, I was thinking something else.

Of course it is.

Somebody's paying for it.

And that day, apparently, somebody was me.

ps...Shout Out to my hometown service department: Reese's Garage in Silverdale, PA. I've always appreciated them, but now, even more so!