When Tech Breaks: Thoughts from the Side of the Road
My car broke down Tuesday. Thanks to a few decent decisions, dealing with it was an inconvenience, not a disaster. Also USAA roadside assistance needs improvement.
Yesterday I went to watch my son play flag football against a rival school in the area, which goes by the Romans according to their uniforms. My car made the 10-mile journey there without issue, but as I drove home I found the shifting to be sub-optimal, followed by the illumination of the check engine and VSA lights, followed by a weird smell and even some visible smoke.
At this point it was time to pull over and get my car towed. Fortunately, I had emergency roadside coverage through USAA. Unfortunately, my phone was nearly dead. Even worse, USAA’s service wasn’t as simple as just calling and talking to someone. TL; DR: things turned out fine in the end, but I was rather unhappy with USAA. Story continues in lessons/thoughts format.
Lesson 1: Don’t make a bad situation worse
When the car started smoking, I was just over six miles from home. Some part of me wanted to just see if I could make it, but the engine was obviously overheating, and in retrospect I could have done serious damage if I had continued on that path. Plus I would presumably have to get my car towed to a shop (or junk yard) anyway to correct whatever problem was happening.
Pullover decision rating: 9/10
Lesson 2: Consider where you “bail out”
When the car started smoking, I was at an intersection waiting for a light to turn green. The temptation was to turn the car off and see if it would start again, but if it didn’t I would be stranded in the middle of a busy road. Instead I drove another half-mile to a shopping center, where I could park in an uncrowded lot next to a tree. I knew I would be stuck there for a while, so just like the soon-to-be-downed fighter pilot who makes the effort to bail out slightly closer to friendly lines, I tried to stop in a place with at least some infrastructure.
Bail out decision rating: 9/10
Lesson 4: Keep comms available (i.e. charge your phone)
Leaving the house, my phone was low on batteries, but in a state that should last until I got home under normal circumstances. After navigation to the game and partially back to my house, I was left with 5% charge when calling USAA for help. Enough to make a quick call… except 👇
Charging decision rating: 2/101
Lesson 5: Don’t make your customers jump through a bunch of hoops in a bad situation to presumably (but not actually) save a couple bucks on tech support
Safely at the side of the road, I called my (formerly) trusted insurance agency USAA… which I found out provides roadside assistance through a company called Agero… which contracts with a company called El Monstro Towing to do the actual service in my areaw. El Monstro was fine as far as I know2, but getting to the point where they were actually helping me was quite bad.
Upon calling USAA, their automated service sent me a text message link to a website that had me fill out something like 10 pages of information3 about my situation on my phone. This included my USAA number (which I wasn’t able to adequately produce), and location data, which my browser didn’t provide by default. I didn’t immediately know how to turn this on, and this would have drained my dying battery even more.
I finally got this done-ish before my battery expired, and a USAA agent called me to inquire about information I didn’t properly provide to the website. He then officially opened the service call, and, besides a bit of confusion explained in footnote #2, my car was taken where it needed to be.
They then texted me at 12:04 AM and 12:05 AM to ask how my service was, then again at 7:33 AM with a brief survey. Then they called me again at 8:05 AM to personally ask me about how the service was. IIRC, the lady was rather disappointed that I wasn’t willing to recommend them based on this interaction. Not only did they do a bad job by trying to save on customer service costs, I posit they actually used more labor in this case.
I’ve used their service in years past, and don’t remember things being this frustrating. In an unrelated situation, a family member who has used USAA for decades just cancelled her service. Maybe I should see who Gronkowski uses for automotive insurance and roadside assistance.
On the positive side, they gave me good content for this newsletter.
Customer service rating: 2/10
Lesson 5: Know your mechanic
When my car broke down, I immediately called my mechanic, Murray Motive, which has worked on my vehicles for nearly a decade, to ask/inform them that I was having my car towed there, and that we could discuss things further up in the morning.4 This was fine with them, and probably a common occurrence. They called the next morning to inquire about what was going on, and shortly thereafter called to tell me that the car was fixed; it was just a disconnected radiator hose and the resulting lack of coolant.
When I went to pick it up, they noted that they had run checks to make sure everything was functional and refilled the coolant, and that they weren’t going to charge me for the service. Awesome!
When they do charge (most of the time, as they should) their service is probably not the cheapest, but they do good work. And as seen here, they don’t try to nickel and dime people either. One might also say that as a business you should charge enough to ensure you treat regular customers well in cases like this.5 Also, do you want the cheapest service available when your life and lifestyle literally depend on what they are working on?
Automotive service rating: 10/10
Lesson 6: Backup batteries are great (unless you forget about them)
As noted above, this incident nearly drained my phone battery. However, after I got of the phone I decided to poke around in my trunk to see if I had anything that could charge my phone. To my surprise, I found my emergency CAT jump/light/pump/USB Charge brick in the back, complete with a bag containing jumper wires and USB cables!
I hooked up my phone, which gratefully received its charge, allowing me to get in contact with the driver a bit later without fear of it dying. So that was great, but somewhat late. Still, I would recommend having something like this6 in your car for various emergencies. Just don’t forget that you have it!
Preparedness/memory rating: 6/10
Things turned out well
Once I had things lined up, my wife came and picked us up. I reluctantly placed the key in the driver’s seat, with the window down, for the tow truck driver to use7. He then took care of things, towing it to Murray Motive, which ultimately took care of the problem.
I’ll need to replace that car at some point, but as little as I drive working from home, it always seems like a very low priority. Besides, my 2006 Acrua TL is a pretty good car for its age, even if at some point it transformed from “wow that’s a nice car” to “wow, that’s cool it still runs.”
Also, props to my son, who did very little complaining during this entire incident, and actually did some homework while waiting.
Safe travels, and thanks for reading - JC
Thanks for reading! I hope you will follow along as I post weekly-ish about engineering, technology, making, and projects. Fair warning: I am a native Florida man, and may get a little off-topic in the footnotes. Maybe I even had an alligator or two as pets growing up. Perhaps they are alive today and could be used to test earth-wormhole pet friendliness. -JC
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Addendum/Footnotes:
Not great, but it did what I needed
To be fair, they initially called from a Boca Raton number, which made me question whether or not USAA had sent them to the wrong location. After a bit of back and forth and confusion, likely exacerbated due to a language barrier and/or my unease at a ~2% phone charge level, this was eventually cleared up.
At the end of the day, they got my car where it needed to go, and I have no issue with them. Plus, El Monstro is a pretty awesome company name. My company is called Jeremy Cook Consulting LLC, but El Monstro Consulting LLC does have a nice ring to it…
I wasn’t counting, but if that’s an exaggeration, it’s not by much. Seriously, shame on you USAA and/or Agero.
I’ve technically known the shop owner since middle school, as his son and I played basketball together. And, weirdly enough, my wife’s parent’s know these people really well too from before I even met her. They didn’t introduce us, so I guess there is that.
To be fair, they had done some major work on my car a few months prior. So it’s possible they made a mistake during the process and were making that right. Even if that was the case, I suspect the results would have been different at a less reputable establishment.
Similar, or maybe the same as, this one on Amazon, though I bought mine from Costco at significantly less $$$ IIRC.
There’s a certain power to having an older car. Sure, someone could just walk up and steal it, but would they? Well maybe, but I would be less unhappy than if it was, say a new BMW. Also, new scratch? door ding? No big deal, just say “it’s OK” to the other, presumably very grateful, driver.