Pages

Friday, December 15, 2006

Gotta watch Wapner. Gotta watch Wapner

6 months ago, I was really ticked off at RackNRoad. They had installed this (permanent) roof rack atop my car, and the work was not exactly to my satisfaction. There were numerous problems, and I won't bore my faithful readers with all the details here.

The important stuff: 1)Those tracks are not parallel; 2) the crossbars interfere with the sunroof 3) anything mounted on the rack interferes with the trunk 4) my beautiful car is scratched; 4) I was charged for parts not provided.



Anyway, we ended up in Small Claims Court yesterday. My case looked strong, or so I thought. Unfortunately, I am not an expert in the installation of permanent roof racks. When the expert (the defendant) says: "Those tracks are not supposed to be parallel", I guess that is more believable than me (as a non-expert) saying: "Are you kidding? I have the only roof rack in the world with non-parallel tracks".

Contrary to what you see on television, small claims court judges typically mail their decisions to the involved parties; still, I am guessing from the judge's tone that I did not fare well. On the way out, I said to the defendant: "I think you won that one". He patted me on the shoulder and replied: "That's business for you. Anything else I can help you with?" I suddenly felt bad for causing all the trouble...6 months had gone by, and the fight was really no longer in me.

So I'm ending my boycott of RackNRoad. I suppose the moral of the story is: Don't ever let anybody drill holes in the roof of your car. They are not easy to patch.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

the tracks going across your car aren't parallel? If they aren't your car will pull to one side in a headwind... which is pretty much any time your car moves. For the ones going front to back - if they're tilted at all they should be closer together in the front than they are in the rear.

Scratches suck.

Michael Lasko said...

Roof rack terminology: The bars going across the car are crossbars (mine are parallel, or at least close to it). The tracks running front to back are tracks.

PT Cruisers are wider at the front...my tracks run along the edge of the roof (making them farther apart from each other at the front).

Here's an interesting picture of a rack with parallel tracks:
Factory Rack