You know how I said the other day that buying a car in Massachusetts probably wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever come up with?  Do I have a story to tell you!

We started off the morning with the FedEx envelope, containing our temporary license and registration, missing the truck for delivery. We paid extra for it to be guaranteed for a 9am delivery to the car dealership.  We thought, okay, we’ll just go and pick it up on our way to get the car and that’s what we did.

When we got to the dealership they told us they had just done a full inspection on the vehicle and they even filled it up with gas.  Everything was perfect.  The paperwork issues were on hold because their business manager was off for the day but they promised they would take care of things with Alaska DMV first thing on Monday.  Things were looking good and we were on our way.

We left the dealership on our way to Bill’s brothers house in Maine, about 150 miles away.  Around 50 miles into the trip a bell ‘dinged’ and a warning message appeared saying a tire pressure sensor had failed.  We thought, okay, we’ll need to have that checked and kept on going.

Around 75 miles into the trip another bell ‘dinged’ and a warning message appeared  that the traction system had a fault and it was being turned off.  We thought, okay, that’s not so good but we won’t be needing the all wheel drive today so we’ll get that checked out when we get to Maine and we kept on going.

Around 100 miles into the trip, 45 minutes from Bill’s brothers house, it was getting late (8pm) and we decided we should stop and get something to eat.  When we came out of the restaurant and started the car we got the two warnings from earlier plus a red warning that the power steering needed to be serviced now.  I tried to turn the wheel and we had no power steering.  That made it impossible to drive the car any further.  We thought, okay, we don’t want this car anymore.

We called the dealer who gave us the number for Ford roadside assistance.  Since the vehicle is still under the factory warranty they sent a tow truck to pick it up and take it to the nearest Ford dealer.

Now what?  We had figured out we were in Portsmouth, New Hampshire when we had to give an address for the tow truck to pick up the car, it was after 9pm and the rental car agencies all closed at 6pm.  We didn’t want to have Bill’s brother drive the hour and a half to pick us up and take us back to his house since we weren’t sure what would happen with the car dealership/servicing in the morning.  We were stuck.

The tow truck showed up fairly quickly after we called and lucky for us he was a really nice guy and offered to give us a ride to a hotel which was both close to the Ford dealership where he was taking the car and a rental car agency.  Our first good luck of the day.

We are  now (11pm) checked in to a Comfort Inn and will go down to the dealership in the morning to figure out if they can fix the car.  Of course, it will be Saturday and most service departments are closed on weekends but we’ll see what happens.

Right now, I want them to at least get the power steering fixed so we can drive the car back down to the dealer who gives a 7 day money back guarantee on any car they sell and get my money back!  We’ll see  how I feel tomorrow but I think I’m done with this particular car.