Chapter 9: Rear Window Explosion
I’m just having awesome luck with my 2 month old Yaris. First there was the door ding, and now I have no rear window. What’s most interesting is that all evidence seems to indicate that it wasn’t smashed by anyone, but rather it just exploded on its own. I was parked at work yesterday in the back alley for only about an hour, when the shipping manager called upstairs to let me know my rear window was broken. So I went down to look, and found this:
Obviously, my first thought was some asshole did this. I quickly surveyed the situation and took a couple pictures and then drove it to the closest ICBC glass express shop. The guy who looked it over told me that there is a real possibility that it wasn’t smashed by anybody or anything, but that it exploded on its own. After that, the more I thought about it, the more likely this seemed to be what happened. I noticed that there was no body damage whatsoever, and nothing appeared to be missing or even touched inside. There was also quite a bit of glass on the ground outside, but no glass inside my car on the back seat.
So the glass shop guy told me to contact the dealership to see if I can actually get it fixed under warranty or whatever as a defect. So I called up my sales rep first, and he told me to bring the car into the dealership service shop so that the service manager could take a look at it. So I drove it over there and pretty much right away, she said Toyota wasn’t going to cover it. She said that Toyota doesn’t have glass problems, and if there was something wrong with the glass, it would only get replaced under warranty within 2 weeks of purchase. She told me I would have to go through ICBC as per the usual process. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about this. I called my sales rep back, because he wanted to know the outcome regardless… and he told me to call up Toyota Canada headquarters to let them know of my situation, so I did that… and now they’re going to review it and in 5-7 days, they’ll decide whether to compensate me or not. In the meantime, I now had to drive back to the glass shop… which was really fun, as going over every bump means more glass crumbling and shattering in the back. So, back at the glass shop, they had some problems allocating the part since the car model is still so new, but eventually they found one in stock locally, and it’s being fixed today. As of now, I’m going to need to shell out the $300 deductible for the ICBC claim though. I sure as hell hope Toyota is going to pay me back, but I have a bad feeling I’m going to need to argue pretty fiercely if that’s ever going to happen.
One thing in my favour is that apparently the same thing happened to a Yaris in Quebec. Just having one other person with this problem is a huge help in making a case that this is actually a defect with the car and/or window itself.
I guess I’m just going to need to wait until Toyota calls me back.
Two nights ago, I had the worst online poker session ever. In a little more than one hour, I managed to lose more than $50 in every way possible playing $25/NL and $25/PL. It was actually quite ridiculous. Several times, I had the absolute nuts, only to get outdrawn to an even bigger hand. One of them, I had JT and flop came AKQ giving me broadway and the absolute nuts. I didn’t slow play it either… I came out betting. And it just so happens, someone with KQ calls me and then ends up landing another K on the turn for the boat. Then there was another one where I had Ad8d and had the absolute nuts with the flush on the turn, and had like 3 people all in, only to lose when the river paired the board to give the person with a set the pot. Against a loose player, I lost with QQ to his K8… and not from him landing a K, but instead from him getting two 8’s on the flop. All in all, it was just sad… and I was tilting the most I had ever been.
I guess playing poker has its ups and downs… because yesterday, I made all of that back and more. In under 3 hours, I managed to win more than $160… easily my best session ever. Things were finally going right, and the difference was I was still getting my money in with the best hand, but more often than not, my hands were holding up. Then there were the few hands were I was simply up against people that just handed me their money… but hey, I’m not going to complain about that. There was one hand where I went up against this girl. I limped in with KT. The flop came KQ3. So I had top pair - not bad. I bet out 50ยข and she just min-raises me to $1, so of course I call. The turn comes an J, now giving me an open ended draw for broadway as well. I think I bet a buck, and she just calls. Now, the river card made things interesting… it was an ace. So the board is showing KQ3JA. There is four to a straight on the board, and of course I had the T to complete broadway, which was the absolute nuts as there was no 3-suited… so I bet out a few bucks. Surprisingly, she raised me like $10. I had to look again just to make sure that in fact I did have the nuts, and I did. So I reraised her another $10. She reraised again all in, and I call. It ended up being a $69.50 pot. At this point, I was thinking we were going to surely split the pot… how else could she be so confident to even call the $10 reraise, nevermind pushing all in? BUT… it turns out, she had pocket rockets, and was only holding on to a set of aces. How she could be so confident with a set of aces when there is four to a straight on board, I’ll never know. Some guy really laid into her afterwards. I commented "Didn’t you see the four straight on the board?" and some guy pipes in "Oh, she seen it. She just thinks her set of aces covers a straight" and she replies "shut up". So slow playing her rockets cost her dearly… but not as much as her recklessness did. Pocket rockets aren’t unbeatable… even if you hit a set with them. You need to look at the whole picture, not just what you’re holding.
