Monday October 21st 2024. The saga begins. I am driving home from work in my 2012 Volvo XC60. The weather was nice so I had the sunroof open. I get on interstate and the noise from the semi next to me is horrendous, so I decide to close my sunroof but leave it in the vent position. Barely a mile later, I hear a THUNK as a different semi runs over something. He was a couple lanes away from me and 50 yards ahead or so, but I catch something out of the corner of my eye. In the sky. A helicopter? No. A piece of debris. Tumbling down at me. Getting closer. It’s the size of my forearm and the trajectory is undeniable. To my left, a car sitting right next to me; a pet peeve of mine is to NEVER drive directly next to someone. To my right? Guardrail. No dice on an escape. I gotta take the hit. I duck and lean left. BOOM….KA-THUD. My sunroof spiderwebs but somehow did not penetrate. I take a breather, continue home, and when I arrived in my garage, I verified operation of the sunroof by closing it completely, opening it completely, then closing it again. Aside from the chunks of glass flaking off the top and the giant spiderweb cracks all through it, everything works.
Tuesday, October 22nd 2024. I call insurance and start the comprehensive claim. I have $0 deductible for comprehensive, and naturally I want to get this done as quickly as possible; and logistics are hard as hell when you’re a one man operation, so I choose the location closest to me that had the shortest lead time. It’s just the sunroof, right?
Thursday, October 24th 2024. I take my XC60 in for the inspection. Inspector finds a chunk had been carved out of my driver side roof rail. The other side is badly faded so he agrees to replace both since apparently you have to take the headliner down. He gets the estimate written up and parts get ordered. I take their shuttle back to my house where my other car (the unsung hero in all of this) is waiting. I’m barely 10 minutes late to work. Not such a bad experience.
Saturday, November 2nd 2024. Car was ready the previous day but I couldn’t get over there. I take an Uber (one man operation) to pick up my Volvo, the lady hands me the key and sends me off. Not so fast. Given the amount of incompetent morons in the world, I have trust issues so I decide to verify everything. Roof rails look brand new, Good. Start it up, and airbag service urgent message is on my DIM, with the accompanying airbag light. I open the sunroof, and go to close it, and it won’t close. It keeps going back to vent position and refuses to close all the way. As I’m staring up at it, I notice something: The BACK part of the sunroof has a crack too. I run my finger across the top. Yep. I can feel the ridge. Sigh. I go back inside and report my issues. They start a warranty ticket and tell me to come back Monday. I take the car and park it in my garage so the open sunroof won’t be an issue.
Monday, November 4th 2024. I arrive just before they open. Manager is waiting for me. I walk him through the issues. He agrees they should have caught the rear piece of glass and apologized. He believed the sunroof to be an alignment issue and the airbag light needed “investigation”. Okay, fine. But how can we fix it? He orders the back section and the 3rd brake light too, because I noticed the lens was cracked and missing. I have no idea if this was just age or if it was part of the incident. He says he’ll present it to insurance and see if they’ll fix it.
Monday, November 18th 2024 (present day). I get a call. Car is ready. FINALLY. I have the manager put the key in the console and lock the doors with the button, since they close before I get off work. I consider going home first and getting an Uber to pick up my Volvo, but trust issues/anxiety get the better of me. Fearing these people are incompetent morons, I decide to drive to the shop, give the Volvo a shakedown cruise home, THEN get an Uber to retrieve my minivan. I’m glad I did this, because I unlock the doors, and no interior lights come on. Sus. Maybe they’re turned off. I open the door, sit down, and check the switch. Nope. Central position. They should be on, but they aren’t. I cycle the switch. No luck. I try the individual map lights. No luck. I try the back seat’s map lights. Nothing. I start the car and discover that they did manage to get the airbag light off. Nice. I cycle the sunroof. It opens and closes fully first, second, and third tries. Nice. But I don’t have interior lights. I had them before. I decide to do a function check of every system and discover that the rain sensing wipers don’t work either. I decide to leave the car, and I’ll bring them they key again in the morning.
All this brings about the following jumbled mass of thoughts:
I am glad I’m alive after this ordeal. Had that first truck not prompted me to close the sunroof, would I be here to type this? That said, how hard could it be? It’s literally been 4 weeks and all they had to do was change out 2 roof rails and 2 pieces of glass. I am beginning to believe that these folks are incompetent morons, but now I must see this dumpster fire through. Am I being too hard on these folks? Would any other shop have run into these issues? Should I demand the car be taken to a Volvo dealer at their expense and have all this sorted out? I should have chosen a different shop.
Thoughts?