Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Someone asked me a couple weeks ago whether I had watched the presidential debates.  I told her no, and she looked at me like I was on fire or something.  She asked, “Don’t you care about our political system?”

Actually, I do care, very much as a matter of fact, but I can not stomach watching “debates” and the like for the same reason I hate all of the following… taking my car in for any sort of maintenance or repair, calling the cable company to get cable installed, or talking to a Best Buy salesperson about extended warranties.  I just don’t like it when people try to take advantage of other’s ignorance and bold-faced lie to them.  It turns on a switch inside of me that makes me want to harm them for thinking I’m gullible enough to believe them and for probably duping a lot of other people prior to me.

So here’s a bit of the TRUTH for a change…

Auto Mechanics / Oil Change Places:
You do not need half the repairs they suggest, or if you do, you really don’t need it for at least another 20,000 miles.  If you’re a woman, you probably didn’t need 75% of the repairs they suggested.  Sorry, that’s just the way it is.  When mechanics see a woman walk in alone, their eyes flash dollar signs.  You know why they take you to your car to show you the “problem” that they find?  Two reasons – one, to make it seem like they’re informing you so that you can make an educated decision, and two, to get you out of the lobby where someone who knows something about cars may correct them in front of you.  The thing is, there may be a germ of truth in their advice… meaning that you may not have a perfectly running car.  But the repair they suggest is equivalent to changing all the light bulbs in your house when your refrigerator light goes out.  And the oil change places that have records on your car’s service schedule?  They use the schedule for your car that is designed for almost abusive use of your car… like towing a redwood stump with your Dodge Neon.  And when they say that your transmission may fail if you don’t change the transmission fluid NOW, do not believe them.  The only way a fluid is going to completely ruin your car so quickly is if it is completely absent.

Cable TV “Installation”
The cable TV installer probably does not even need to set one foot in your house to give you cable service.  For most homes, the “installation” process basically involves turning on a box outisde your house.  There was a time when cable installers used to do just that – install cables in your house, but most homes these days come completely pre-wired for service.  They kept the “installation service” to have an excuse to charge you more money.  And to add insult to injury they actually make you stay at home from work for a four hour window to let the installer into a house he does not really need to go into most of the time.  Also, if they ask you how many cable outlets you’d like to “activate,” tell them you just want one.  They’re all connected together already.  But they won’t tell you that because they want to charge you $15 for every outlet in your home.  They can no more “activate” or “deactivate” your cable outlets than the water company can activate or deactivate specific sinks in your house.  It’s ludicrous.  But of course, the general public does not know this, so they take advantage of the customer’s ignorance.  Oh, but I learned the hard way that they have sneaky methods too.  When I told them that I only wanted “one” outlet activated.  They “deactivated” my other outlets by TAKING the ALREADY INSTALLED splitter in my house.  And the funny thing is… I’m a whole lot less angry that they actually took my property than I am that they thought they could get away with it.

Those Extended Warranties
You do not need them.  When have you ever collected on them?  And if you have… could the combined cost of all the extended warranties you bought actually cover the cost of the item brand new?  I heard somewhere that more than 20% of Best Buy’s profits come from selling extended warranties.  Toward the end of any electronics transaction at that place, I dread the extended warranty hard sell that they do.  Not because I’m afraid they’re somehow going to convince me to get it – I’d sooner bathe in rancid cottage cheese than do that… more because, again, I don’t like being bold-faced lied to.  They say that “if for any reason something goes wrong, they’ll replace the product, no questions asked.”  When they say this, I just roll my eyes and sigh… yeah, because I’m sure the company SO enjoys giving away merchandise.  Then they try to scare you by saying how “someone just brought one of these things in the other day because it exploded the day after the manufacturer’s warranty ran out.”  One time when the guy said something like this, I told him that then perhaps I shouldn’t even purchase such a shoddy piece of equipment.  He got really quiet after that.  Another time a salesperson tried to sell me an extended warranty that completely overlapped the manufacturer’s warranty.  When I asked him what kind of crazy pills I would need to take to be convinced that was necessary, he said that I could get a brand new product rather than simply get it repaired by the manufacturer…   oh then, by all means… yes, please take my money… it was too heavy in my pocket anyway.  I’ve discoverd a very effective way to stop the hard sell of the warranties.  What I do now when they start in on their pitch, I just start laughing really loudly.  They usually stop right there.  I think it’s because they realize it would be as fruitful as convincing a middle-aged Jewish rabbi that Santa Claus is on his way.

Now, you may think that all these things tick me off because of the potential monetary loss, but most people will tell you that I’m not really miserly.  What I dislike is the fact that there are those out there who would take advantage of the population’s trust for their own gain… acting on their fears and ignorance to manipulate them.  I just wish someone would step up for the little guy.

Which brings us to politics.  I hate it.  What I hate more is that in these debates and campaign ads, the potential leaders of the most powerful nation in the world have to resort to “bending the truth” to attain their goals… that it is considered political suicide to “tell it like it is.”  And in these debates the candidate has to look into the camera… smile… look the country in its collective eye… and lie like their lives depended on it.  I tell you, it stinks like the south end of a north-bound mule.  And I have to vote for one of them a week from now.  God help us all.