Why I Won't Go Back to Evergreen Ford in Issaquah

Earlier this year I had an issue with my rarely driven 1994 Ford Ranger (it's 21 years old and has 121K miles). Around June 2015, I started hearing a squeak / chirp type noise when I started up my truck.

Unfortunately, we were also dealing with some pretty hot weather around that time. Normally I like to try and do all the work on my truck myself; I've replaced the ignition coil, accessory belt, various pulleys, spark plugs and wires, radiator, and lots of other things on my own. Some of it I've posted to my blog or Youtube account. But this time around, due to lots of factors (time, upcoming trip, busy at work to prepare for trip, hot weather, and most importantly, not knowing specifically what the issue could be), I wanted to take it to my neighborhood shop. Plus, I really didn't want to crawl under my truck in 90 degree heat.

I had a good idea of what the issue was. I had read on multiple forums that it's probably about time for the camsync (camshaft synchronizer) to be replaced. It was either that or one of the pulleys, I thought.

So I called Evergreen Ford, first to see how much I should expect to spend and second, to schedule an appointment. I called multiple times because the first time I called, it was about 10 minutes before the shop closed, and I was asked to call back. They told me it would take too long to look up the part(s) that I wanted.

So when I called back the next day, I spoke to Brenda. She couldn't quote me on specific parts prices either (she said most of the pulleys are probably between $60-$80, and the crankshaft position sensor was probably between $80-$100). But she did say the diagnostic fee would be $130, and that labor to install the pulley or position sensor would be around $130 each. I'm guessing that's their hourly rate since I can't imagine either taking much more than an hour to install for a shop.

I get the diagnostic test scheduled and bring it in to the shop. I'm hoping and expecting to spend around $300, tops.

The next day, I get a call, but it's not the one I'm expecting. I'm told that my truck needs all new front brakes (calipers, rotors and pads). I asked, "What would my out-the-door price be including tax?" and Brenda told me it was just above a thousand dollars.

She also told me they couldn't find a noise, chirp, or squeak and that everything else looked fine.

I asked, "And if I don't get anything done, I owe $130 + tax for diagnostics?" And she told me "Yes."

So I schedule the brake job and expect to pay around a thousand dollars. Mind you, the dollar amount doesn't bother me. I was glad that they were able to diagnose it, and I had that peace of mind. I thought, $1000 and I can drive my truck without any worries.

Unfortunately, it's about here where things start to go to shit. I went to pick up my truck on July 2nd, 2015.

1. Now, I know I said the dollar amount didn't bother me, but being lied to does. The total amount when I showed up to pay was $1,115.21. The total I was quoted over the phone was without tax, even after I asked for the total with tax.

2. As soon as the car porter dropped off my truck, I could still hear the squeaking! I asked the gentleman, "You hear that right?" And he paused and said "Yeah"... and we both kind of stood there looking at each other, and he shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Right then I should have gone back inside to re-address the issue, but I was asking myself, "Are they going to charge another $1K to not fix the issue?" "Are they deaf?" "Do I ever want to go back into this dealership?" And I was too upset so I left.

3. On the 4th of July, 2 days later, I had to drive to a friends house on the Sammamish Plateau, right behind Skyline High School. I went early in the morning to avoid traffic and to test drive the Ranger since I hadn't driven it since picking it up from Evergreen Ford. And CLUNK! On the road next to Skyline High, I hear a chunk of metal clanging around in the engine bay and I lost power steering and had to coast to a stop.

I open up the hood and first notice the belt is loose. Then I notice a pulley over in the corner of the engine bay. It had come loose and fallen off. The bearings were exposed (images below).

At this point, I'm upset at myself for not catching such an obvious fix, but also at Evergreen Ford because I'm thinking, "Didn't I mention one of the pulleys could be bad? What the hell did I pay for? Don't they work on Rangers all the time? Shouldn't it have been even more obvious to them? Especially when I mentioned the camsync and pulley when making the appointment."

Anyway, to make a long story short, it was the 4th of July after all. The street I was parked on had "No parking" signs on it because people were going to be watching fireworks along the road later that night. I looked up a tow truck on Craigslist to get it back to my house.

Meanwhile, I went to an Oreilly's, paid $20.99 + tax ($23.01) for an idler pulley (as shown in the 2nd and final image) and repaired it myself. I was grateful that Oreilly's was open on a holiday and they had the part I needed in stock.

When I wrote and called Evergreen Ford just to air my frustration (in reality I was hoping they would credit me some money back or reimburse me for the towing and Oreilly's part, but knew that would never happen), nobody ever called back until I got a hold of Tony Rehn, one of the general managers. I was asked to come into the dealership to explain in person and to show receipts. I only had a receipt for Oreillys ($23.01), not the tow guy from Craigslist that I paid with cash. This seemed like such a car salesman tactic. "Lets meet face to face so we can use lots of hand motions to explain why we're right and you're wrong." I was still busy with work and with preparing for the trip so I never went back. And don't plan to.

Korea 2015

Before I go and forget everything about my recent trip to Korea, I wanted to write about it here.

There's a reason I'm a homebody and typically don't travel much. I usually get motion sickness on a plane. On this trip, I was ready for it with some Dramamine. Unfortunately, other things didn't go quite as planned.
- My shoulder seized up and I had to go to a Doctor twice. He told me I had subdeltoid bursitis and then injected my shoulder with something. I'm still not sure what it was.
- I must have rubbed my eye without washing my hands, because the skin around my left eye turned red.
- Terrible allergies.
- Abdominal pain and problems with bowel stuff. For 4 days. You get the idea.

But the great things happened;
- It was Livia's first and second time on an airplane. Other than having trouble sleeping, she did great.
- It was my last time seeing the Heukseuk-Dong house in person. It will be demolished very soon. It was the home my dad grew up in, and the home my grandfather worked hard to buy for his family.
- I got to see my cousins again. Outside of my mom and sister, they're the only family I have.
- It was my wife's first time in Korea. And she had a blast.
- My sister and I got to revisit many parts of our childhood.

When our dad passed away, we never thought we'd go back to Korea. But now we're already planning more trips. And I can't wait.

What I Learned from Operating a Lodge

I feel like I could write a novel with at least a dozen chapters regarding this topic, but I'll just write the abridged version here.

For those that don't know, my sister and I inherited a lodge business when out father passed away in 2007. For about 5 years, I operated the lodge and am more than willing to share my notes with anyone who is interested.

With the sale of the property and business now finalized, I wanted to write some thoughts while they're still fresh in my mind.

When I first took over The Lodge Near Mt Rainier, it was October 2008 and a little more than a year after my dad passed away. He left the business to me and my sister. Some might have wondered why I waited so long to get involved, but we had people and processes in place and I didn't want to jump in and make changes. We had a full time manager as well as a caretaker, and my sister was the one who stepped up and said she would take care of everything that my dad left behind.

So why the change? If all the rooms were rented every night at the listed price with no discounting, the business would have made around $550K per year in income. Instead, it made $55K in 2008. I had no hotel experience, but thought half a million in annual sales should be our goal.

Sidenote: We had other issues as well, including an outdated website that I desperately wanted to redo, and a staff member who refused to return our calls or emails. July 4th was historically one of our busiest times, yet in 2008, it was empty and we had no reservations.

Lesson 1 - Occupancy Rate - Set a Realistic Goal
One of the first things I learned, you can't set 100% occupancy as your goal, especially when you're just starting out. To increase business 10 fold, I would need more cleaners, more people to answer phones, questions and emails. And if done incorrectly, expenses like utilities, labor and cleaning supplies could increase just as much, eliminating any profit. Instead, I needed to take baby steps.

I read that nationally, hotels average between 55 to 60% occupancy. A quick Google search confirms this general range. Considering that most hotels are in city-cores or just off major highways or near tourist attractions, I figured that those hotels would have the highest occupancy rates. While specialty hotels, like cabins and lodges, have even lower occupancy rates, often 25-35% (I don't have a direct source for these numbers other than from talking to neighbors and a friend who works for a company that funds / finances hotels). All of a sudden, my goal of doing $500K in sales was looking more like $150K to $200K at best.

Early on, my goal was to just get weekends booked. 2 out 7 days each week would mean an occupancy rate of 28.6%. I would end up using this figure as my goal during my entire experience, and we would consistently meet or beat these numbers. The only exceptions to this goal would be during July and August when we would be nearly 100% booked.

Lesson 2 - If you can't fix up your own house, don't bother buying a hotel
I constantly felt like I was taking care of 10 homes. Even though we only had 6 units that we rented out, we also had a storage facility, a building for owners, an office, and a vacant building that we thought about fixing up. You're always cleaning, dusting, taking out trash, vacuuming, fixing little issues and thinking of the next step and the next thing to address. My mindset was, if it bothered me, it would probably bother our guests.

PS - Even though that 'vacant building' wasn't rented out, it still needed to be inspected by health inspectors since it was part of the property. It also had to pass these inspections. I always felt that was ridiculous, but that's just one of the many rules of owning a business like this, at least here in Washington State.

And if that wasn't enough, there's always things you're neglecting, things that need more attention, like remodeling and deferred maintenance. These things ranged from needing new furniture to new paint, siding and roofing.

Imagine if you live in a condo with a strong homeowners association. You wonder why you pay so much every month in dues, but then realize you never have to pay for paint, repairs, siding, roofing, or any of that. Part of that higher payment each month should go towards a reserve account that allows the complex to address deferred maintenance.

When you own a hotel, you are your own HOA. You need to set money aside to address these issues. No one does that for you. This is probably the toughest financial lesson I learned, as most people would want to treat any profit as just that... "profit", but it should really be reinvested into the business.

Lesson 3 - You should treat your website like an employee
When I took over the business, the website was one page and all it had was a name, address, contact information and a couple pictures. It was like looking at a physical brochure. There was no current availability and no dynamic content. It was all static, meaning the information was set once and rarely, if ever, changed.

The worst part, though, was the amount of phone calls we received. Phone calls that ranged from, "Does your complex have wifi?" and "How far are you located from the entrance to the National Park?" to questions about availability, pricing per unit and so on. All of these questions could be answered with a simple FAQ page and an updated website.

With the help of a friend, we created a website that had some key elements,
- An active, up-to-date reservation calendar (it used AvailbilityOnline and iMagic to receive and manage reservations from the website, which, when combined, came out to less than $300 per year)

- A Frequently Asked Questions page that was updated at least twice a year. I believe at one point, there were about 40 questions on this list, but it greatly helped reduce the number of emails and phone calls we received.
- A listing of each unit, specific pictures for each unit, as well as pricing information based on the number of guests in each unit. Again, this helped reduce the number of times people asked questions about pricing. It also helped create some consistency in pricing. Sometimes people would call out of the blue and catch you off guard (especially when I had phone calls forwarded to my cell phone at one point). You forget if you just raised / lower the prices, or if a specific special you had just advertised was for 4 guests or 6.

One tip of advice, if you do create a website, I would also keep a separate Change Log. Anytime I made changes to the website, whether it was a new question added to the FAQ list, or a pricing change was made, or policy change was made, etc etc, I logged it on a document so I could go back and see which periods had the greatest conversion rates. One time, I did an across the board price increase so I could match some competitors. Unfortunately, we had a steep drop in new reservations during that period so I reverted back to the old pricing.

So this brings me back to the point of this section, but when done correctly, your website becomes an effective salesperson for you. Instead of hiring someone and paying them $10 an hour for reservations, emails and phone calls that may never come in, now you have a website that is up 24 hours a day that can answer questions and be on call for you. And, as I mentioned, it cost as little as $300 a year* and only required a few hours of updating every once in a while.

* There were free options for creating an active online calendar, but they were VERY difficult to fine tune and customize. I went with a system that many competitors were using and they were well worth the money.

If you still really want to get involved and own your own hotel, here are some tips;
1. Live on-site. If you can't live on site, try to live within 30 minutes. This was my biggest issue, because there were people I trusted and people I didn't trust. Being 2 hours away meant that any issue would require a half day of driving just to get to the property and back.
2. Consider alternatives. Hotels, and generally any business classified for commercial purposes, have so many regulations. Be prepared to hear from the Department of Health, Department of Licensing, Department of Labor and Industries, Department of Revenue, and so on. How does one get around it? Maybe start by renting out your own place on AirBNB or VRBO / Homeaway. If you can't deal with guests for one unit, maybe owning multiple units isn't for you.
3. Don't get too excited! So many people have this dream of buying a property like this, retiring away from the city and just running a business during their retirement. Once the property was listed for sale, we had a lot of inquiries, but few were mentally prepared. I was always honest with the numbers and people were always surprised at the bottom line. Income was about what everyone expected, but the expenses were always much much higher than anyone expected.
4. Consider the neighbors and neighborhood. My biggest pet peeve about the town of Ashford is that Highway 706 East becomes a dead end road in the winter. You can drive up to Paradise, but due to road closures, people can't drive through the National Park.

Why is that a big deal? Because the amount of traffic that drives by during the winter months is a fraction of what it is during the summer. People avoid Ashford and drive around, they avoid the entire region altogether.

Compare that to, what I consider, an ideal neighborhood like Leavenworth. There are plenty of events during both summer and winter seasons. Even during Ashford's slowest months (April and October), Leavenworth still offers spring skiing nearby at Stevens Pass and Octoberfest. Highway 2 is a major alternative to I-90 for getting across the state. And best of all, my cell phone works in Leavenworth!

No more MDX

I finally gave up on the Acura MDX and traded it in for a brand new vehicle that 1. had around 30 miles on it when I bought it and 2. is under the manufacturer's warranty. The monthly payments stayed the same and I didn't have to pay anything out of pocket, so it was a no brainer for me. Size wise, it's a similar vehicle. Features wise, they couldn't be more different. I went with a new Jeep Wrangler Unlimited.

No leather, no navigation, no 3rd row seat, no roof rack, no heated seats.

4 months in, I'm still ecstatic about the decision and I don't think I'll go back to an Acura anytime.


The things I've noticed about the Wrangler.

1. Other people in Jeeps wave at you.

2. The gas mileage is about the same as the MDX. Except I don't need to use Premium anymore! (sidenote: the gas mileage was a few MPGs better with the stock Sport wheels / tires, until I put BFG All Terrain tires on them.)

3. The Jeep is noticeably narrower than the MDX. That might suck when I try to fit 3 adults in the backseat, but it's great when parking and maneuvering in tight spaces.

Hopefully my LAST post about MDX check engine lights

So here's my latest and hopefully last update regarding the recurring check engine light for my 2007 Acura MDX. I'm only sharing because I hope it might help someone else out in a similar situation.

In mid-February, I took it in to the Acura dealer for a regular oil change. And yes, the check engine light was still on. The gentleman checking me in was really friendly and asked about the light (he noticed it when checking my mileage).

The error code was P0420.

I just simply said I was trying to ignore it, since anytime I brought it in, I either had to fork over another $500, or I was told everything is fine and the CEL (check engine light) is turned off by a mechanic.

The service tech said he would look into it for me, free of charge, and sent me off with a loaner car which I wasn't expecting.

In my original post about check engine lights (about a year ago now), I expressed concern that it needed a new catalytic converter. Sure enough, after all that time, that's what was causing the CEL. I knew from the beginning that the catalytic converter was covered under an extended warranty by Acura. So fortunately, it was covered. Unfortunately, 1. I was told it also needs a new gas tank ($1800+) and 2. It took almost a year, and at least 6 documented trips, for them to figure it out!

I won't go into all the other issues I had regarding this particular visit to the dealer, but it is now 2 months later and the car is running great. I'm just glad it's all over.

So, to summarize,

February 2014 - I spent $492.98
November 2014 - $513.00
February 2015 - $2,112.90

Here's the thing about buying used cars, in my first 13 months of ownership, I've spent another $3,118.88 on unexpected repairs. That comes out to another $239 per month. I could own another car for $239 per month, maybe a Nissan Leaf so I wouldn't have to pay for gas anymore. Anyway, I digress. Like I said, I'm glad I don't have a check engine light anymore.

1994 Ford Ranger ignition coil - before and after

After trying to figure out what was wrong with my truck for several days, it turned out to be another bad ignition coil. I'm going to have to avoid buying these from O'Reillys, it's on it's 3rd ignition coil since I've owned the truck (almost 5 years, since mid 2010).

2007 Acura MDX clearance with an Inno Shadow roof top box

After purchasing my Inno Shadow 16 roof top box from the Bellevue Rack n Road last Labor Day weekend (2014), I've been avoiding many parking garages.

I found out pretty early on that my 2007 Acura MDX could clear 7'0" easily, so I could get into most garages in the Puget Sound without issues. However, anytime I saw the garage clearance start with a "6", I got really nervous.

Well, now I know, it can clear 6'10"! (assuming the sign saying 6'10" is accurate)

The main garage at Bellevue Square says it has a clearance of 6'10", and I was able to get in and out without any issues. There's even an inch or two to spare.

Another Acura MDX update (2007)

So my last few posts have been about my Acura MDX acting up. That was about 2 months ago in mid-November. Unfortunately, the check engine light issue has continued, although it's just the one code now. That code is P0420 and is apparently for the Catalytic Converter. It goes on and off at random times, and the 2 times I've mentioned it to Acura of Bellevue, they have just turned it off and said everything is fine. The light / code then stays off for another a week and returns after that. I can't tell if it's a specific type of gas that I'm using that causes it, but the Check Engine Light tens to come on during long (1 hour or longer) drives. I've been trying to find ethanol free gas, as I've read that Honda and Acura's sometimes have this issue due to ethanol, but I haven't been able to find any yet.

Stay tuned.