A Day in the Toilet

Robert - We had planned to do some sightseeing on Prince George today but that was overtaken by events. Shortly before we were to set out, our toilet broke. Now there are a number of things you can do without when you are on the road. No stove, you can eat out. No refrigerator, buy a cooler and ice. No air conditioner, buy a fan. No toilet, hard to answer nature's call at 3:00 a.m. when the bath house is 100 yards away.

I got on the phone and found one RV dealer who said he could take a look at it but we had to bring the rig to him. We packed up and got there around 11:30 a.m. We had all planned to do laundry later than day so Connie, Stan, and Leslie took the dirty clothes to be washed while I stayed with the trailer. They started to work on it a little after 1:00 p.m. and soon discovered two things; first there was a broken part inside the toilet that enabled it to flush, and second, they didn’t have a replacement part. The choice came down to staying in Prince George for another week without a toilet while waiting for a repair part or installing a new toilet. We picked option two. As a bonus, we ended up with the old toilet in a box just inside the trailer door. It was too late to call to find out if there was a three year warranty on the old toilet and if there is they might want to see the broken parts before honoring it. I will make some phone calls Monday morning to find out if we can abandon the old toilet in the next dumpster.

Just minutes after I changed to the new toilet to a charge card, I got a call from the charge card Fraud Monitoring Unit. They were calling as the charge pattern they were seeing was unusual. (We don’t often buy toilets in Prince George.) I explained everything was alright and could they put a note in the file not to get alarmed by charges in Canada and Alaska. I was told I would have to deal with Customer Service for that. We got back to the campground and set up the trailer for the night. Leslie called Customer Service while I set off to get fuel for Snowflake. Diesel fuel in Canada is about a dollar a liter and Snowflake needed almost 75 gallons (almost 300 liters). When I gave them the charge card, it came back, “Charge Denied!” To say I was a little bit angry is way too mild. I called Customer Service and raised Hell with them. Every time the person there would launch into a “I’m so sorry for your troubles, etc.” I would tell him I didn’t want to hear this crap, just fix the problem! Within a few minutes he would try to explain how sorry he was and I would once again tell him I didn’t want to hear this crap and to FIX THE PROBLEM! After about 5 minutes, I was told to try the charge again and this time it worked. He was unhappy that I called him an idiot but I was unhappy standing in a gas station with a slip of paper that said, “Charge Denied!”

This definitely wasn’t the best day on this trip.