Well, being the Internet, I’m sure there are many wrong pieces of information. Now that more search engines are relying on AI to bring back results, and AIs are known to hallucinate, anything you read should be taken with a grain of salt (as always). There are certainly vast quantities of opinions on every topic under the Sun, which may others will consider to be wrong.
I’m not going to discuss any of those topics, at least not in this post. Possibly at some point in the future. But for now, I want to talk about finding a local business. Let me explain.
Several weeks back, we got a chip in the windshield of our car. It started as a little crack, but it has since grown into a longer crack. I’m guessing this is because the weather is running from being cold / cool in the mornings to warm / hot in the late afternoons. The temperature differential might be causing contraction / expansion (respectively) of the windshield, thus causing the crack to lengthen.
We first tried our local car dealer to see if they could fix it. They said they don’t do windshields and gave us the contact information for someone who did. We contacted him, hoping the windshield could be repaired while the crack was still tiny. He said because of the type of car we drive, and the cruise control system it uses, the entire windshield had to be replaced. His price to do so was quite high.
We got a price from a National Windshield Replacement Company. They too had a very high price tag for replacing the whole windshield.
I talked about the problem with a friend of mine. He suggested a local place, here in town, that he said should be able to help.
Here’s where the Internet got things wrong.
I looked the business up online so I could get the address. When I put in the business name, I kept getting directed to a company with a different name that did the same thing. They had the same address / phone number as the business I was looking for so I figured maybe they company changed their name.
I looked up their location on Google Maps. It was a few miles away so I hopped in the car to go see if they could do anything to help. I drove to the location for the business, except there was no business there. Just a small house. I drove around the area, thinking maybe Google Maps was just off by a block or two. They are usually spot on so I didn’t expect that they had it wrong, but you never know.
I put the address in the car’s GPS system. It said the business was a few miles in the opposite direction. Fine. I gave it a shot and drove to the place the GPS said it was located in. Nope, just a big field.
I put the address in my phone’s GPS system (also run by Google Maps) and it directed me back to where I was before. The small house. Now I realize that this is Small Town America and people run businesses out of their homes but I’d think an auto glass place would need some place to do the work and store any inventory. This place didn’t even have a garage.
At that point I just gave up and came home. I suppose I should have called them but I was tired, getting cranky and in need of a nap. (Got home but didn’t get a nap.)
I’ll take up the search again tomorrow.
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