Who Can You Trust?
Buying most things (books, CDs, etc.) is straightforward enough. But buying expensive items, particularly rare or one-time purchases (homes, cars, etc.), and maintaining those items is more complicated. There are a lot of reasons for this. Because there is often more to know about expensive items, there can be a knowledge disparity between buyer and seller. Given this disparity and the fact that there generally isn't an ongoing relationship between the buyer and seller based on repeat purchases, there is significant incentive for unscrupulous sellers to cheat buyers. And all of this is exacerbated for the buyer by the emotional strain of spending a large amount of money, especially knowing all of this. So when one is making a large purchase, one wants to deal with someone that can be trusted. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as my wife and I have been buying an apartment and trying to fix a persistent problem with our car.
Back in May, when we decided to look at apartments, we went on-line, found apartments that looked promising in our neighborhood, and made appointments to see them. During the first round of appointments, we engaged an agent. When we saw the apartment that we wanted, we didn't mention to the seller's agent that we had our own agent, but we made the bid through our agent later that day. Since both agents work for the same company and the seller's agent didn't want to split the commission, she spoke to our agent's supervisor and got the deal to herself. That in and of itself doesn't bother me, but that she has been worthless as an agent does. To be fair, the problem doesn't seem to have been that she was serving the seller's interests at the expense of ours--she's just lazy.
When we were preparing the package to be submitted the co-op Board, I asked to submit the paperwork for the renovations that we wanted to do at the same time, so that we could start as soon as we closed. Without checking, she said that no such paperwork would be necessary for the work that we wanted to do. I doubted that, so I pressed her, but she assured me that it wasn't necessary. At our meeting with the Board last week, we learned that of course the paperwork would be necessary, and we learned this week just how extensive it would be. We are closing two weeks from today. We have to find contractors, get all of the necessary paperwork done, and wait for approval before we can start work, and then we have to complete the work before we can move. It appears that one can't trust real estate agents.
The problem with the car began on Easter last year. When the car has been driven on the highway for a while, it stalls when it comes to a stop. It will start right back up, but it will stall as soon as it is put back into drive. At first, the problem seemed random, and was difficult to reproduce. We tried dry gas, premium gas, changing the fuel filter, and bringing it to a mechanic twice. The mechanic was unable to reproduce the problem, and everything else we tried seemed to have a random effect. Everyone thought that it had something to do with the fuel system. Eric suggested that it might be the TPS (which is either the throttle positioning sensor or the toilet paper system). Finally, we brought the car to a dealership. They did find something loose in the fuel system, but on further testing they found that correcting that hadn't fixed the problem. They were able to reproduce the problem and then fully diagnose it. The culprit was a transmission solenoid, and there were a number of other problems as well (to the tune of $1,200 plus tax). It's the fact that they tested until they found the problem (we hope) that makes me trust the dealership though I never entirely trusted the mechanic. We'll soon see whether or not that trust is misplaced.
Having to think about whether or not the people one is dealing with can be trusted is wearing, and over time, it erodes the larger sense of communal trust, and with that, community itself. If I trust too much, I end up feeling naive and incompetent, and if I don't trust enough, I feel cold and disconnected. It's a basic human impulse to assume that things were once easier, less complicated, but I wonder if that's true.
7:40:23 AM 
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