What if People Bought Cars Like They Buy Computers?

[ZeroHour]

To make up for the duplicate joke Henyman

General Motors doesn't have a "help line" for people who don't know how todrive, because people don't buy cars like they buy computers -- but imagineif they did . . .

HELPLINE: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
CUSTOMER: "I got in my car and closed the door, and nothing happened!"
HELPLINE: "Did you put the key in the ignition slot and turn it?"
CUSTOMER: "What's an ignition?"
HELPLINE: "It's a starter motor that draws current from your battery and turns over the engine."
CUSTOMER: "Ignition? Motor? Battery? Engine? How come I have to know all of these technical terms just to use my car?"
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HELPLINE: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
CUSTOMER: "My car ran fine for a week, and now it won't go anywhere!"
HELPLINE: "Is the gas tank empty?"
CUSTOMER: "Huh? How do I know!?"
HELPLINE: "There's a little gauge on the front panel, with a needle, and markings from 'E' to 'F.' Where is the needle pointing?"
CUSTOMER: "It's pointing to 'E.' What does that mean?"
HELPLINE: "It means that you have to visit a gasoline vendor, and purchase some more gasoline. You can install it yourself, or pay the vendor to install it for you."
CUSTOMER: "What!?" I paid $12,000. for this car! Now you tell me that I have to keep buying more components? I want a car that comes with everything built in!"
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HELPLINE: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
CUSTOMER: "Your cars suck!"
HELPLINE: "What's wrong?"
CUSTOMER: "It crashed, that's what went wrong!"
HELPLINE: "What were you doing?"
CUSTOMER: "I wanted to run faster, so I pushed the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor. It worked for a while, and then it crashed -- and now it won't start!"
HELPLINE: "It's your responsibility if you misuse the product. What do you expect us to do about it?"
CUSTOMER: "I want you to send me one of the latest version that doesn't crash anymore!"
--------------------------------------------
HELPLINE: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
CUSTOMER: "Hi! I just bought my first car, and I chose your car because it has automatic transmission, cruise control, power steering, power brakes, and power door locks."
HELPLINE: "Thanks for buying our car. How can I help you?"
CUSTOMER: "How do I work it?"
HELPLINE: "Do you know how to drive?"
CUSTOMER: "Do I know how to what?"
HELPLINE: "Do you know how to drive?"
CUSTOMER: "I'm not a technical person! I just want to go places in mycar!"

 

[Maveric169]

That really would be funny

 

[NerdUprising]

That is more true than it is funny - it'd be good to have to throw at someone when they complain about how crappy a computer is

*saves for later usage*

 

[LeeJend]

The sad part is every one of those questions has been asked of Car Dealers and auto mechanics thousands of times...

The biggest waste of paper on the planet is user manuals. They are never opened, let-alone-read.

 

[Son Goku]

Someone mentioned this elsewhere. Reminded me of another joke, about Microsoft building cars. Old one, though this list has a top 20...

http://www.twoguys.org/~gregh/ms/ms-cars.html

20 Things That Would be Different if Microsoft Started Building Cars

1. A particular model year of car wouldn't be available until after that year - instead of before it.

2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you'd have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would just die for no reason, and you'd have to restart it. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this.

1. Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you'd have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this, too.
2. But that wouldn't work, you'd have to take the engine out, do nothing to it, then put it back in.

4. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought a "Car 95" or a "Car NT". But then you'd have to buy more seats.

5. Sun Motor Systems would make a car that was powered by the sun, twice as reliable, and five times as fast - but it would only run on five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, engine, fuel and alternator warning lights would be replaced with a single "General Car Fault" warning light.

7. People would get excited about the "new" features in Microsoft cars, forgetting completely that they had been available in other cars for many years.

8. We'd all have to switch to Microsoft fuel.

9. The U.S. government would be getting subsidies from an auto maker instead of giving them.

10. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

11. The air bag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.

12. The steering wheel would be replaced with a mouse and you'd need to memorize the keyboard short-cut for "brake".

13. For some reason the engine controller would need a 1G hard disk and would take 5 minutes to boot up.

14. They wouldn't build their own engines but form a cartel with their engine supplier. The latest engine would have 16 cylinders, multi-point fuel injection and 4 turbos, but it would be a side-valve design so you could use Model-T Ford parts on it. There would be an "Engine Pro" with bigger turbos, but it would be slower on most existing roads.

15. Your car would refuse to start with a message "Abort, Retry, Fail or Cancel?"

16. You would have to have a full service every 500 miles.

17. The speedo would read 70 even though you are only doing 50.

18. They would make a flashy convertible model, where if you raised the top the engine would overheat.

19. The entire engine wouldn't be in the bay at once, and the car would have to keep stopping and starting to load in the relevant parts.

20. Everytime you carried a new passenger you would have to alter the cars configuration settings. When the passenger alights these configurations would remain in place.