My patience is being tested!

Well today and yesterday have been extreme tests of my patience. In both incidents I felt like my head was going to burst because I was SO mad (and rightly so) and ended up crying instead because that's what happens when I get really mad. The tears just come and there's NOTHING I can do about it. It's kind of funny actually. Anyway, I need to vent, so here are the stories:


1. The Car
So this story starts out with me taking the car to All Tune and Lube to get our timing belt fixed because when Jeff called around for quotes, they were the cheapest. Here is the list of frustrations that we encountered:
-The day I took the car in the guy told me it would be $430 instead of $330. Um, big difference! Not knowing what to do, I called Jeff who called the store and was luckily able to get them to stick with the originally quoted $330. Alright so far, but it gets worse as we go along.
-After picking the car up an hour later than they told me it would be, I drove to Jeff's work to pick him up. On the way, I noticed a strange sound. Something was wrong. We called them and they told us to bring it back in as soon as possible.
-I brought it back and waited for an hour for them to fix it. After leaving, there was ANOTHER DIFFERENT sound this time. At this point we were very annoyed.
-So once again I brought it back. I sat and waited for half an hour before the guy came and said we would have to come back when there was another mechanic around. What's that about???
-Yesterday was my millionth trip back (and my last EVER as they totally have lost our business) and I was quite annoyed to be there. However, throughout this whole ordeal, we both kept our cool and acted very rationally. So I'm sitting there and the guy says that I'll be out of there in half an hour. "Okay," I think, "That's not bad." Well 45 minutes later I was still waiting and decided to ask how much longer it would be. This is when I got mad. The guy tells me that the part is not there yet and he doesn't know when it'll get there and then it will be another half an hour after that until I could leave. I had to get up and walk out of the store to stay calm and I called Jeff who helped me relax. I was furious! Seriously, who has to go back to a freakin' store 4 times for them to get something right?!! Although I so wanted to give him a piece of my mind, I was as nice as possible to the guy in the store and just let the tears flow once I got in the car. IT WAS SOOO RIDICULOUS!
2. Okay, I'll make this story a little shorter since I've written so much already. Back in December I got an Ipod Nano and for my birthday I got Nike+ shoes and the Nike+ adapter (it connects the shoes to your ipod and it's like a GPS/coach in your ear as you run--way cool). I've loved it! The ipod was working fine until about a month ago. It just stopped working for no reason. I took it to a Mac store in Orem and since they didn't know what was wrong, I then took it the Apple store at the Gateway. The people there were horrible. They told me that my ipod had been "exposed to large of amounts of water," and told me "sorry, we can't do anything about it." Excuse me? What? Large amounts of water? I think not. I am more than 1000% positive that my ipod has NOT been exposed to ANY water let alone "large amounts" of it. Yes 1000% positive! So I finally got around to calling someone about it last week and got nowhere. I called again today and with all of the How to Win Friends and Influence People principles in mind, I was still getting nowhere. But I refused to let it go because it's ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS that a $150 product can all of a sudden stop working and when I try to confront someone about it, it's all of sudden my fault. Bogus! I was on the phone for over an hour (most of it was sitting on hold and writing this blog entry) talking to three different people and feeling like it was a lost cause...but guess what? I thought this entry was going to start negative and end negative, but it's not! I just got off the phone with a wonderful person named Chad who is going to make sure that my Ipod is fixed free of charge! Can you believe that?! Even though that's what I expected in the first place and that's what I deserve, I'm still shocked! I seriously have had a trial with patience lately and I feel like I have just past the test!!!