"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." - George Orwell
Happy winter solstice, 2023!
As mentioned near the bottom of this post, the Subaru driver's side window rolled down, but refused to roll up. I ordered a replacement window switch (new in box) from a seller on eBay, which turned out to be a huge mistake. 98% customer satisfaction might as well be zero percent, in hindsight.
Warning: rant ahead...
I used the "Buy it now" feature to order the replacement window switch from this seller with a 98% satisfaction rating. The seller immediately issued a tracking number, which prevented me from demanding a refund, as the shipping date slipped further and further away.
They messaged me saying that "their order hadn't yet arrived". At that point I was thinking "WTF are you doing, selling something that you don't even have?". That's when I discovered that once a tracking number has been assigned, eBay assumes the item has shipped and the seller is off the hook for a refund - for a while, anyway.
The original promised shipping date window was Dec 9-14. Then it became the 19th. Meanwhile the guy kept messaging me, saying it would ship the following day, once it arrived. Over and over. On the 20th, I requested a refund, because the time had expired.
After I requested the refund, he messaged me again, saying it would ship the following day, once he got it. I told him not to bother, that Amazon had got me the item in two days and I no longer needed it. At that point he refunded the money. This seller constantly trying to paralyze me into not pursuing alternatives put me in a very sour mood for several days. I really should not let random people on the internet piss me off like that, but it happened.
I operate on the suspicion that nearly everyone I do business with intends to rip me off by providing poor service or product, but rarely is it ever this blatant and awful.
Rant over.
The AMAZON part that arrived last night went in today, so that's where the rest of this is going. You might notice that the new switch is dangling from the wires at the bottom right side of the door in front of the speaker. I plugged it in for the commute to work.
However it's best to not have it dangling by wires, so the wires don't fray over time. Everything out on the hood inside the powerhouse building at work. The boss said I could work on it on the clock... Merry Christmas to me, I guess, haha.
Below: Switch about to be mounted to the plate on the door panel.
Below: About to screw on the switch cover and door pull lever cover. Screws for this one come in from behind the panel.
Below: cover in place.
The trickiest part of this, as you would expect, is getting the door panel to pop into place. First you have to attach three electrical connectors. This means you have to hold the door panel up until you get it attached, or risk damaging the wires or connectors. Next you have to pull the door handle out so that the panel can slide over it. Then the panel has to go up and hook over the window opening. It doesn't want to go up once the door handle is in the slot. So lots of wiggling back and forth, with a lot of things interfering with moving it where you need it to go.
Eventually I just slammed it a few times with the heel of my hand and it popped into place very solidly. At that point it was two screws and covers, plus a dowel hold-down thing, and it was done.
Below: hold down thing
And there it is. I'll see how badly the door panel rattles on the way home. Hopefully not much.
Unfortunately the worst part of this entire repair was some eBay seller D-bag in South Carolina that in the end, had nothing to do with the repair.
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