Never really noticed what a pain car maintenance could be.

Last night I was rummaging through some old mail and came across a letter from Volvo from last month. It was opened and presumably read but I don't remember reading it.

Anyway, the gist of the letter was an announcement that Volvo extended the powertrain warranty to ten years on our 2000 wagon. The letter described a problem with the electronic throttle system (ETS).

When I was driving the wagon, two summers ago, it exhibited those same symptoms. The repair was about $800, out of pocket because, as I was told at the time, the car was out of warranty by five months.

The defect really seemed to affect a core system feature so it seemed reasonable to both me and my husband that the warranty would cover it. Not true then.

We had the money so we paid the bill. And I was all thanking God that we had the money at the time because the week before, the car's routine service had also cost $800 ... because they recommended that I buy two new tires. And my husband was like, "Yeah, but aren't you grateful that we can afford such repairs?" and I was like "yeah, I am."

End of story ... until I read the letter last night. I checked my files for the receipt but Jeff had recently shredded a bunch of old receipts, so no luck. Without the receipt, I would be unable to request a refund of the repair costs.

I called the dealership and, looking back in my Franklin Planner, I told their service department the exact day of the repair. They found a record of the service in their computer and promised to mail me a copy of the receipt. I should received it by Saturday.

In the meantime, there's a software update that needs to be applied. The letter indicated that and the service department confirmed. So I scheduled to take the car in on Monday morning. Just when I thought I was done with car repairs for a while!

And I'll ask them to check the air conditioning, too, because another service center replaced the coolant on Tuesday at a cost of $300 and, by the time I got home, it was blowing hot again. They said it would cost $1700 to repair, i.e., fix the leak. The problem is that Jeff is pretty sure that they caused the leak in the first place when they did the 120,000 mile service in May.