I’m heading up north on Friday – Boston and New York and it’s been an issue trying to get rid of my old car.

It’s amazing how I said so many years ago that I would keep the car until I ran it into the ground and that seems to be the case. The car really doesn’t seem to be worth much.

I have kept up maintenance all these years – I’ve always been good about that. But for some reason, it’s all falling apart. The roof leaks (it’s a convertible), the electrical system is shot, the car shakes, which may have to do with the electrical system and quite a few other things. But until last week, it all was perfect, or so I thought.

I have the car at the service station, and they ended buying the car for peanuts. It burns me up that I have spent thousands of dollars there over the years – thousands of dollars some years alone, and they wanted to nickel and dime me over the price of the car. But I needed to get rid of it and the burden, before I leave town tomorrow.

Friends wanted to buy it and I was ready to just give it away, but I didn’t want to sell it or give it away to anyone I know. I don’t trust it and I didn’t want to sell or give away a problem car to someone where they will always have problems with it. My good gesture will end up bad.

I agreed to sell the car to Carvana and they were to come out yesterday to pick up the car and pay me, but they sent me an email canceling the whole thing because Carmax, the almighty Carmax, says the odometer does not match what I told Carvana it was, even though I had it verified and I sent a photo of the current odometer. How Carmax is accurate and I, the person in possession of the car, is not, I don’t know.

I finally decided to donate the car to a local charity. But I needed them to pick up the car by today. I never heard back from them to arrange the pick up. I gave them all the info over the phone and I then just waited, but I was getting antsy, so I sold the car to the service station instead, just to be done with it. And for the past few days I have picked up every strange phone number that called – all robocalls, but thinking that one might be the charity. None were.

As for my trip – I’m taking one of my usual Thanksgiving trips where I start off in Boston and then take the train down to New York. I wrote about one of the train trips in 2017 called “A delightful train ride,” where I overheard a couple of older ladies and their conversation the whole train trip – they sat behind me on the train. You can read that here.

UPDATE: After I sold the car for next to nothing, I received an email from Carmax. They corrected the error and it’s updated on their website. A day late and thousands of dollars short.

Receive Tomversation via email each time I publish Click here.