I gave up my career to be a stay-at-home mom. My kids play soccer in the fall. I drive my kids to and from school everyday because of my daughter's extreme car sickness. After reading these statements do you picture a mom wearing sneakers with the 'mom' haircut driving a minivan with balloons hanging out the window? Apparently that is what the makers of my Goodyear floor mats think. You see, I have a problem with the floor mats that my husband and I both have in our trucks. I'm not talking the cheap pieces of paper that are on the floor when you buy the truck. We purchased the mats from an auto parts store to a not so cheap tune of $50 a pair. Having two trucks, we bought two and they are only front mats.(Apparently kids in the back seat have clean shoes?) Now,as any parent knows, $100 is a lot. I could have done a lot with this amount of money: Diapers, groceries, the electric bill, the doctor bills, new shoes for my kids...you get the idea. But, instead, I made what I thought was an investment to preserve the carpet in our trucks.
So we go along our merry way with our floor mats. Driving the kids to school, going camping, to car shows, family events, church, and grocery shopping. Everything was fine until I was cleaning out my truck which, I admit, is not as often as it should be. I took my floor mats out to vacuum all the Cheerios and leaves and miscellaneous crumbs. When I did this, I saw a dark brown spot on the carpet right where my heel would be in front of the gas pedal while driving. Hmmmmm. Checking out the mat, I saw there was a small rip around one of the squares designed to catch mud, snow, and other unmentionables. Hey-this stuff happens, so being industrious, I just switched the passenger side and driver side mat. Off we go again. Here, there, and everywhere since my truck is the family vehicle. The next time I clean out my truck, I am disappointed to see the same ugly spot on the carpet. What is going on? I check to make sure that I really did switch the mats and it wasn't my imagination. Nope, I did it right. OK, well, no worries. My husband has the same mats in his truck, so I took mine out to his passenger side, and stole that one from him, since I am the only one who rides there. Have you noticed a pattern? I'm sure you can predict what happened last time when I pulled mats out of my truck to vacuum. Yep, that's right. Another hole. Apparently these mats were made for men with steel-toed loggers covered in mud, rocks, and ice, but they are no match for my size 9 heels I wear on the way to church.
Enter my email to Goodyear. I looked up Goodyear using a Google search, and emailed the marketing department explaining my extreme disappointment with the quality of their product. A few days later, I receive a very short email which tells me the name of the company to contact. So, another email goes out to Kraco Enterprises. I receive a sympathetic sounding email explaining that this company is the largest supplier of automotive floor mats in the US, and if I would kindly provide my phone number and a good time to call, he would arrange a method of restoring my confidence in their company. Excited and surprised to receive such a positive email, I emailed him back with my home and cell number and a time to call. This was a month ago.
So, here I am with my ripped floor mats, dirty truck carpet, and really no options but to spend more money on floormats made especially for my truck from another comany. I just hope this company catches on to the idea that woman drive trucks,instead of just lean on them while wearing bikinis and stilletos like they do on magazine covers. Apparently that's all they think women are good for when it comes to cars and trucks. Seems pretty sexist to me. In the end, I still have my ripped floormats, I still drive my truck, and I still wear heels, and I'm not giving them any more of my money.
As a note of interest: Kraco Enterprises did finally provide me with two new sets of floormats. Although they were lower grade than we had purchased, at least there was an effort made after an additional email. Thank you to Steve Lazzara for being the person who followed through.
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