smart USA *very* prompt with refund

Many months ago we had placed a US$99 deposit with smart USA. We had planned to purchase a smart car in 2008 when they become available here in the US. But after test driving them, we decided that it wasn't for us, so Shirley bought a Honda Fit and I should be getting a Toyota Yaris within a month or so (we did a special order on the Yaris, so it takes a little while.

One week ago I sent a letter to smart USA requesting a refund of the deposit. Today the check arrived. I had read comments from people on a number of web sites, with the folks wondering how easy/hard it would be to get a refund if one were to decide to cancel the order. Well, at least in our case, it was a very simple process: mailed a letter and received the check a week later.

For anyone who might need to send for a refund, just write a letter listing your reservation number and stating your request, and mail it to:

smart USA C/O Internet Brands
ATTN: smart Representative
                               
909 N. SEPULVEDA BLVD., 11TH FLOOR
EL SEGUNDO, CA 90245

Like Shirley said, on a scale of 1 to 10, these cars get a 12 for appearance. But she was going to drive it in automatic shift mode, and felt it just wasn't responsive enough. Bummer. In manual shift mode (the way I'd tested it) I thought it was pretty nice. Oh well.

Brief visit w/ Barry and Karen

My good friend Dr Lavine (not a real doctor);his wife Karen, esq. (a real lawyer); my wife Shirley, MT (makes teeth); and I - Joe, SBG (short bald geek) all met for a brief visit today at Tampa airport. Barry and Karen were heading back home after vacationing with relatives, and had a bit of a layover in Tampa. Gosh, I don't think I'd seen Barry since I was up in the Pacific Northwest in August 2006 after my dad had passed away. And I'm guessing it'd been a few years since we'd seen Karen.

So we gathered at the Wharf pub in the airport and bs'd for an hour or so. It was like being back up in Portland, just shooting the breeze with friends. Very cool. Oh, and I tried to take a pic of the four of us by holding my camera out and shooting semi-blindly. From the left, going clockwise, that's Karen, Barry, Shirley, and me.

Garage hose - possible thanks to solar water heat

Back in April of this year, we completely disconnected our gas-fired hot water heater/tank, and had a passive solar water heating system installed. In the pic to the left, the silver tube hanging down is a vent hose from the old water heater. We'll need this if we hook up a tankless water heater as a backup to the solar system. Over to the right are the 2 water pipes for the solar water system. The nearest pipe (wrapped in black insulation) is the cold water feed, running up to the unit on the roof. The far pipe returns the heated water down to the house.

Well the installation included a spigot on each of these pipes, and given that there's really not a convenient outside spigot if we need a hose in the driveway (like to rinse the car off), today I picked up a hose and a hanger and hooked it up. Shirley's been wanting this for a while (I believe since April), so a few minutes time, and it's done. She only had to wait 6 months :)

Cool-N-Save - easy way to reduce A/C costs

We enjoy watching Living with Ed on television. Ed Begley, Jr. has been working to live ever-greener for 30 years, and the show never fails to give us several great ideas. A recent episode featured the Cool-N-Save product. The idea is to provide a gentle mist of water around the air conditioner condenser - only when the condenser fan is running - so that the evaporation of the water will help the air conditioner with its cooling chores. The projected energy savings are up to 30 percent! Given that the Cool-N-Save costs under a hundred bucks (US$87), it will be worth it even if our savings fall far below 30 percent. Here in Florida, air conditioning is one of the main power consumers of a home (for all-electric homes, water heating is the other real biggie).

Well, I've got quite a list of chores I've been wanting to get to around the house and the yard, so I took a vacation day today to tackle some of them. One of those jobs was installing our new Cool-N-Save unit.

The installation is very simple, although some might find the adequate instructions not quite detailed enough. So Shirley snapped a number of pictures as I installed the unit. We probably took 30 minutes to do the installation, but that was largely because we kept going back inside to fetch a felt pen, a wire cutter, a cable tie, etc. We've posted the installation sequence up on Flickr.

And with that, we are hoping that our footprint on the earth has perhaps become just a little bit smaller :)

Drove the smart car today

We've decided that the smart car is not for us. Today the "street smart" road show came to Tampa, so we finally had the chance to each take a very short test drive. But that was enough to make a decision.

Good stuff: The cars they had available are all the US model ...the slightly larger body, US engine and transmission ...the only changes that will be made prior to 2008 release will be slightly different wheels, a speedometer that displays speed as miles per hour, and an enhanced shifting system. I drove the car in 'manual' shift mode, which means I could either use paddle shifters at the steering wheel, or the stickshift to change gears on the clutchless system. The released model will have a changed gearshift. And I thought the acceleration was ok, the cars look very cool, and it was quite comfortable and roomy inside.

Bad stuff: The steering wheel position does not adjust. The horn is not easy to activate; I like to have my thumb resting on the horn button to deal with these crazy Tampa drivers, but I'd have to move my hand to get the horn on this car. And with a car this small I do want to be able to hit that horn very quickly. We've got an order in already for a Yaris and that will be primarily my car. The smart would have been primarily Shirley's car, and she wants an automatic transmission. The smart is pretty unresponsive in automatic mode. And Shirley felt that some portions of the interior and the inside door handles were a little "cheap". And she also did not like having to move the hand so much to hit the horn.

So we decided that for about the same money, we should be able to get a different car that has better performance, more storage, still be pretty small, and get about the same mileage. So far we've driven the smart, a Hyundai Accent, the Toyota Yaris, and a Honda Fit ...and have looked at a Nissan Versa.

It's a little bit of a bummer giving up on the smart, but we know we'll find something that will fit our requirements.