A Campbell River man put Midas Muffler’s lifetime guarantee to the test lately when he brought in his 30-year-old muffler for replacement.
“I got this Midas Muffler guarantee, lifetime guarantee as long as you own the vehicle,” Richard Miller said.
Miller owns a beautiful, cherry red and white 1966 Mercury pickup truck that he restored 30 years ago in North Vancouver, which included getting a new muffler and tail pipe put on it in 1994.
“I discovered a few weeks ago, I’ve got a hole in my muffler and I kept this in the glove compartment,” he said holding up a Midas Muffler guarantee in a branded envelope. “I go to Midas (in Campbell River) and I said, ‘I’ve got a guarantee, are you gonna honour it?’”
He said there was a little bit of humming and hawing “because they’re like, ‘Nobody keeps a vehicle for 30 years.’”
In addition, the guarantee says on it that after one year, there is a service charge of $9.95 to replace the muffler, and the local dealer called up head office to get some direction. He came back with “Yep, we’re going to honour it.”
Their computer didn’t have anyway to process the $9.95 so they didn’t even charge them the service fee.
“So, I got my free muffler,” Miller said. “Now, I thought that was really, really good of them after 30 years.”
The whole situation put Miller in mind of an old Midas Muffler TV ad from 1975 when they launched the guarantee. It involves ‘Old Man Crane’ rolling into the Midas Muffler shop in his old Ford Model A.
“And the boys are standing there. ‘Mr. Crane, we haven’t seen Old Man Crane since … and he interrupts, ‘I’ve got this Midas guarantee that says that Annabelle here is going to get a free muffler.’ And they give him a free muffler. So, I’m Mr. Crane!” Miller said with a laugh.
Miller’s 1966 Mercury pickup hasn’t exactly been sitting idle for 30 years but he does baby it.
“I’ve only put 30,000 miles on the truck since 1994,” he said.
So, he’s a little surprised that the muffler rusted enough to get a hole in it.
“Maybe lack of use, I don’t know,” he said.
Miller is a returnee to Campbell River. He went to high school here and met his wife at Miracle Beach but she was from North Vancouver and they relocated there after marrying in 1968. Then after retirement, they sold their Lower Mainland house and relocated to Campbell River in 2015.