The hire car got collected on Monday, and I was expecting to have my car back the same day. It’d been promised as such by the poxy bodyshop.

Only of course that’s not what happened.

They called me on Monday afternoon – well after the hire car had been collected – to say that “the computer hadn’t ordered things properly”, they were missing some parts that were needed for irrelevant shit like attaching the front bumper. So it wouldn’t be ready on Monday. No chance. Everything would be delivered on Tuesday, then they’d deliver the car to me.

Noon on Tuesday, they called to say that everything had arrived, it was all fitted, and they were going to get it cleaned before delivering it to me. Great.

Ten past noon, the manager called to say Um, actually, he’d taken my car from where it was parked to go to wherever it was for cleaning the car, and had scratched/dented the front wing on another car. Fuck me, crash damage while in the bodyshop – that’s got to be a novelty, if not a first.

Anyway, because it’s knackered, they tried getting a rental car for me, except no-one had one available. Fortunately they’ve eventually found a courtesy car for me to use – free of charge – while they finish everything off.

Even better, because they’ve made such a monumental fuckup of the entire thing, and already cost me two days off work (we’ll gloss over the entire “working from home” thing, shall we? Heh) they’re now also repairing/repainting all the other scratches I’ve built up on the car over the last three years.

So we’ll see what happens from here. I’ve got the courtesy car so I can get to and from work again. They’re currently saying it’ll be Friday now for the work to be done – I’m not holding my breath on that score, to be honest. But at least I’m back to being mobile, able to get to work and so on.

And once I do get my car back, it’ll be back to how it was when I bought it, and for no further cost than the insurance excess.

So while it’s all a bit of a clusterfuck, I think I’ll come out of it OK in the end. Fingers crossed.

At some point today, Enterprise Car Hire are supposed to be collecting the piece-of-shit hire car I’ve had since the accident on the 17th December.

I haven’t yet collected my own car, but according to the bodyshop that should be ready for collection today, or at latest tomorrow. Let’s hope.

So far, my experience with Enterprise has been unremittingly negative. It took them two days to even deliver the sodding car, and extending the hire for a third week was an exercise in stupidity, so I’m really not expecting them to arrive here today to collect the damn thing at all. Still, that’s not my problem – so long as they don’t try charging me for extra hire days due to their incompetence/idiocy. We’ll see.

Mind you, they also haven’t yet even charged me for the third weeks’ hire, so it’s not all a failure. But we’ll see whether they get that one right too.

In short though, I really wouldn’t recommend Enterprise Car Hire to anyone. While they might be a bit more expensive, I’ll stick with Avis in future, thanks.

Update : They actually came and collected the car by 10am. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they’re a lot more efficient at getting the car back than they are at delivering the damn thing.

Following on from Friday’s fuck-ups with Enterprise Car Hire, we’d organised for the Norwich office to come and collect me between 10 and 11am, bringing me back to the Norwich office to do the paperwork and collect the car to drive home. Simple, you’d have thought. But no – because Enterprise Car Hire are a bunch of abysmally slack useless bastards.

Just before 10, they called to say that because of the condition of the roads (which were OK for the main roads, but a bit dodgy on back roads) they wouldn’t make it for 10-11, and would instead come over between 2 and 3. Fine with me, at least I knew what was going on.

Except, well, that’s not what they actually did. Instead, they gave the job back to the useless fuckbags at the Diss office. (which I’d explicitly asked to not happen, as Diss office were – um – useless fuckbags) The people at the Diss office decided to bring a car to me – why they did this and used up two of the three staff at Diss, rather than coming over to pick me up, as Norwich had planned to do is a mystery – and supposedly left Diss at 1pm.

After lots of phone calls to the Diss and Norwich branches, the car eventually turned up at 5.15. If the Diss office of Enterprise Car Hire are to be believed (and that’s a bit of a leap) it took them four and a quarter hours to travel 20 miles.

I’ve got the car for two weeks for sure, and we’ll see what happens after that. I can’t wait to see how Diss fuck up the returning of the car. Still, so long as they don’t charge me for whatever they fuck up, that’ll be fine.

As it is, I’m just glad I’ve finally got the car. It means at least I’ll be able to get in to work tomorrow, and sort out the stuff that’s waiting for me there.

Because of the damage to my car (and that damn fence) I’ve had to make a claim on the car insurance for the first time. Of course, it’s going to cost me the no-claims bonus and so on – and result in having to note it if I change insurer for the next few years – as well as the excess, but it’s going to be better to pay out £300 than the fuck-only-knows-how-much for both car repairs and fence reconstruction.

So far though – and as with previous things where I’ve used their recovery services – I’ve been really impressed with Tesco Insurance. Having had the accident, the recovery vehicle was with me within an hour as promised.

On Friday, having called them at 9am to register the claim itself, I was told that the car would be taken to their recommended bodyshop – I did have the choice of using my preferred one, but then it’s fucking about with estimates etc. – within four hours, and that the courtesy car people (Enterprise car hire) would be in touch also within four hours.

By 10am, the garage had called me, explained they’d need to get a different company to lug the car, and the different company had also called me to arrange collecting the car. By 12 the car was on the way to the garage on the back of a flatbed. Efficiency personified.

The only cloud so far has been Enterprise bloody car hire. The promised callback didn’t happen by 1pm. Fair enough, it was a shitty and busy day, but they’re a big company, you’d think someone would’ve been able to call, if only to say “We’re really busy, but will get back to you”. I called Tesco insurance back, and they got hold of Enterpriuse, and promised a call back again within two hours.

And still nothing. I ended up calling them at 4pm, and still not speaking to the right place “because they were too busy”. They finally called back at 4.30 to say “We’re not going to get to you today”. And that was it, so far as the Diss office was concerned. They weren’t open on Saturday, so *shrug*. We might be able to get out to you on Monday. Maybe.

I did sort out going to the Norwich office to collect one on Saturday, but that fell through for other reasons. So now I’ll be getting picked up to get to the Norwich office, rather than Diss. Frankly, I’ve no confidence in the Diss office at all, and have explained that to both Tesco Insurance, and the Norwich office.

We’ll see what happens on Monday, and whether Enterprise manage to sort themselves out for this one.

Yet again today I’ve been involved in an argument about the costs of Dell vs. Apple laptops. It gets really old, really fast.

All the normal excuses get trollied out, “They’re not that more expensive really”, “Apple Macs are lovely, and built from a solid block of aluminium”, “Dells fucking suck” so forth, so fifth.

So for the sheer fuck of it, I decided to do a comparison. Dell vs. Apple Mac vs. HP (as one person recommended). HP isn’t really fair, as they don’t appear to offer much in the way of customisation.

The spec : An “office-ready” machine. (i.e. not Dell’s low-end inspiron, but corporate Latitude). 4Gb RAM. 500Gb hard disk (or highest size possible). Best possible monitor/screen resolution. And what we come up with is this :

Not the most convincing (once you’ve added in VAT – Dell and HP don’t show it ’til afterwards) but still the Apple is nearly £200 more than it’s nearest competitor.

Interesting though.

Today we’re off to Birmingham and the NEC again, this time for the BBC Good Food Show. It’s just been one of those months where we’ve ended up there twice. Mind you, hopefully we won’t be going back again ’til it’s time for the International Spring Fair.

The Good Food Show (and most of the others held at the NEC) is usually good, except that the NEC – and probably most other show venues as well – does insist on trying to stuff in as many exhibitors as possible. I understand that up to a point – after all, it’s good business – but it gets annoying when each aisle is wide enough for three or four people at most. That’s fine when people are moving along, but when they’re stopped at a stall and trying to either a) get to it or b) get samples of whatever’s on offer it gets ridiculous. At that point those “4-people wide” aisles become half the size (at best) because there’s people either side of them stopped and not moving.

I’m going prepared this time. No, I’m not taking a stungun – although that would be a good alternative – but I’ll be prepared to go and sit somewhere else, either with the laptop or a book, and just not get involved. It’s not ideal, because I’d actually like to be going round the stalls – but if I do that, the odds are that someone’s going to get hurt. And people, it won’t be me.