Driving Change

Yesterday, while travelling to and from my on-site visit, the car started making Noises Of Imminent Doom.  Nothing super-evident immediately, but a vibration I could feel through the pedals, and power that was starting to “blip” – not quite to the level of stalling, but… it felt like that was on the way.

So I got home fine, and had spent the time figuring out What’s Next.

Bearing in mind that it’s on just over 220,000, I reckon the turbo is on its way out. I got this one in September 2018, and that was at a mileage of 115,000, so yeah, it’s about on-schedule.And while it was worth doing on a car with that mileage, I don’t think the same is true when we’re heading towards double that.

So today I spent time sorting stuff out – and as a result, I’ve got a new (to me) car arriving on Monday. Unexpectedly, it’s another Kia, but this time it’s an Optima, in Silver.  Not my favourite colour to drive (it disappears in rain/mist etc.) but again, meh, it’ll do.

It’s an automatic (which is what I’d intended to get) and fully ULEZ compliant – my current one isn’t – and that’s much more relevant with the recent expansion of the London ULEZ, as well the growing prevalence of them in other places I visit. Most importantly, despite being a 2016 plate, it’s got less than 30,000 on the clock – and while I paid more for it than I’d hoped/expected to, it still came in under budget at £10K.  Hopefully it’ll last a good while – although I suspect it’ll initially be a shock for a car used to four or five thousand miles a year to suddenly be doing my kind of miles and journeys.

As it is, it comes with a seven-day returns period if it’s horrible, a three month warranty from the garage (including RAC cover) which is about standard. I’ve also paid for it on a credit card, so Section 75 can cover things if it turns out to be a problem past that.

And once I’ve got it, the old car is going off to “We Buy Any Car” – I don’t expect much for it, but it’s better than paying out for scrappage or whatever!

So everything’s in place, and now I just need to hope it all works out. Time will tell, obviously.


MOT Thoughts

Following on from getting the car’s MOT Test done this week, I had a look back on the history of my car’s MOT tests (that’s just a link to the service, not to my specific vehicle)  Something I find interesting on it all is the inconsistency of what’s reported as faults.

I’ve noticed it before – but even when using the same MOT Test Centre, they don’t seem to check the same things every year.

As an example – last year I had advisory warnings about corrosion to the rear doors, and to some suspension components. This year? Neither of those problems was mentioned at all – and I know I haven’t had any work done to sort them out!

It’s not just this test centre, either – the same was true when I was using the Kia dealership down in Milton Keynes, and I know was true with the Saab (an exhaust back box that was blowing one year and not the next, for example) and I thus assume for the Ford as well. (I didn’t really check/track then)

Obviously it’s meant more for looking at current serious faults that would make a vehicle dangerous – although in that case I don’t quite get why misaligned windscreen washers or headlights result in a failure rather than a “needs fixing” – but the lack of consistency on the historical ones just leaves me with a bit of a feeling of “This is all just subjective and/or guesswork, isn’t it?


An Expensive Time

This September-October period is always an expensive one for me.

The main thing is the car – because I got it in October , it means that this six weeks or so includes MoT (and any associated fixes), Service, Tax, and Insurance Renewal. This time it also included a visit to the local dealership to get the handbrake cables replaced (because KwikFit decided they couldn’t/wouldn’t do it, and some other load of old cock that they told me) as it wouldn’t have passed the MoT with them un-fixed.

The handbrake thing is one that’s been going on as long as I’ve had the car – every other MoT gets a warning about “handbrake too high” or “little reserve play/motion”, whoever’s fixing it does something, and it’s OK again – but it got a better-ish fix at KwikFit last year, and then got worse again recently.  So far the newly-replaced cables seem to have sorted everything though.

Anyway, the MoT was yesterday, and it passed fine.  It failed initially (but only for misaligned windscreen washer and misaligned headlights) but was then fine.  Not bad for a car with 220,000 on the clock!

The insurance renewal was mentioned elsewhere, as it was farcical, but is now fine – and I’ve managed to keep it at the same level as what I was paying for the last year, so happy day.

Alongside that (because God Knows, I’m shit at planning) it’s also been time to sort out my tenancy renewal on the new place – which has involved a small-ish raise in rent, although not as much as initially suggested.  And then I also ended up organising for a company to come and deal with the front garden and so on, because it’s a bombsite and needs dealing with (and I am emphatically not a gardener!)

So yeah, it’s all been a bit costly.  Utterly doable though (which is lovely, and still a good thing compared to ten years ago) and at least I know it’s now all organised, so the rest of the year isn’t too bad at all. Thankfully!


Insurance Renewal Fuckery

This being the time I bought the current car, it’s also time for that annual festival of fuckery – Insurance Renewal.

I knew that this year was likely to be a pain in the arse – there’s been plenty of coverage about how insurance premiums have gone up massively as part of “the cost of living” (which in the case of insurance etc. seems to me to be just rabid profiteering – I don’t see how inflation and food costs have a knock-on effect to the car insurance industry!) so I was expecting it to be stupid. I just wasn’t expecting quite how stupid.

So – I got my renewal letter through from my current insurers, and they’d managed to double my insurance. For no changes – the address change happened before last renewal and the car hasn’t changed (other than in losing value for having been driven another 25,000 miles)  But no, somehow they feel they can justify doubling the price.

Well, frankly they can fuck off.

So off I went to that site with the meerkats (because it annoys me less than the one with the opera ‘singer’, or the one with the weirdly confusing existential ads that make no sense) and looked at what was available.

As it turns out, I got a deal with a different insurer for all the things I wanted, and paying the same as I have been this year. Which I reckon is a total win, all told.  So far it’s been painless – I’ve cancelled the renewal on the current one (while laughing on the phone at them, because doubling the quote is just fucking ridiculous) and the new one is in place to start in early October.

But it does make me wonder about what the business model is for so many of these insurance places. I have to assume that there’s a huge number of people who just blindly accept the renewal cost without looking elsewhere (and if that’s the case then they bloody well deserve to be ripped off, in my opinion) but that’s pretty mind-boggling, given the prevalence of these comparison sites and so on now.


Pods

Ages back, while I was still in Tiny House, there was an offer going on for a particular brand of laundry pods – my usual brand of laundry detergent, but the pods instead of the liquid.  I took advantage of the offer, but then didn’t use the pods until after I’d moved here.

So far they’ve been OK, but nothing special. Not massively impressed – to the point of “wouldn’t bother getting them again”.  They’ve been doing the job, but… yeah, nothing epic.

Anyway, this week I saw an advert on TV for (a different type of) laundry pods, which showed people putting the pod in first and then covering it with the laundry to be washed.

Oh!“, I thought. “I didn’t know that was how they’re supposed to be used“.  (I’ve been putting them on the top of the laundry or in the middle, same as I did with the liquid dispenser)

So I looked at the instructions on the container of my ones, and yep, pod under the washing, and if it’s a large load or hard water (which my area is) then use two.  Which is another “ooops”, as I’ve only been using one at a time.  (Because you pretty much expect it to be in a “one pod per wash” set up – or at least I did!)

Yes, I should’ve read the instructions. But I’ve been doing laundry now for decades – and I’m a boy – so that wasn’t my first consideration.  Ah well. Live and learn.

As a result, I’ll just have to see how they go when I’m now using them properly. Should be entertaining…


Cleaning Up

One of the best decisions I made when I moved to New Place (almost a year ago already!) was to take on a regular cleaning service for the house.

I’m not a horrible house-keeper in general – despite what a couple of now-exes said – but I also make no claims about being perfect. There are things I won’t notice or worry about until they get (by my standards) bad, but then I’d always handle them.  But when I moved out of Tiny House, the moving of furniture etc. made me realise that there were things I hadn’t done at all (like moving the bed to get under it for cleaning purposes)

So with this one, I have a service that comes in once a month and does a general cleanup.  It only needs an hour a month (and they keep on being surprised by this, that a man living on his own isn’t some kind of absolute sty-dweller) but it means everything’s being kept up to date.  To me, that’s absolutely worth what I’m paying.

The only thing that annoys me though, is that, despite each person saying “Oh, I’m so OCD about cleaning” and so on, not one of them has been able to clean stuff and then put it back where it was.  I suspect it’s a thing that’s meant to say “Yes, we’ve cleaned round this”, and that’s fine – I’m sure they have customers who need to see that sort of thing, otherwise they’ll feel the work hasn’t been done.  Thankfully, I’m not that sort of customer.

So anyway, I understand the motivations, but it still grates a little.  But still, having the service is worth those minor irritations.


Finance Trials – Follow Up

Following on from my complaint to the Financial Ombudsman about [Company A]’s fuckery, I got a response this morning from them.

Well, I say a response. More of an acknowledgement. With this in it…

We try to resolve complaints as quickly as we can. But there’s currently a very high demand for our service – so it might take around four months before a case handler gets in touch with you and starts looking into your complaint.

(That’s their emphasis on the timescale, not mine)

So on current evidence I’ll be lucky to hear anything at all before 2024…