Humbug
Posted: Mon 25 December, 2023 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Festering Season 1 Comment »And at last, Christmas Day is upon us.
That means that at least we’ll be getting rid of adverts for perfumes, excessive food, trite festive bullshit, and other horrors.
In return, we’ll now be seeing ones for holidays, diets, and stopping smoking. (I assume)
And we’ll be back to this old garbage in eight months or so.
In the meantime, may this bring to you and yours whatever works for you.
Solsticial
Posted: Thu 21 December, 2023 Filed under: Depression, Domestic, SAD 5 Comments »Shortest Day! Shortest Day!
Tra-la-la-la, it’s the Winter Solstice.
I don’t think I need to say any more than that, really.
Driving Change – Better Services
Posted: Thu 30 November, 2023 Filed under: Business, Cazoo, Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, Insurance, Thoughts 1 Comment »Following on from the utter farce with Cazoo being shockingly shit at customer services, it’s only fair to mention that there have been other companies who have made things a lot easier than they could have been.
First among those has been Enterprise, who have always been a stand-out for me when it comes to car-hire firms. They have one simple thing that makes them stand out (and I don’t understand why other hire firms don’t mimic it) in that quite simply, they come to collect you rather than insisting on getting to them. Alongside that, there’s been no hassle when I’ve needed to extend the hire period and so on. I know that really it’s “just” a case of doing the jobs they’re paid to do, but sometimes even that feels like a rarity.
Honourable mention also goes to We Buy Any Car, who again just did what they said they would – I got the old Kia to them, they checked it out (and explained the entire process really clearly) and paid what they’d agreed within the day. All the paperwork came through fine, the V5C change of ownership and so on, and it was all smooth and easy. (Cazoo wouldn’t do a trade-in on the Kia, as it was over their mileage limit, which is fair enough)
Alongside that, even my car insurers (Darwin Insurance) made life easy. Once I’d taken delivery of the car, I checked other insurance providers so I’d got a good idea of costs, and then called my current insurer to see what the charges would be with them. It turned out that sticking with Darwin would mean a premium that was about 50% higher than a different provider, so it made sense to cancel the current policy and start a new one for the new car. Darwin made that cancellation process easy and smooth – and it turned out that I’d paid enough that I got a refund rather than having to pay the cancellation fee. (Which has just *got* to be a win!) The new policy has also all come through fine and been easy to sort.
So, despite Cazoo being a monumental pain in the arse, there’ve been others who’ve made the entire thing a lot easier than it could have been. And that’s something I’m deeply thankful for.
Driving Change – Update/At Last
Posted: Mon 27 November, 2023 Filed under: Cazoo, Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised 2 Comments »At the start of November, I had to buy a new car, and used Cazoo to do so. Today, I finally received one. It has been a long process!
The first one I bought (a Kia Optima) was due to be delivered on November 6th. That day, after the delivery slot had closed, they called and said “While we were checking it, we found a problem with the rear bumper, so we need to respray it. No, I don’t know how long it’ll take, I’ll call you back“. (Spoiler : They didn’t call back) Not a great start to things, but… OK, I guess that at least they’d checked it.
Time went on. They came back a few days later, still saying “There’s a problem, we don’t quite know how long it’ll take“. I kept getting “we’ll let you know [in a couple of days time] when we know more” (which they never did, I had to call each time) We got to two weeks late, in which time “a problem with the bumper” had turned into “a problem with the gearbox” (on an auto box with less than 30,000 miles on it?!?) had turned into “we need to replace the gearbox, and don’t know how long that’ll take“.
At that point, they decided to take the Kia off-sale, and refunded my money. Which was deeply annoying. Understandable in the circumstances, but annoying all the same.
However, they offered a discount on another purchase with them (and had already offered a day-rate for inconvenience and travel costs) so I stuck with it, and ordered another car – this time a Vauxhall Insignia of similar age, and similar low mileage. (Under 20,000 miles for a seven-year-old car)
Thankfully, that one arrived today – and all seems to be OK so far. It’s had a small (in my terms) test-run to make sure it’s not totally rotten, and it’s going to get some testing over the next couple of weeks. (In that we’ll be covering a mileage in two weeks that is on a par with what it’s been doing annually so far!) As with the Kia, I’m as protected as possible – if it’s shit this week, it can go back with no penalty. From there it’s got a year’s warranty including Roadside Assistance, and it’s been paid with a credit card for that Section 75 protection.
Mind you, at the moment I wouldn’t recommend Cazoo to anyone. I’m hoping that this second purchase might ease my dislike of them – but the entire experience has been an utter, utter shambles. I suspect that they’re OK so long as everything runs smoothly and to the script, but as soon as things go awry they’re all at sea and nothing short of fucking useless.
- To date, there’s been absolutely no apology from them for pissing me about.
- They assigned someone as a “case manager”, but it took a week to even discover that. Additionally, there’ve never been any direct contact details – everything goes through their generic customer-service email account.
- That “case manager” couldn’t manage their way out of a paper bag. They had absolutely no understanding of things, and were strictly stuck to their script with zero flexibility.
- That “case manager” has also completely failed to escalate things as they got worse – or at least, if they have escalated, that’s never been made clear to me.
- The daily rate for “travel costs and inconvenience” was fairly pathetic at the beginning, and Cazoo then tried to reduce it during this whole process. (Sadly – for them – they’d named the rate in their early emails, so they were knackered on trying to reduce it)
- However, for some reason they’ve wanted receipts to prove I’ve had travel costs – God knows why, just paper-pushing bean-counters – and that caused real confusion with the case manager. No matter how many times I explained that I wouldn’t get a receipt until I’d paid for the extended car hire (and that wouldn’t happen until I’d taken delivery of a new car) we were stuck on the “But we need a receipt” loop.
I ended up going to the hire company and closed off one hire (and then started a new one) in order to get that receipt. Utterly farcical.
There’s still going to be some stuff ongoing in this – yes, they’re paying the daily travel costs rate, but that’s less than half the cost of the car hire I’ve had to have while they’ve been pissing about. I’ve been reasonable, in that I originally had a week’s rental to cover over the first delivery date and I won’t include that initial period in what they need to repay. But the subsequent three weeks hire have been entirely down to Cazoo messing things about, so I feel it’s only fair for them to pay for that.
So once I’ve paid for the final week (this Friday, assuming that the Vectra stays being decent) then I’ll send the receipts and an invoice (less what they’ve already paid) to them. From there it’ll be interesting to see what happens – I know what my expectations on it are, but we’ll see.
Right now, I’m just hoping that everything is now as done as possible. This month has been a ton of unnecessary hassle, and it’d be good to end the year with no further fuckery.
Misunderstanding
Posted: Mon 13 November, 2023 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Business, Customer Services, Domestic, Stupidity 3 Comments »Back in February, I got a specific credit card with two years of 0% interest on balance transfers. It’s all been good so far, and I”m down to about a third of the original balance, which is how I wanted things to be.
But today I got an email from them saying “Your promotional rate is expiring at the end of the month“, and talking about the money transfer rate. Which seemed a bit odd – and very early.
So anyway, I called them up to find out what was going on, and it turns out that (unsurprisingly) I’m a bloody idiot.
Turns out that the card also had a zero interest deal for money transfers – which aren’t, as I thought, the same as balance transfers. And that’s the rate that was expiring. I’m sure I should’ve known the difference between money and balance transfers, but in that general “What the fuck?” phase of things, I conflated the two things into one.
So anyway, all’s fine. And my acknowledgement of my own idiocy at least made the call handler laugh, so there’s that.
Unhelpful Timings
Posted: Tue 7 November, 2023 Filed under: Domestic, Finances, Insurance, KwikFit, Thoughts 2 Comments »The one downside of the whole “need a new car” thing is that I’d only recently sorted out all the MOT, Servicing, Tax, and Insurance Renewal for the current car. Which is, to say the least, a bit annoying.
Thankfully, the MoT hadn’t needed too much work – simply realigning windscreen wipers and headlamps, no major stuff at all – but still it’s annoying to have done all the stuff for ensuring it’s mechanically OK, only to then have something unchecked go ker-fut. (OK, *start* to go ker-fut!)
The insurance renewal is a bit more of a pain. I could make alterations, but I suspect that the massive difference in vehicle values might make it ridiculous. So I might have to cancel the newly-renewed policy – I know what that will cost, and it’s doable. And before I make a decision, I’ll find out what the costs will be, so I can properly evaluate the pros and cons.
Again, things could be far, far worse. It’s just annoying.
52
Posted: Sun 5 November, 2023 Filed under: Domestic 1 Comment »Fifty-flippin’-two. Blimey.
Onwards and upwards, as always.