MoT Day
Posted: Tue 16 April, 2024 Filed under: Domestic, Driving Leave a comment »Well, today’s the day of the new (to me) car’s MoT, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens. Let’s hope it just cruises through.
[Updated : It passed, no problems and one minor advisory]
Literal vs Lateral
Posted: Fri 12 April, 2024 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts Leave a comment »One thing I’ve found fascinating with people – both where I live now, and previous places – is how literal they are, even when it means they take longer to do things.
For example, where I now live there are several junctions where turning right onto a busy road can mean significant delays for people. But most of those junctions also have roundabouts a short distance up the road if people instead turned left.
So here, for example – the scenario is that I’m pulling out of the Stephenson industrial estate, wanting to turn right.
If I turn left, it’s 400m to the roundabout. It’s a simple thing, an 800m round-trip, and far faster than the delay when waiting to turn right. But no-one does it. They’re so locked into “I’m turning right” that they somehow don’t even think about turning left instead.
On another regular drive, in the run-up to another roundabout, the left-hand lane gets utterly jammed, waiting for a safe gap in which to get out and turn left. But if one takes the right-hand lane, it’s all too easy to get up to the front, go all the way round the roundabout and then come off to that same route – well before the equivalent drivers in the left-hand lane have caught up. Yes, it’s effectively a 450° turn, but it’s *so* much quicker. And again, people are locked into “I’m turning left” and seem to not see the alternative at all.
It’s all very odd. I mean, I’m glad I can look at it and see those lateral decisions that make life easier, but I do find it fascinating that so many people simply can’t/don’t do so.
Car Progress
Posted: Fri 8 March, 2024 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Thoughts Leave a comment »Somehow I’ve already had the new (to me) car for three full months, and thankfully it’s turned out to be a good buy.
I had my concerns – for a car registered in 2016, a mileage of 18,000 is gobsmackingly low, so I did wonder if it had spent a lot of its time in garages or whatever, but it seems that the previous owner just didn’t get out much. Obviously that is not the case with me, so that mileage has already increased by a third. (6,000 miles in three months – yeah, that’s about standard for me)
It’s proved to be an absolute beast on the motorway, and just handles all the miles I’ve thrown at it so far. It’s weirdly quiet in general – which isn’t a complaint, just an observation that a diesel vehicle still doesn’t feel like it’s meant to be that quiet! It’s also sitting happily at an indicated 49Mpg. I’d be happy if that were slightly better, but it’s a decent enough figure for my purposes.
It’s also meant that I’ll be able to split the costs of MOT / Servicing and Tax / Insurance Renewal – I got it with about six months MOT left, so that’ll be due in April, and Insurance etc. isn’t til November/December, which is definitely nicer than having Everything Due All At Once.
There are niggles – primarily it turns out that what I’ve got is a 2015 model that was registered at the start of 2016, so it’s just missed out on having better tech integration (no Apple CarPlay, for example) although I can – and will – fix that with some form of aftermarket sortout. On the positives though, it means I also don’t have driver “aids” like auto start/stop , or the lane-change-warning stuff (that tried to kill me last time I had it on an Insignia) which is all fine with me.
All told, it’s worked out well.
Key Information
Posted: Fri 26 January, 2024 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Driving Leave a comment »When I got the new (to me) car it only had one key – although it had two fobs, it was just that the actual keyblade on one of them was missing. (Which is quite an achievement in the first place!)
I like having two working keys for the car – it means, among other things, that I can leave it with people (valets, MoT/Servicing etc.) without leaving my full bunch of house keys as well.
So I asked at the local dealership what the price would be for a replacement, and they quoted an OK-but-high price for it, saying it might take a couple of days from ordering in order to get the right one – oh, and have the V5 registration certificate as proof of ownership. And then didn’t get round to it.
This week though, I did a quick trip to my local(ish) Tesco that I know has a Timpson concession/branch at it. And (being organised, for once) I remembered to take the spare key fob with me. Nothing to lose by asking, and all that jazz.
So I asked, and got it done for £50 (less than a sixth of what the dealership had quoted) in less than fifteen minutes.
I’ve always been impressed by Timpsons (among other things, I like that they are open to employing ex-convicts and so on, opening doors that many places close) and I’m glad that I took the time to use them for this one.
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.
Driving Change
Posted: Wed 1 November, 2023 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Finances 2 Comments »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
Posted: Thu 21 September, 2023 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, KwikFit 4 Comments »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?“