Crunch – Replacement Cars
Posted: Thu 14 January, 2010 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts Leave a comment »Since the crunch, it’s been my “privilege” to have had two replacement cars, one through bloody Enterprise and one as a courtesy car from the bodyshop.
Depressingly, both of them have been Chevrolet cars. Two or three years ago they would’ve been Daewoo cars, but they’re now all rebadged as Chevrolets.
The Enterprise car was an Avgo (and who the fuck makes up these stupid names?) which was a woefully underpowered piece of crap. 0-60 time could be measured in days, and felt like it was driving on pram-wheels rather than anything useful.
The courtesy car is the model below the Avgo, the Matiz. Amazingly, it’s even more woefully underpowered than the Avgo, and appears to have been designed by Zanussi’s washing machine department. When I open the door on it, I don’t know whether to get in or throw in a load of laundry.
Based on a sample of two, I’ve got to say, Chevrolet cars are an awesome heap of shit. I suspect they’re only bought by hire companies and the like as “lowest common denominator” vehicles. Surely no-one buys them out of choice?
Crunch – Ongoing Debacle
Posted: Wed 13 January, 2010 Filed under: Customer Services, Driving 1 Comment »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.
Getting Rid
Posted: Mon 11 January, 2010 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving Leave a comment »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.
Quiet Weekend
Posted: Sat 9 January, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Weather Leave a comment »What with the weather and how work has been this year so far, we’re taking this weekend as a quiet one.
It makes sense in a lot of ways – we’ve still got a bundle of snow outside which is making driving entertaining, to say the least. (Both my experience of driving last night and this morning bears that out nicely) We’ve got enough food, don’t need anything, so don’t need to go out and do anything else this weekend.
And lo, a quiet one beckons.
Victimless
Posted: Sat 2 January, 2010 Filed under: Driving, News, Stupidity, Thoughts 2 Comments »Good to see that politicians haven’t made any resolutions to talk more sense…
On BBC News today, there’s a story about plans to add the £15 “victim support” surcharge to lesser offences like speeding, driving and using a mobile, shoplifting etc. According to the politicians quoted, these are all crimes “with victims”.
Under the plans, a fine of £60 for speeding, using a mobile phone while driving or not wearing a seatbelt would be increased to £75.
Government officials deny the move amounts to a stealth tax.
They argue that such offences are not “victimless crimes”, saying thousands are killed or injured on Britain’s roads every year
Now I’m sorry, but how the scrambled fuck is speeding not a victim-less crime? And while I don’t like the offence, I don’t see how driving while using a mobile actually has a victim.
In both those cases, if your speeding or use of a mobile causes an accident (or worse) then it’s not the speeding or the use of a mobile that gets charged – it’s driving without due care and attention, death by dangerous driving, or one of the other offences I can’t currently remember.
If I’m caught speeding, the “victim” is me – I’m the one penalised by the action of the crime. If I’m not caught speeding, nothing whatsoever happens. I’ve not driven away from the scene of an accident, I’ve not harmed someone else, I’ve not broken, stolen, or conned something. I’ve just got to my destination faster.