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?“
An Expensive Time
Posted: Tue 19 September, 2023 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, Finances, KwikFit Leave a comment »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
Posted: Thu 14 September, 2023 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Domestic, Driving, Finances, Legal Leave a comment »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.
Discharged/Recharged
Posted: Thu 4 May, 2023 Filed under: Customer Services, Driving 2 Comments »When I was starting the car in York on Sunday to come home, it took a lot longer to get going than usual. Never a good sign.
I figured that it had already had 300 miles of motorway driving in the last 36 hours, so was either not charging properly or the battery was fucked. (Which I’ve experienced before) But then by the time I got home, I’d forgotten about it, and didn’t check things. (I blame the post-drive “stunned monkey” phase)
So yesterday when I was due to go off somewhere (thankfully nothing essential, nor involving anyone else) the sodding thing wouldn’t start. Battery flatter than a very very flat thing. Tits.
As it worked out, I tried some mobile places for battery replacements, and while most were less-than-useful (“Oh no, fully booked today and tomorrow!” and so on, and one that promised a callback within 30 minutes to arrange and then only called back an hour after that, once I’d sorted out the people who did turn up) I did manage to book one, and it all went smoothly. He turned up early (having called to check it was OK to do so) and checked the car’s diagnostics as well to make sure it wasn’t a problem with the alternator or anything. Then when we opened the bonnet it was obvious that the battery was utterly, utterly fucked. Corrosion on the terminals and so on, definitely knackered.
Anyway, long story short, it’s all been replaced and tested, and everything is happy and smiley once more.
I’m off to be on-site again tomorrow so it’ll get a good run as a test-bed for everything, but so long as it starts and continues to do so, I’ll be happy.
(I checked back on here, and it turns out that battery was installed in October 2017, so it’s had a good run!)