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Ok it's only been a week since the last award ceremony but I needed a rant...
The Gold Embossed Parchment Certificate for Entitlement goes to...
The guy who demanded an unaccompanied test drive of a brand new £65,000 vehicle over the weekend directly after describing taking to me as a 'waste of time'. I had spent ten minutes with the guy, he didn't want to test drive it with me, had no idea which model he was interested in and (although I know he owns a very large business and probably could afford it) had given precisely zero thought to how he was going to pay for it. "I'm not going to spend any more time talking to you until I've you've given me the car for the weekend and it has to be this weekend. I'm not prepared to spend that amount of ...yadda yadda yadda."
Good news! There is actually a business model that caters to people like you who obviously don't want to buy a car but want to turn up at some social event big timing it about your new wheels. It's called 'car rental'.
The Well Polished, Shiny Trophy for Nitpicking goes to...
The couple who found and bought a perfectly sensible low mileage used car. They negotiated on price based on 'the boot being a bit heavy' and the perfectly understandable fact that they wanted to pay as little money as possible. Within two minutes of shaking hands on a price and signing the papers they were out by the car trying to find problems with it. Triumphant in their assessment of the paintwork as 'used' (funny to find that in a used car isn't it?) they demanded to know how long it would take for us to respray about half of the bodywork, for free of course.
After a brief conversation where it was hinted that they should probably cancel this order and buy a brand new car they left in a huff having decided it wasn't so bad after all. The next day they were on the phone hooting about the boot again. Could they have more money off? Could we replace the broken parts? "What broken parts?" we asked. "We've been on the internet and the gas struts are broken." They said.
...so off to the workshop it went. And back it came an hour later with a report from the tech which pretty much amounted to a post-it note asking "WTF are you talking about?"
We were all pretty surprised so the whole showroom emptied into the car park and we were equally bemused. It was a bog-standard saloon with a typical tiny boot with 30cm gas struts, you press the boot button and it pops up a bit and then you lift it. The struts take the weight and hold the lid where you leave it or if you give it a bit of a push it glides open. Puzzlement.
Eventually time passed (as it tends to do) and Mr & Mrs Gas-Strut arrive to pick up their new crapwagon. Much theatrical straining and grunting ensued as they desperately tried to pretend that the boot was too stiff to open in a normal manner. The manager and I stood around in some confusion and after both opening and closing it several times in front of them we noticed that they were pushing on the wrong part of it - directly above the hinge mechanism. We had a brief chat about leverage and showed them how to do it but try as we might we couldn't persuade them to push on the correct part.
In the end we ordered them some new gas struts just to try and get some peace but warned them that when they invariably turned out to be exactly the same we would not be doing anything else. The next day the struts turned up and we also had a message from them to say there was a problem with one of the buttons on the dash - fair enough. No worries about fixing shit that's actually broken. I called them back to book them in to the workshop but couldn't get through and left messages on all of their phones.
This was two weeks ago and we haven't heard from them since.
The Bronze Statue of Odin in Honour of a Lack of Perspective goes to...
The otherwise pleasant young couple who failed to understand that a used car is not a new car. "Well this looks like it has been driven a bit, I'm not happy with the seats: you can see they've been sat in... have you replaced all the parts in the engine? I don't want one that's less reliable just because it's got a few miles on it..."
Sit down guys. This is going to take a while.
The Gold Embossed Parchment Certificate for Entitlement goes to...
The guy who demanded an unaccompanied test drive of a brand new £65,000 vehicle over the weekend directly after describing taking to me as a 'waste of time'. I had spent ten minutes with the guy, he didn't want to test drive it with me, had no idea which model he was interested in and (although I know he owns a very large business and probably could afford it) had given precisely zero thought to how he was going to pay for it. "I'm not going to spend any more time talking to you until I've you've given me the car for the weekend and it has to be this weekend. I'm not prepared to spend that amount of ...yadda yadda yadda."
Good news! There is actually a business model that caters to people like you who obviously don't want to buy a car but want to turn up at some social event big timing it about your new wheels. It's called 'car rental'.
The Well Polished, Shiny Trophy for Nitpicking goes to...
The couple who found and bought a perfectly sensible low mileage used car. They negotiated on price based on 'the boot being a bit heavy' and the perfectly understandable fact that they wanted to pay as little money as possible. Within two minutes of shaking hands on a price and signing the papers they were out by the car trying to find problems with it. Triumphant in their assessment of the paintwork as 'used' (funny to find that in a used car isn't it?) they demanded to know how long it would take for us to respray about half of the bodywork, for free of course.
After a brief conversation where it was hinted that they should probably cancel this order and buy a brand new car they left in a huff having decided it wasn't so bad after all. The next day they were on the phone hooting about the boot again. Could they have more money off? Could we replace the broken parts? "What broken parts?" we asked. "We've been on the internet and the gas struts are broken." They said.
...so off to the workshop it went. And back it came an hour later with a report from the tech which pretty much amounted to a post-it note asking "WTF are you talking about?"
We were all pretty surprised so the whole showroom emptied into the car park and we were equally bemused. It was a bog-standard saloon with a typical tiny boot with 30cm gas struts, you press the boot button and it pops up a bit and then you lift it. The struts take the weight and hold the lid where you leave it or if you give it a bit of a push it glides open. Puzzlement.
Eventually time passed (as it tends to do) and Mr & Mrs Gas-Strut arrive to pick up their new crapwagon. Much theatrical straining and grunting ensued as they desperately tried to pretend that the boot was too stiff to open in a normal manner. The manager and I stood around in some confusion and after both opening and closing it several times in front of them we noticed that they were pushing on the wrong part of it - directly above the hinge mechanism. We had a brief chat about leverage and showed them how to do it but try as we might we couldn't persuade them to push on the correct part.
In the end we ordered them some new gas struts just to try and get some peace but warned them that when they invariably turned out to be exactly the same we would not be doing anything else. The next day the struts turned up and we also had a message from them to say there was a problem with one of the buttons on the dash - fair enough. No worries about fixing shit that's actually broken. I called them back to book them in to the workshop but couldn't get through and left messages on all of their phones.
This was two weeks ago and we haven't heard from them since.
The Bronze Statue of Odin in Honour of a Lack of Perspective goes to...
The otherwise pleasant young couple who failed to understand that a used car is not a new car. "Well this looks like it has been driven a bit, I'm not happy with the seats: you can see they've been sat in... have you replaced all the parts in the engine? I don't want one that's less reliable just because it's got a few miles on it..."
Sit down guys. This is going to take a while.
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