BTW – the mocking comments about my wife’s pregnancy related car incidents (PRCIs) in the previous post were here suggestion not mine.? I would never be so cruel to her about it as she is about it herself!
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? The Wiggles would have been proud of our car: A 1999 red VW Golf.? I’ve always wanted a Golf and they are pretty well priced in the UK compared to Australia.
Which makes the following tale of woe all the more poignant.? We bought our car in good faith for 2000 pounds from a local dealer who seemed fairly decent. In fact when we picked it up he had had the timing belt changed because it was sitting around 60 thousand miles.? ? We? settled on a Golf also because it is a good resale car and we want to get a good amount for it, and quickly, when we go back to Oz.? The? cash would be a good month and a half living expenses for us – perfect while I get a job.
Things? have gone from bad to worse since then.? Not that the car drove badly – it drove great. But when it had its MOT at the mechanics who work for that particular car yard(the MOT is? a yearly over-the-pits check that is compulsory in the UK) it failed its emissions test. Next thing we know we are being told it needs a new engine and a new gearbox.? We were assured that the engine would be purchased second hand and with the? warranty we bought? we would come out? of it about 300 quid down.
That was in April.? We have not seen the car since.? Every time we ask? we are told that they cannot find an engine for under 1200 pounds.? We have been given a succession of increasingly rubbish “courtesy cars”, though goodness knows if that’s the courtesy car then I have to? wonder what the rude car looks like. We are now driving what could only be described as a purple biscuit tin on wheels, with all of the comfort and extras one expects of such a tin.? Jill can’t drive it as it has no power-steering and it is so small the steering wheel digs into her five-months pregnant belly!? The brakes are loose and with Jill’s track record of pregnancy related car “incidents” (PRCI)? I am none too confident. By the way we were told that we owe 200 pounds for the damage to one of their courtesy cars in one of the aforementioned PRCIs.
All of this was offset by the promise that if we did not get our car back they would provide us with another because they felt responsible for the dud, we would pay a few hundred and we’d be in the clear.? All sorts of cars were promised, including “a really nice Honda that drives well”.? It must be a Honda Unicorn because I haven’t seen it and I’m sure it doesn’t exist.
We now have nine weeks before we get back and there is no car forthcoming and things are getting a little nasty.? Now it looks as if they are not going to honour their word about another car.? The only reason I hung on for so long driving their courtesy cars was due to that promise.? Trouble is I have no legal leg to stand on.? I bought? the car and have, stupidly, taken them at their word.? Mind you, this is a used car dealer we’re talking about.? What possessed me to take him at his word?
The follow options are open to me.? Tell me what you think.
1. Jihad (TCH protest outside the business)
2.? Scrap my car? for a couple of hundred and cut my losses
3.? Get legal? advice (the used car dealer says he has a brother in the legal profession – Surely not! – Ed)? ?
4. Print 1000 posters and put them up around Sheffield saying “Don’t buy a car from Chapel Motors”.
Number 4 is looking good at the moment because there are heaps of areas in Sheffield I haven’t been to yet and I could do with the walk.
And what about the issue of my personal godliness?? I want to walk away from this knowing that God is a better source of security than a month and a half’s living expenses when I get home.? Hebrews 13 has been looping in my head, especially the part about keeping our lives free from the love of money and being content with what we have “because the Lord has said, ‘Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.’”? As Steve T said to me this morning “You cannot rip off the people of God, he will always see that justice is done.”
BTW – I really mean number 4. DON’T, under any circumstances, buy a car from Chapel Motors in Cemetery Lane, Sheffield.? As its location suggests, it’s where cars go to die!
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