.. 4th biggest investment bank collapses. Stock market values drop off vertical cliffs and incalculable sums are lost every hour. Thousands of people lose their jobs and that’s not even close to the end of it. High street banks panic and merge, huge insurance providers get emergency funding and de-facto nationalisation. A quarter century of greed comes crashing down, and we’re left wondering what the fuck will happen next.
But that is NOTHING compared to how I’m feeling right now. You can simply deal with shit like financial markets imploding, because there is really toss all you can do about it. But when stuff in your control goes badly wrong then that’s so much better – you can feel like a right bloody charlie, and that is exactly what you are. I’m so fucking annoyed right now, staccato and rhetoric are my only forms of communication. So here goes:
1) What kind of nutjob spends two days researching problems with potential new cars and then buys one anyway?
2) Have you ever heard an engine expire with a noise that can only be described as “expensive“?
3) Exactly how many months out of warranty counts as out of warranty? Here’s a clue, it’s about exactly how old my car is.
4) What’s the most expensive part to replace? Another clue, it’s currently chucking litres of fucking oil into the engine bay
5) What specifically is excluded from the extended warranty? See 4) for further insights into possible answers.
6) If you buy a car from a broker, not a dealer, what comeback do you think you might have?
7) How the hell am I going to get to Heathrow next week?
8) Is it time for another beer?
9) How much is it going to cost to get fixed? What’s to say it won’t just happen again?
8) is really rhetorical. 7) Involves trains and boredom. 9) is string like in its’ length. The rest you can probably work out for yourselves.
You know that old expression “Don’t beat yourself up about it?”. Well it’s bollocks. I knew better and I did it anyway. And now I’m somewhere between mildly vexed and vein throbbing mad. Although tending somewhat more to the mad.
It’s not just the four figure fee to fix it. Or the castigation for not actually acting on good advice. It’s the ball ache of getting it sorted, arguing with Nissan and tramping round dealers with a sick car. Worse than that is the worry that you’ve bought a lemon and this is merely an aperitif to the main course of never ending spending.
Still I did save two grand buying it off the Internet. That’ll about pay for this repair. And if/when it happens again, it may just spark another rash sell/buy transaction. Tell me again, why the fuck did I sell the Honda?
woooah there nelly.. it’s less than a month since you bought it – surely you must have some form of guarantee from the broker? I mean they could sell a car without a radiator watch as it breaks down and then one week later charge you a pound of flesh to fix it.. which blatantly isn’t right..
i’ve had a bad track record with motors so know the ball ache and hassle – just never that soon after getting one!
“always serviced at the Nissan dealers as well”
Full dealer service history means FUCK ALL in my experience. The Audi made it to 60k on the original set of spark plugs which should have, by the, been changed 3 times and to 82k on the original cambelt.
The former I had fixed by the bloke at the garage where I get my MOTs done, who diagnosed the issue in 30 minutes with a test drive and some proding. He described getting to them as a bastard of a job because they are right behind the block near the bulkhead. That saved me£1200 because Audi with all their techno wizardry and computer gubbins analysed it and said it was ‘probably the turbo’ which is an engine out job.
The latter was only picked up after I had paid£350 for a long life service where they didn’t do all the things they should have done, like changed the 4wd fluid. When it went back in to have an ABS sensor replaced about 2k later, then they came back with about£6k of ‘issues’, none of which had been flagged during teh service, but all of which were apparent then.
The best bit was when the dealership phoned me up at work during lunchtime to tell me that the mechanics had advised that the cambelt was ‘serious’ and the vehicle wasn’t safe to drive. Luckily for me they could do it that day. I told them just to do the work it was in for. Which was a wise move, because when I cam back to the office I discovered that their princely fee was three times that of a local specialist doing the same job with the same parts. FFS, they were even twice the price of some other Audi dealers for the same job.
I don’t often get really angry, but that was one of those days. I calmly rode down to Stockport Audi and when it came to processing the bill. I create a big scene about how, even though the cars were nice, and that the customer facing side of the business was OK, they were being let down by an INCOMPETENT bunch of MONKEYS in the WORKSHOP and how they were THREE TIMES THE PRICE of other dealers within a 100 mile radius FOR THE SAME WORK.
I hope that of the several people looking at spending lots of money on Q7s, A6s and R8s, some might have been put off doing or at least started having second thoughts.
Sorry to hear about your Nissan. Modern cars are rubbish. If it goes wrong they don’t fix things these days just replace a whole unit. It’s nuts.
I have a 10 year old Peugeot now. I’ve made a set of homemade ramps out of MDF boards and armed with a socket set, a Haynes manual and advice and well documented DIY guides from other owners on web forums I don’t think that there is anything I can’t fix myself if I have the time.
see, you sell the SX and anger the god of manufacturing excellence .
Sorry to hear it died dude. new toys are no fun once they do that.
fix it and sell it
serves you right for trying to look like a farmer.
:¬)
Seriously though, that is shitty luck. have you spoken to the broker? he might have some connections with local garages?
Thanks all. I am relatively sanguine about the whole experience now. I did find out the Turbo has already been done so when the intercooler gets done, it’ll hopefully last a bit longer than a wine gum.
The Nissan Dealer were really nice actually. They are currently trying to guilt Nissan UK into paying to put right their shoddy components. I don’t expect it’ll help but at least it saves me having to talk to an outsourced call centre who asked me three times how to spell “X-Trail” 😉
Pah. No sympathy. If you really want painful car-spelling tedium, you should try owning a Mazda Xedos.
I looked that up as I was sure you must be fibbing, and no such car exists. But it does, and it sure is ugly. And expensive to fix. And apparently unsaleable.
Was that your experience? 🙂
This is all indeed, very upsetting. I feel guilty in some way. Of course, this is offset by me feeling rather smug when I’m driving round in a very nice car which is quite frankly, superb. Hope you get it all fixed soon and cheaply, and with a helping hand from Nissan.
I’m 99{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} confident that if Paula now suggested that she was unhappy with our Audi and would like us to sell a car to allow her to buy a horrible little crap bucket, I’d sell the Audi…. But of course she’s not, it’s an Audi and her last car was a Nissan…oh…
The Xedos 9 is ugly, the 6 is quite nice I think. Not much more expensive to fix than similar cars, but harder to find parts. But dead components inside an automatic gearbox buried under a big V8 solves any difficulty I might have had in selling it 🙂
Jon – don’t be. I’m glad your enjoying the mightyness of the Honda 🙂 I have a spare number plate here if you want one. I can send it with the elbow patches 🙂
V8? Killer of planets 🙂
Did I say V8? I meant V6. A mere planet beater-upper.
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