When is a salesman not a salesman??

When he’s the Managing Director of course. Now I know there are lots of you staring at the screen with rather blank looks on your faces and I don’t blame you to be honest but to clear things up I will let you know what I mean. It is in fact all about one of the loves of my life or should I say, one of the nightmares. That’s the car. When we went, all those months ago to the Motorbility Roadshow to check out what was available for me and my chair to travel around in we arrived at the stand of “The Automotive Group” a vehicle conversion specialist from Newcastle. We were met by this, what appeared to be a really nice man who knew his stuff. He explained the vehicle’s advantages etc perfectly and even suggested having them fit an older model ramp to the new model car so that the ramp was even lower, a problem we had with nearly all the other vehicles we tried out incidently. He explained that he could get a hire vehicle down to me in 3 days and that they would take away my old one. The new converted one would be here then in 2 weeks. He never once mentioned the small fact that he was the M.D. we decided to go away and have a final look around before making up our minds but knew that we would go back there mainly because of his attitude and approach and willingness to help. So after a walk around we did return there and although he was tied up with another customer did pass us on to one of his salesmen to fill out the forms telling them what we had discussed about the ramp and delivery etc. well as you all know the 3 day delivery on the hire car turned out to be just over 2 weeks and the 2 week delivery of the new vehicle turned out to be around 6 and that’s only due to Motability coughing up the deposit to get the metallic one instead of the no deposit plain one I had ordered. Well then, the new one arrived eventually and as per usual not without it’s faults. First the retaining belts were really complicated to work out. Then the spare wheel has just been dumped loose in the back with nowhere to attach it either. The fuel gauge is eratic, showing full one minute then empty the next. The exhaust sounds like a tractor and is spuing fumes back into the car when the windows are open due to the fact that where they have had to re route it because of the lowered floor it now only has 1 silencer instead of 2 and comes out the side of the car not the rear as before. I booked the vehicle in to my local main dealership to look at these for me and when the eventually booked it in they refused to touch it as the faults were all down to the conversion company and not Fiat and in fact that this was probably the worst conversion they had ever seen, which was very reassuring as you can imagine. Oh yes, I forgot to mention the other that happened too. The drivers door decided to lock and refuse to open at all whilst Judith was sat in the drivers seat and me in the back I must add. She tried everything including brute forse and eventually thankfully managed to clamber out via the passenger door. The rac came out to have a look and eventually after about of ½ hour of trying the handles etc it just popped open as if nothing was wrong at all, bloody annoying. So after contacting Motability again about these faults they had got Automotive group to ring me to sort them out. Lo and behold the M.D rang me back straight away and was very apologetic indeed. After explaining what the problems were he promised to carry out the work but would need to come and take the vehicle away. He told me that he would have a hire vehicle brought down to me on Tuesday (Today) but would ring me Monday to let me know what time. I told him that to be honest it would be a novelty if anyone from his company actually rang me back as they haven’t ever done so up till now. He said I am writing it in my diary now to remind me. Surprise Surprise, when I rang them at 4.45 Monday as he hadn’t rang I was told he was not actually in the office today and noone else knows anything about it. I told the woman on the phone that unless they got hold of him urgently and rang me back they would be having the vehicle back on their doorstep in the morning and a cancelled order to boot. I did get a phone call a short while later to say though that the vehicle they are hiring me would not be ready till Wednesday not Tuesday and I can’t repeat what I actually said as my mother reads this, but I can assure you there were lots of £%^*&%$%^&%^%%’s. so they are supposed to be ringing today to let me know what time they will be here but don’t hold your breath, and the same goes for Wednesday too.

Time to give my eyes and fingers a rest too as all this blogging is hard work you know. I am sill looking into the Volunteer Typewriter.

See Ya!!