This is the first in a series of posts all surrounding my latest purchase, first let me give you some background info.

Due to my “flamboyant” driving style the powers that be decided to kindly request I didn’t drive for a couple of years.  After that time was served and then some more I decided financially we were secure and it was time for me to get back on the car ladder and so far I’ve had no luck at all.

1999 Volvo S40 1.8T SE (Blue)

So the first car I was looking for had to be big (2 kids 2 adults) around 1.8cc and be safe.  So after a hunt we found a Volvo S40 SE 1.8T, this seemed to be a great car albeit a bit under equipped for a Volvo.  The bodywork was clean, mechanically seemed fine and the car had just flew through an MOT, so I parted with £1000 and took the car home. I enjoyed this car for around 4-5 months until I started to notice blue smoke coming out of the exhaust when I drove off from a stand still, when the engine was warm.  Ok so I changed the oil and ensured plugs, leads and top end of the engine were clean all looked ok until I took the oil cap off when the car was running.  It looked like I had struck oil, it was squirting out like a good ‘un’, this told me that the car had back pressure and was probably on its way out.

Then the next problem came along, it started drinking a lot of oil then throwing it out of the exhaust in clouds of smoke under hard acceleration.  So after some investigation it turned out that there were some perished oil seals somewhere, I then started getting my wallet ready for a big repair bill.  That was before I went round a corner and started this clunking noise, in fact every bump, there was a metal on metal knocking sound.  Originally I thought it was the exhaust, or the spare wheel so we chucked the car on a ramp, secured the exhaust and ensured the spare wheel was locked in place.  Whilst it was up there I hung off the wishbones and checked nearly every part of the suspension and found it was all solid as a rock.  The knock never went away so we thought its time to trade up and get a new car.

2002 Renault Laguna, 1.8 Sport (Red)

The Renault was a great car, I managed to pick it up for a little under £1000 (plus £600 from the Volvo trade in).  This car had nearly every conceivable extra (no leather or satnav) and was a lovely deep red, I think it was titan red.  It had 43,000 miles on the clock and looked very well looked after but didn’t cost a lot so I was naturally wary.  However the car was great on fuel (45mpg average), it was fairly rapid, had keyless entry and the best driving position of any car I had driven previously (there have been many).  The only problem that I had from the start with this car was the ground clearance, as it was a sport model it was a bit lower to the ground and used to grind over the speed bumps around my house.  I was really happy with this car, especially when it out handled most cars on my 40 mile journey to work down crazy country roads.  However after 12 months, 60,000 more miles and no major service, the car started to misfire at 2500rpm.  So I changed the plugs and leads and did the usual top end clean up and strip down, I ensured the airflow was ok and flushed the oil out and replaced with some fully synthetic.  This didn’t solve the problem so I took it to a garage who diagnosed the fault as being a dodgy ECU which would cost me around £900 to replace so it was back to the classified ad’s.

So that’s the first part of my tale of woe, click here for part 2…

A helping hand, Everything else 1.8 se, blue smoke, ecu, ecu problems, laguna, laguna ECU, problems, renault, renault laguna, s40, volvo, volvo s40

Post offices open on a Sunday???

I have a scenario for you, its Friday and your car dies suddenly, so you take it to a garage, they tell you it’s going to cost £2500 to get fixed. Rather than pay that to get it fixed you decide it’s time to buy a cheap run-around.  So you trawl through auto trader and the free papers and you find a great little car for a couple of thousand pounds but it is 100 miles away from your house.  You travel by train, which gets seriously delayed and arrive at the garage at 4.30pm.  You fall in love with the car and have to fight people away from it because it seems that half the country is trying to buy it.  You part with your money, sort the insurance out and realise that the tax ran out last month, what do you do?
Under normal circumstances I would walk away and return on Monday to collect but I needed the car for Monday 8am.  So I drove it home and plonked it on my driveway and thought I would have to get tax first thing on Monday morning but curiosity got the better of me.  I decided to google “post office Sunday opening times” and found nothing but a link to the store locator.  So I whacked in the post code of where I just bought the car and could you believe it I found a post office that did road tax on a Sunday.  So I started putting in different towns all closer to home and found that there are a handful that do open on a Sunday.

So if you live in the Midlands and need to tax your car on a Sunday see below for a short list of post offices that are open on a Sunday.

I will be adding to this list and maybe will include all areas of the UK because this list doesn’t appear to exist anywhere on the net.  Alternatively if you know of any other post offices that are open on a Sunday and will provide road tax just leave a comment and I will update this post!

Bradgate Mall Beaumont Shopping Centre
Leicester
Leicestershire
LE4 1DE

Opening hours
Monday     08:30     19:00
Tuesday     08:30     19:00
Wednesday     08:30     19:00
Thursday     08:30     19:00
Friday     08:30     19:00
Saturday     08:30     19:00
Sunday     10:00     16:00     

Castle Vale
Unit One
Castle Vale
Birmingham
West Midlands
B35 6DL

Opening hours
Monday     08:30     17:30
Tuesday     08:30     17:30
Wednesday     08:30     17:30
Thursday     08:30     17:30
Friday     08:30     17:30
Saturday     09:00     13:00
Sunday     10:00     13:00

Soho Road
235 Soho Road
Birmingham
West Midlands
B21 9RZ

Opening hours
Monday     08:30     17:30
Tuesday     08:30     17:30
Wednesday     08:30     17:30
Thursday     08:30     17:30
Friday     08:30     17:30
Saturday     08:30     17:30
Sunday     11:00     16:00     

Villa Road
121 -125 Villa Road
Birmingham
West Midlands
B19 1NH

Opening hours
Monday     09:00     17:30
Tuesday     09:00     17:30
Wednesday     09:00     17:30
Thursday     09:00     17:30
Friday     09:00     17:30
Saturday     09:00     14:00
Sunday     11:00     16:00  

Berriew
Berriew Stores
Welshpool
Powys
SY21 8PG

Opening hours
Monday     07:00     20:00
Tuesday     07:00     20:00
Wednesday     07:00     20:00
Thursday     07:00     20:00
Friday     07:00     20:00
Saturday     07:00     20:00
Sunday     08:00     20:00

http://www2.postoffice.co.uk/branch-finder

A helping hand birmingham, car tax, help i need tax on a sunday, leicester, post office, post office sunday opening times, postoffice, road tax, soho, sunday, telford, villa, welshpool

Wow, I am so glad I stayed up late tonight. It would appear that those genius pirate sail boat types have struck again, this time dealing a boat load of irony to Mr Murdoch himself.

The legendary “just for lulz” security group has taken positive action  against the media mogul Rupert Murdoch and had their wicked way with one of their stories.  To make matters worse for the NI group they managed to redirect all of the sun’s traffic to their twitter feed.

They have claimed that this is just phase one in their master plan to cause more NI lulz over the coming days/weeks; personally I can’t wait!

Catch up with the Lulz Here

http://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec

Uncategorized hacking, lulz, lulzsec, rupert murdoch, sun, sun hacked

It has been 14 days since my employer Geko Direct announced I wasn’t getting paid due to “financial problems”.   It has been 7 days since we were all told to go home as the company was being put into administration.  Then today it was officially announced that the company is actually in administration.  It is at this point I will share with you the questions that have been running around my head.  So I think this might be a world first but I am going to interview myself about the whole Geko Saga.

Q. Did I see it coming?

A. No, the last I knew we were told that the company had been making a profit and our connection figures were looking good.

Q. What happened then?

A. I am not in a position to answer this as I was told the same as everyone else, the company is suffering from a cash flow problem and Geko were doing everything they could to sort things out.  Also due to the fact I worked in a satellite office in Stoke I was never actually briefed by the MD or FD (Dave or Vince) and was given the news via the Sales Director (also based in Stoke).  So this is still a question that is yet to be answered, how could such a successful company fail so badly!

Q. How do I feel about it all?

A. Pretty shit!  That’s the short answer, the long answer might include more colourful language.  I put my heart and soul into this job and feel that someone should have pre-empted this and done more to protect the staff and company.

Q. What are you doing now?

A. I am being kept busy with freelance web design work, I have had a couple of fantastic job offers but I am unsure if I want to go back into the mobile industry.

Q. Why haven’t you answered any of the questions?

A. Currently the company is going through the legal bits and bobs and I don’t want to comment until this is finished and the facts are revealed.

So that is my crap interview to myself, yes I understand that there were more questions such as who did I blame, and what “REALLY” happened, however I will keep that for another day.  I am not bitter about what happened, slightly miffed that only one member of the senior management team has bothered to keep me in the loop.  I suppose that is to be expected as I am so used to working my ass off, going above and beyond and getting no thanks whatsoever.

Anyway, I’m getting bored of negativity so I am going to say a few words on what good I took from Geko.  When I started at Geko I worked in an entry level position in a mind numbingly boring job.  I wasn’t about to sit there for the rest of my career doing it so I made it my own and hit the books, I learnt the industry, used my technical background to ensure that I learnt everything there was to know.  Most people turned to me with their technical questions and on many occasions I was given the task to sort out technical issues, crib sheets and self help guides.  I tried my best to balance the mind numbing job with the technical side but my heart was set on moving up!

I then moved into field sales and I’m going to be honest, I was pretty crap!  I couldn’t do the hard sell thing and preferred to take my time, build a relationship and work on customers one at a time which of course affected my sales figures, they were never rock bottom, but they weren’t at the level the company expected.  This wasn’t my biggest problem, I was still supporting the entire Geko sales force and sorting customers technical issues.  If I spent 2 hours on the phone, only 30 minutes would be spent doing my own job.  My day was split 70/30 with 70% of my time doing the support thing.   After some management changes upstairs things started to go wrong, I was still doing the dual role but this time I was getting disciplined for missing target.  So 1 verbal, 1 written and 1 final written warning later I was asked to go to Stoke to follow a sales/support role.  Of course I jumped at the chance, the sales director gave me what I strived for, a chance to shine and ensure that customer’s technical issues were sorted in house as opposed to just referring the customer to the network to sort things out.

The rest is written in the history books (and in these pages).  I have met some great people and learnt so much about an industry that is forever evolving.

RIP Geko Direct.

Geko Direct Limited 01952602260, 08707777701, blackberry, cheap, geko, gekodirect, help, Orange, scam

We’ve all been there, wake up in the morning and notice that your twat of a neighbour has launched a lighter into your windscreen and cracked it, well maybe not all of you but I’m sure any drivers out there have experienced the nightmare that is a cracked windscreen.  I first noticed this crack on a cold morning before setting off for work, it was at the top and kind of hidden behind the rain sensor and tinted section of the screen.  At first I assumed it was just a flying stone but the debris of a lighter was also found within the immediate area.  However I didn’t think much about it as I had windscreen cover with my car insurance and made the call when I arrived home that evening.

The call was fairly straight forward, they took my details and advised me someone would call back to arrange the replacement.  A few minutes later Autoglass called and asked about the car and the damage then told me that he would arrive the following day.  Just as we were sorting out the finer details he told me it would cost £75 for a repair and £150 for a replacement, apparently my rather expensive windscreen cover carried a high excess!  I told him not to bother calling out until I had spoken to my insurance company (Admiral via Bell).  They then told me that the excess was required and I should have opted for the “free” windscreen cover at a cost of £70 a year (I’m already paying an extra £50).  Completely unhappy with this and knowing my insurance was due for renewal a couple of weeks later I chanced driving with the ever increasing crack in my screen.

After 2 weeks of watching this crack get bigger I decided to bite the bullet and start getting quotes, my partner has a premier account with Lloyds TSB which offers a big discount if you buy from AA windscreens, however that quote came in at £600 with the discount.  Thinking that I would be better off just paying the excess I made one more enquiry and found a local company (Auto Price Windscreens) who quoted me £140 for the screen and fitting.  As this was cheaper than the excess I arranged a next day replacement at my workplace.

Now I work in Stoke, the head office is in Telford (where I live) however I drive a company car around the country as part of my job meaning I was not there to inspect the work once finished.  I paid over the phone before he came out and collected the car once I had finished work.  The invoice had some advice about when I could drive the car and the “no car wash for 4 days” warning and all appeared good.  The following day the company car wasn’t available so I drove my car to Norfolk to do a job and on the way home the windscreen lifted and the rubber flew off.  After making a dive into the hard shoulder I retrieved the trim pieces and called them.

I was quite angry at the situation as I was stuck in Milton Keynes on the side of a motorway wondering if I could drive home.  The MD then called me and once I had told him the problem I was safe to drive home (slowly) and he would send someone out to me as soon as he could.  I got home and just started making a cup of coffee when a van pulled up and the fitter knocked my door, amazed that they knew I was home I showed the chap the problem and he set about fixing it.  Problem sorted or so I thought…

Today I decided to go to the garden centre to make use of the week off I have and went over a pothole and a big part of my rain sensor/alarm thingy/rear view mirror fell off and was left hanging on by a couple of brightly coloured wires.  Once again I called them and they advised me that someone would call out within the hour.  Just as the friendly lady had said a chirpy chappy came out and fixed the mirror thingy, cleaned up the roof lining, polished the windscreen inside and out and even had a crack at polishing my dashboard.

One happy customer later I finish off my gardening and think about telling the world about a company who stand by their work and who came out to me to put right any problems I had.  Do I think they should have done the job correctly the first time?  Yes of course, however they haven’t once given me the brush off and have fixed everything professionally, without question and best of all without charge.  Would I use them again and recommend them?  Yes 100%  I doubt any of the major companies would have tried so hard and called out twice to put things right without charge.

So if you are in the Stafford/Shropshire area and need a windscreen then try Auto Price Windscreens by calling 0800 298 0469

http://www.autopricewindscreens.com/

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