The Recall

My little Chevrolet Aveo continues to delight me with it's reliability. But a few weeks ago I received a recall letter from the company saying that they wanted to check part of the ABS system as they have seen some with spongy brakes. Part of the recall involved draining the brake system and refilling it even if they didn't need to change the possibly faulty item.

I took the car into FRF motors in Swansea and was completely ignored by the members of staff sitting down by the TV drinking coffee. Admittedly, they hadn't started work at that point but a hello or someone advising me that the person I needed to speak to hand't arrived would have been nice.

The car was then booked in about 5 minutes later and was ready about 15 minutes sooner than they said. I was advised that some tyres were needed for the car and was quite shocked at the cost of £80 a tyre, I then asked how much it would cost for a service?

The suggested service for a car with the mileage mine had done was £290, the only extra thing apart from plugs, filters and oil was replacing the brake fluid. I mentioned that this had already been done as part of this recall and was told that the service for that mileage included the replacement of the fluid again. No suggestion of possibly removing the cost of this was mentioned and I felt that at this point I was actually in the way and should just go. The only other item on the list was adjustment of the rear brakes, this was going to cost £82.50 on top of the service.

I can only say that although the garage was efficient, I would not go there to buy a car and would certainly not take my car there for a service.

Later that day I had two tyres fitted to the car at a total cost of £52. The cost of the service was quoted as being £100 which I consider reasonable.

I've decided to become American

It seem about 4 hours ago that I turned 50, well that's what it seems like anyway. So much has happened since then including a move to Runcorn to be nearer work, then promotion to Rotherham, a change of jobs to go to the dark side and then a move back to South Wales which was part of the original plan to be honest, that is until things started to go wrong.

But now they seem OK, the job is not bad, it could be better as could all jobs but it's not that stressful and it pays enough to ensure that we can live and do things we want to.

And now we come to the part about becoming American. Over there in the colonies, you can't go above 55 and I've now reached that age. It's quite strange that at 54 I had really bad sciatica and had to take pain killers and undergo physio, then suddenly at 55 that seemed to go and although I get a few twinges it's not really there anymore. There's a few other ailments such as a bit of water retention but that's gradually going away and now that I've become American I won't get any older.

What do you mean 55 is the maximum speed limit, oh bugger!