RIP OFF BRITAIN

Dear Blog,

              Not so long ago ‘Rip Off Britain’ was the big media talking point. Feature programmes on the wireless and the television jumped on the band wagon with dire warnings and examples of people being ripped of left, right, centre, up and down. Why the fuss? I asked myself at the time. Hasn’t it always been thus?? Have things changed or is it still going on??

 A true story Blog…

Well, imagine the situation … a young lady packs her camper van to go away for a few days break last Friday. It was raining. It was raining hard. So what I hear you ask Blog; nice and dry and warm and comfortable in the van. Destination, two and a bit hours from leaving home … no problems on the roads, not even the motorways. THEN. Just over an hour into her journey, the darkness had descended and the rain continued to pour, her windscreen wipers on the camper van stopped. Driving was not possible in the rain with all the spray kicked up by other motorists so it was a case of quickly looking for a stopping place and a telephone call to the breakdown service for their assistance as onward travel in the prevailing conditions was not a feasible option. The breakdown service just scraped inside the promised one hour arrival time. Much investigation. Much twiddling of this and that. The consensus was that the wiper motor had packed up and a new one would be required … and no new wiper motor would be available until the garages opened up on Saturday morning. What to do?? Sit out the night at the side of the road in the rain?? Get a tow to a nearby campsite if there was one nearby?? A nonsensical clause in the breakdown cover meant that no two attendances to the same vehicle on successive days for the same problem was permitted!! It would not have been safe for the young lady to spend the night at the side of the road so a sensible decision to cut her loses and accept a tow back home from the breakdown service was arrived at. The attendance sheet gave the diagnosis as a burnt out windscreen motor which she could give to the garage when she went in for a repair. A young lady with a camper van wanting her windscreen wipers fixed …  you could almost imagine the quids growing in the eyes of the garage man!!! Many quids for old rope. RipOffBritain.

No repair could be arranged until the Monday morning and when she delivered the van to the garage in Warwick, she was advised to leave it as the garage was fully booked with service jobs and it would have to be fitted in when and if possible .. more quids for the garage man, after all we are in Rip Off Britain, aren’t we Blog?? She left the diagnosis sheet from the breakdown service with the garage man but he said he would take a look and do the tests for himself ..oh yer, many more quids there then??

The young lady got a call about 4pm to say that the van had been repaired and was ready to be collected when convenient. AND THE BILL??? Prepare yourself Blog and have a hankie ready to dry the tears!!! Total cost was a whopping £8!!! Blog I kid you not. The garage man had found a loose wire and fixed it. How about that for service? How about that when he could so easily have ripped the young lady off and there would have been nothing she could have done about it but to have paid up. Eight quids. Now use the hankie to dry your eyes, no doubt watering from disbelief Blog. Eight quids. That man should be mentioned in dispatches. A small garage on an industrial estate next to the railway in Warwick. Unbelievable. Restores your faith in the human race, what Blog? E I G H T Q U I D S .

                                    Colin