>> Revenge well it was simple
Go on; give us a clue; what did you do?
The bit which joins the cup and slightly snapped on both of them.
May I say that I do like "slightly snapped"
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Slightly snapped as 3 inches of the remainder coil, and a nice sharp bit remaining waiting to puncture the tyres.
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I complained about work not done during a sevice at a main dealer, 3 months later coolant cap leaking on a 2 year old car. The workshop had very kindly greased the rubber seals. I did get a free replacement from the service manager.
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You can imagine the 'fun & games' I had with customers during 14 years of mobile tuning in the S.E. and E. London area's :(
Many times I just said "ok pal - I'll just have to remove the plugs, points & condenser I've just fitted"
Thems were magic words cos the green folding stuff would miraculously appear out of nowhere :)
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Getting back to the original theme, a pal of mine used to build garages over the weekend. Start Friday night. Finish Sunday night and get paid. Very efficient piece of project management. Then one customer said he didn't have the money. So my pal got his sledgehammer and started knocking down the garage he'd just built. The punter stopped him, went inside, got the money and paid my pal. Then he asked him to repair the sledgehammer damage. My pal told him that would be extra.
HJ
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A builder near where I used to live, couldn't get this couple to pay up for a new block paved driveway he had laid for them.He found out from their neighbours that they were away on holiday. When the couple arrived back they were greeted by the sight of one tonne of set ready mixed concrete on their new driveway. It certainly made me laugh when I walked past their house.
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Probably an urban myth but good all the same
The women driver that goes to the fast fit place for a puncture repair, gets the free safety check. Surprise surprise, needs new brakes and shocks. OK , go ahead she says and I will come back later.
Comes back later, presented with a bill for £hundreds at which point she hands over the receipt for the same work, from the same company, from 3 months ago with the year's guarantee.
Definitely true, happened to a friend of a friend's wife's brother's dog etc etc
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Could be true - a garage failed my car on the rear brakes which they'd supposedly replaced at the service 3 months earlier. I got my free replacement set and didn't go back.
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Not a revenge as such
For ' fluffy pink dice ' ..read FPD.
One afternoon, I was sat at home threatening the kids when the phone went......I chased after it and brought it back.
Sorry, start again....Phone rang....
' It's Mr Smith, the landlord of the Crown '
Me.'What can I do for you, sir ? '
LL ' How are you doing with my car ? '
Me 'What car is that, sir ''
LL ' My Renault, you picked it up earlier '
Me 'Don't know anything about it ' ( dropped the 'sir' by now )
LL You FPDing FPD, I want my FPDing car, where the FPD is it ?'
Me ' Never seen it '
Another tirade of swearing and abuse with accusations of me stealing his car and hiding it.
I decided to enter into the spirit of the contest and, in a stage whisper, asked an imaginary colleague to ' Move that Renault, Bob, and hide it round the back '...He went ballistic...FPDs were gushing forth from his foul mouth ending with, ' I'm getting the Police on you ' and slamming his phone down.
An hour later two WPCs arrived at the door, told me a complaint had been made that I'd stolen a car....all good fun...after tea and a very pleasant chat about old time policing they satisfied themselves that I hadn't been out of the house all day and made good their escape.
A couple of hours later one of them rang me to say he'd dropped his complaint.....apparently, the garage that had taken the car away had phoned him to say it was fixed and ready to be collected !
No apology, flowers or free beer for life though !
Stand up for yourself...be a man, my son !
Ted
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A couple of hours later one of them rang me to say he'd dropped his complaint.....apparently the garage that had taken the car away had phoned him to say it was fixed and ready to be collected !
So what's the back story? Why did the guy think you'd picked-up/stolen his car, is he the local crazy?
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Sorry, should have added...
He asked his wife to ring me as he was out for the morning.
She forgot who she was supposed to ring and called somebody else out...only she didn't tell him !
Wasn't really local either...about 3 miles away. Found me in Yellow Pages.
Ted
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You get those nutters occassionaly. Its happened to me twice. People phoning me up why I haven't I come round a job when I know for 1000% certaincy I had no idea who they are.
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In my line of work, trade customers expect 30 days credit, 60 days is quite common and customers taking 90 to 120 days to pay without prior approval is sadly not unusual. Until everything went pear shaped you could still get insurance on the debt reasonably easily and cheaply. Now it is either very expensive or nigh on impossible.
One tries of course to ask for pro-forma payments but few are prepared to do that and we have been caught out seemingly countless times in the past couple of years by bad debt.
People are increasingly dishonest about these things.
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Tell me about it.
Unless a valuation is for a bank, its money after I have inspected and before I issue the report or even discuss it over the phone.
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People are increasingly dishonest about these things
I'm not so sure that the general level of honesty changes much. It's just that in hard times everyone's cash-flow slows down, so the natural thing is to delay payments for a while, hoping that something comes in.
In the early-90s recession I was invited to leave the (large) company I worked for, and like many others I did a little bit of 'consultancy' for them afterwards as a sole trader. I was lucky that they seemed not to take advantage of me in the way I have described, but I am pretty sure that some of their commercial suppliers suffered in that way.
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Can we rename this thread to
1400Teds guide to Customer Service?
(very tongue in cheek)
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Can we rename this thread to 1400Teds guide to Customer Service? (very tongue in cheek)
You can remove tongue from cheek, AE, thats just standard motor trade treatment of their "victims", (sorry customers). :-)
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Totally correct ON......but Ilike AE's idea...may write abook one day I'm sure many garagistas on here have similar tales.
You could stand the odd private punter bilking you..some of the trade were as bad.
Polski Fiat agent went bust owing me about £600...no chance of getting that but what I did get were huge wads of paperwork from the accountants telling me how much was being realised by winding them up, how much was owing for Tax, Vat, etc ,etc. Little old me at the bottom of the pan...no chance !
Got the letters for about 12 years !
Not heard for a long time...guess I can write it off now
Did a couple of runs for a dealer on the Isle of Man. Didn't get paid for the last one, couldn't make contact and thought they'd 'gone to the wall' 3 years later got phone call from man who said he was owner's son and dad had died. They'd found my invoice, not marked as paid and said they'd put a cheque in post, which they did.
Faith restored.
Ted
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People are increasingly dishonest about these things.
Isn't it just that these days people are more aware of these things? Before the internet appeared (which isn't that long ago) there wasn't really any facility for the man-in-the-street to make others aware of the scams that went on in all forms of life and business.
With the advent of forums like this, it's easier to spread the message about what can happen to the unwary, and what the victim can do if they are on the receiving end of something.
20 years ago people accepted what they got because they didn't know any better, and it was much more difficult to do anything about it.
I think the dishonesty was always there; it was just a better kept secret in them days.
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In about 1994 when I was a young designer employed in West London, we used to have training sessions from time to time as macs were really starting to run the show by then. I was sent out for a day with a guy who was higher ranking than me although i didn't report to him. Long story short, we hated each other, we'd once almost come to fisticuffs in the studio because "he spoke to me in a funny way" (I was young and angry).
I agreed to drive, we got to the training centre but weren't allowed to park on their premises and couldn't find anywhere else. Eventually, I just parked there anyway. At the end of the day we returned to the car to find they'd blocked us in with a couple of mopeds, however I reckoned that if I drove over the flowerbeds to my right and did a 25-point shuffle I'd be able to just squeeze out. It was a big car, a Pug 605 but I very nearly managed it and soon enough a suit from the front desk came out, arms folded to watch. He was clearly waiting for an apology so that he'd move the scooters but the moment I saw the big fat smirk on his gloating face, the red mist descended. I drove slowly at one of the mopeds, knocked it over and pushed it along and aside until I had a clear road ahead. At this point, I saw the guy in my mirrors running towards me waving frantically, I aimed for a gap in the traffic and floored it. I was still extremely wound up and a few seconds later I smashed the passenger door mirror off on a parked car as I was driving like a maniac through the back-streets of Fulham.
Gradually I became aware of these eyes burning into the side of my face and I remembered my colleague was sitting next to me. His mouth was hanging open, I looked at him and we burst out laughing. We never became great friends or anything after that but we got on much better and he never "spoke to me in a funny way" again.
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blimey, i wouldnt want to spill your pint... BBD
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As a general rule of thumb, the further north you go the less that is advisable !
;-)
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The thing to remember about road rage is there is always a Bigger Badder Dave and one day you will try it on with one. :-)
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Discovery, Big Knife and Kenneth Noye spring to mind.
Edited by Altea Ego on 30/11/2009 at 16:02
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Nice one BBD. I've got one like that, about Lagos in 1977. After being up all night in a recording studio in Apapa, with all that that implies, came out to drive across town in early morning rush hour in a local buddy's Renault 12. We were accompanied by a Jamaican reggae star, a real one.
'You drive,' they told me. Not at my best and never having driven the car before, I eased down the dirt road to the approaching bedlam of the main road at the end, buses, taxis, Alhajis in Mercedeses, trucks from the hinterland, lots of pedestrians... Before we had got to the end of the road they were barracking me, 'Come on man, get a move on,' that sort of thing. They were so insistent and rude that I got the red mist, clicked into South London minicabber in a hurry mode, having done a bit of that not too long before, and banged the Renault over the edge of the blacktop into the maelstrom cutting up buses, taxis and vans right and left, and went down that road like getaway driver amid cries of rage and blaring horns for a couple of miles until my buddy and the reggae star were apologising profusely and begging me to slow down. Heh heh. Doubt if I could do it now though.
The Renault needed a new driveshaft about a week later. My fault I'm afraid. That bang over the edge of the blacktop...
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I bet you're banned from entering Lagos after that :).
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There was a period when I drove to work along the A3 every morning and needed to turn left at the Robin Hood Roundabout. I always joined the left lane failry early. The Hurry up beemer and Audi merchants never did and always pushed in if you left more than 4 microns of gap.
After a week of this, and the third one that morning in less than 30 yards, I needed revenge. And I swore the very next one would get rammed.
Sure enough while i was adjusting the heating a 3 yard gap opened up and a car (cant remember if it was a merc, beemer or audi - it mattered not it was a dragon to be slain) with no indication swung into the opening space. I accelerated and kept my foot in and rammed it hard in the passenger door.
I climbed out and said to the appoplectic driver "Oh dear look what you did"
Edited by Altea Ego on 30/11/2009 at 16:23
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I didn't understand this bit
I accelerated and kept my foot in and rammed it hard in the passenger door.
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Kept my foot on the accelerator to ram him in the door as hard as I could to cause maximum damage.
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Kept my foot on the accelerator to ram him in the door as hard as I could to cause maximum damage.
Sometimes I'd like to do that but my wallet protection routines kick in and stop me, the satisfaction would wear off later but the excess would still need paying.
Knock for knock on the insurance or did you manage to get a witness to say it was his fault?
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>> Knock for knock on the insurance or did you manage to get a witness to say it was his fault?
At a guess, it was a company car!
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>>At a guess it was a company car!
Of course. Company cars don't figure in my thinking having never had one, I've always taken the cash and quickly forgotten about the other option.
One more plus point for the company car :)
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Kept my foot on the accelerator to ram him in the door as hard as I could to cause maximum damage.
That's the time you need to be driving a beaten up Land Rover with a length of railway track as a front bumper. Great for scattering the traffic and few try it on.
Edited by Old Navy on 30/11/2009 at 16:42
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Revenge of the Continentals.
xrl.in/3wbv
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this is turning out to be a bit of a confessional:
mine is similar to AE's version, but v low speed in heavy traffic (Tally Ho Corner, North Finchley, north bound, end of the 80's). I was driving my auction special which was a surprisingly tidy Volvo 244DL, the tidiest car at a South London auction, necessitated after my girlfriend's car had been nicked and I was between cars.
Two lanes go into one, with lane 2 being a turn right lane. The ignorant use lane 2 when they want to go straight on and jump a load of places. I was patiently waiting in lane 1 having seen quite a few doing the impatient bit and their actions were badly affecting the lane flow of my lane. Eventually got to the head of the two lane bit and decided no one else was going to push in. Chap in a Bedford Combi/ Suzuki Carry type small van thought otherwise...and it descended into a gesticulating and 'mouthing' match. He suddenly surged forward and swerved in left getting half his van into a 4 foot space...as I surged forward and buried the Volvo's great big bumper into his side sliding door. The dent was so bad the door wouldn't open and of course the Volvo had not a mark on it.
My laughter is what did it. I have yet to see a rage quite like that. Luckily for me he wasn't big enough to do me any harm....but in reality it wasn't the wisest thing i've ever done...the previous Kenneth Noye remark sums it up really.
It's surprising how many London motorists think they might have to suddenly loosen a wheel nut..or have a sudden urge to play baseball...if my unscientific study of immediate driver aids down by their seats is anything to go by.
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>>if my unscientific study of immediate driver aidsdown by their seats is anything to go by.
>>
Is my big Maglite torch OK?
Edited by Old Navy on 30/11/2009 at 18:15
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Altea ego,i assume you checked first to make sure their was no child or baby in the car you
rammed...
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Nope
I would hope that anyone who had a child in the car would not try and drive so aggresively and push in.
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The red mist does not discriminate, and anyway the other driver would bear all of the responsibility and blame.
I am not advocating this as a desired standard of driving, Would I do it again? No the chances of my airbag going off and causing me damage is too high,
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The alternative to this course of action is to count to ten, comment to yourself on the size of the other driver's genetalia, and go on your way. Surely less likely to cause unintended injury to yourself or anyone else.
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If everybody thought like that, we'd all be speaking German.
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If everybody thought like that we'd all be speaking German.
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What??!
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Is my big Maglite torch OK?
Like everything in life ON, it depends how big!
Just to give you a clue, when I first joined up all my colleagues used to walk around with enormous great 6 cell Maglites, (or even bigger). One of those over your swede did more damage than a wooden truncheon would. Eventually we were told anything bigger than a 3 cell would be considered by our employer as an offensive weapon. No one was brave enough to give it a run, so Maglite shares must have taken a tumble.
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Like everything in life ON it depends how big!
>>
Only a 2 cell, still put a defensive dent in someone.
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>> Like everything in life ON it depends how big! >> Only a 2 cell still put a defensive dent in someone.
AA's? You aint gonna scare me with that ON. what you gonna do poke me with it?
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No DD, Not my bra size. :-)
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>> Is my big Maglite torch OK?
No Maglites in my day, just a wooden staff. However , a roll of 24 old halfpennies bound tightly with sellotape and clenched in the palm within a leather glove gave a considerable extra boost to a well aimed fist. A number of dressmaker's pins at te back of the lapels gave the would be jacket grabbing attacker a shock !
I don't suppose it's allowed now...it wasn't then either !
Ted
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It's surprising how many London motorists think they might have to suddenly loosen a wheel nut..or have a sudden urge to play baseball...if my unscientific study of immediate driver aids down by their seats is anything to go by.
Mine is on the dashboard of the van having been attacked in Kingston (England) late seventies by a nutter from nowhere. It's never been moved since van bought in 02 though.
One in every car, by every house door etc. Don't intend to give it up to some oik.
MD
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>attacked in Kingston
Quite right, cant have you wurzles coming up here into the smoke.
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>attacked in Kingston Quite right cant have you wurzles coming up here into the smoke.
Ooh aaar my dear. Only a Wurzel since 1987. Uxbridge prior, so nerr!!
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I did the opposite trip...born a wurzel on the English Riviera......been in England's premier city ever since !
Ted
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Come back Ted. Us need ee!
MD
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Tales of revenge.
>
>>>>>>>>> someone i know was upset by someone so he went and drilled every panel on this blokes car (this was in the days when a battery run drill was a new phenomena )
-----------i prefer milk,always have
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drilled every panel on this blokes car
Reminds me of this:
autoanything.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/audi-got-...g
the Audi A8 with 8 pickaxes embedded in it...
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Old Navy is quite correct about driving an old LR. Three years ago I bought a N reg Defender 90 which I used as daily transport for 6 months, prinarily to get the urge to own a LR product out of my system. It was surprisingly nippy around town, and I was surprised how it created its own buffer zone. Very few drivers tried to cut me up.
I only had one incident when the driver of a black RR changed her mind at the last minute, and instead of turning left as she should have done, proceded in a straight on direction, causing an irregular go-faster stripe on three panels. After taking a few photos with my disposable, and showing her the copy of my insurance, she did not want to exchange details. I reported it to the police and heard no more.
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