Why Be Difficult?

 

After three years of trying, His Lordship Malarkey has finally persuaded me that it is time to change my 10 and a half year old car for something a little more, well, modern. It says something that for the previous two Winters I’ve had to scrape ice from the INSIDE of the windscreen as well as the outside. Sometimes the driver door freezes stuck, too. I’m getting too old for that faff. My fingers turn white when I hold stainless steel cutlery in the cold months, let alone having to deal with double doses of frost.

This week, then, I’ve been cracking on with the research and the preparation in order to go car shopping today! I’ve already had a bit of a win in that I managed to get my eye drops in my eyes first go, and without splattering them around the sink/ up my nose/ in my ears which is the usual pattern of all things eye drop. The signs bode well! I’ve located two cars that I think will do me very nicely indeed. I’ve compared them with similar models from other brands…or is it species? I’m never sure with cars…anyway, I’ve compared them and still like them best. This is mostly because during the past 38 years of being an official driver (as opposed to an unofficial one in a transit van/ on a tractor driving around my grandparents’ farm) most of the cars I’ve chosen have been selected because of a) their colour and b) their looks. Except for my first car, which my Dad bought me so I had no choice, then a hideous yellow estate that was a family car over which I had no say, and the grey car Andy and I bought just before we got married which was a bargain, price-wise, and it would have been rude to say no despite its greyness. Rest assured, dear reader, neither of the cars I have located to see today are grey. 

Other than that it’s been colour and looks all the way which probably puts me on a par with a vacuous reality TV star but hey, there are worse crimes. Aren’t there? 

Because my car has a private number plate (inherited from my Dad when he died in 1998; I think he got it on a maroon Volvo back in the mid-Seventies so it’s a bit of an heirloom now) I have the added rigamarole of taking the plate off my current car and putting it on a retainer (at the cost of £80 - thanks DVLA), replacing the original plates my current car was born with (saved from Andy taking them to the tip twice because he didn’t know they were still relevant), and telling my insurance company that my car, although still the same, now had a different registration.

After sitting on the phone for ages (currently experiencing a high volume of calls apparently) I got through to a nice lady who said I could have done it all on-line. I said no I couldn’t because I tried and a message popped up saying the service to notify of a change in registration plates was currently unavailable on-line. She said, oh it should be available, and I said well, it wasn’t, and we reached an impasse and she charged me £25 for the privilege of ringing her and telling her the new registration number. I said, are you going to charge me ANOTHER £25 when I call back to say I’ve put my private plate on my new car. She said that if I did it within 14 days then, no, it would be part of the same transaction. She put a note on my account to that effect. I am dubious about the efficacy of her note and am already bracing myself for the return match. 

She said, I’ll just check to make sure this change doesn’t affect the cost of your policy. I said, it’s the same car, just under a different number. She sounded a bit flustered, then laughed and said, oh yes - of course! We had a bit of a chuckle together. I moaned about the extra costs involved when buying a new car. She said she hoped it would be worth it and wished me a lovely evening. Which I did actually have. Perhaps she was magic or something??

This morning, I thought I’d better check to make sure my bank debit card didn’t have a transaction limit because I didn’t want any annoying situations occurring in the car dealership where I might be accused of scamming my own money from my own account. Went on the bank app, like us modern gals do, and was met with the full stupidity of the robot assistant. Firstly, it didn’t understand my question and asked me to rephrase it, which I kindly did. Then it asked me to identify the transaction I had identified as unrecognised on my account. I said it wasn’t unrecognised because it hadn’t happened yet. I said I wanted to buy a car using my debit card. It said it was sorry my card had been stolen, did I want to freeze the card? No, I said. It hasn’t been stolen. Oh, said the WonderRobot, have you lost it? I’m sorry to hear that. Have you tried looking for it in unusual places? Patronising, I thought. 

Clearly, WonderRobot had me down for a mad, scatty woman of a certain age who puts her debit card in the fridge and tries to post slices of cheese into ATM machines and swipe pats of butter to make cashless payments. I took a deep breath. My card is neither lost nor stolen, I typed. I want to know if it’s got a transaction limit. 

I’m sorry, said WonderRobot. I don’t understand the question. Would you rephrase it? 

I typed, ‘This is pointless…’

WonderRobot typed, ‘I’m glad I was able to help you today!’

I typed, ‘You haven’t.’ 

And as WonderRobot started to ask me how it could help, I left the building. I visited Google. Who told me immediately what the limit on my debit card was. And as I’m not buying a top end gas guzzler, I think I’ll be okay. 

Wish me luck…