Friday, September 03, 2010

Keeping Busy

Its been a while...

Have you had a stroke?

No. Just been so busy with real life that blogging and other online activities have taken a back seat. Apart from ranting at substandard car companies here's what I've been up to:

  • Got made redundant. Boo
  • Got a new job with a great web design (york) company: Brightfive. Yay.
  • Built some new web projects of my own, the best of the bunch by far is my clever Hotel Finder application. Its pretty useful (I think). I did a more detailed write up of it here.
  • I got married. Yay. Wife has a blog too. Best link to it I suppose. Its mainly hormonal rants and recipes. You have been warned.
  • Having a baby. Yay. Boy. Due in September.
  • Got sunburnt like a proper Guiri (or is it Langosta?) on my last quick trip to Spain. Boo.
So its been a busy year so far.

Whilst not really my line of work any more - I still like to keep tabs on the Spanish property market. Here's a post I made on Spanish Property Insight using Google's Trends for Websites to compare traffic levels.

Lets not leave it so long next time...

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Evans Halshaw York

Word of advice: Do not buy a car from Evans Halshaw, York.

Utter cowboys who sold me an unsafe car, did a botch fix to avoid paying for the part and then washed their hands of any responsibility.

THANK YOU Evans Halshaw.

I was laughed out of the showroom at the notion of a courtesy car whilst they were "fixing" mine. This left me over £200 out of pocket as I needed to travel to London, so my only other option was the last minute fares on the trains, expensive taxis and the inconvenience of not having my own transport. This with a heavily pregnant girlfriend and luggage was not a lot of fun.

THANK YOU Evans Halshaw.

A month earlier when I walked in with my hard earned money in my pocket, it was a different story of course. They were tripping over themselves to greet me, take me for a test drive, ask me about my favourite football team and all that other false chummy bollocks that low life, no-conscience salesmen effortlessly exude like so much crude oil.

Since their customer service consisted of laughing me out of the building when I said the words "courtesy car" I'd like to know - was it unfair of me to expect some sort of transport, having given them the best part of £3,000 of my hard earned money?

The car they sold me wasn't going anywhere, so I (wrongly) assumed they would be bending over backwards to help me get back on the road again.

No fuck off and pay for the train all the way down to London. Your pregnant bird can carry the cases by the way.

THANK YOU Evans Halshaw.

Anyway at least, I thought, they will have the car fixed when I get back.

However after waiting over a week (and me chasing them on the phone) I eventually get my car back. Funnily enough, this visit to the showroom was not marked with the earlier cheery greetings and pally inquiries as to which football team I supported. I was ignored, indeed blanked by the sales staff - the only person talking to me was the mechanic handing me the keys back.

Then look where I ended up -

THANK YOU Evans Halshaw.

I found out later (from a reputable garage) that instead of replacing the faulty part when I took the car in - they simply cleaned it up.

I ended up paying a proper garage a further £600 to get the faulty part replaced.

THANK YOU Evans Halshaw.

Oh and the response from their customer service department? - Not our problem - you should have taken out a 2 year warranty that our salesmen were also trying to sell you. At a huge commission. Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out.

THANK YOU Evans Halshaw.

At least I am not the only one wise to their cowboy ways. There are numerous forum threads containing people enjoying similar levels of "customer service".

Such as