| Current mood: |  distressed |
So here's how it goes.
You look up the people who claim to provide a given service.
You list the ones that are in the right area, serve the right catchment area, seem to have the right qualifications or general business nouse.
You pick the best looking one off the list; You look up their contact details, and you follow the procedure their web page or other advert gives you for logging your request for service.
And then you wait.
You get no email confirmation of them having received your request.
You get no telephone call back.
You get no message left on your 'phone while your telephone has been switched off 'cos you were at work, where you're not supposed to take personal calls while on duty.
After a day or two, you leave a follow-up call on their answerphone. (These guys never seem to answer their 'phones. At least, not as any time when you're in a position to actually call them. Why they bother listing an office 'phone number when they're clearly one-man outfit and the job they do means they're never in the office is beyond me. But then, if you call their mobile number (if they list one), you either don't get an answer either, or you get a brief confused discussion 'cos they're in the middle of a job and they'll "get back to you as soon as I've checked on the computer when we've next got a lorry in your area".)
And another day goes by, and still you hear nothing.
And so, at the next opportunity you try another website, another number, another service... And the cycle begins again.
Yes, this is still about the sodding car.
Latest non-responding company: Mitchell Vehicle Dismantling Ltd., in Bishop's Cleeve. I say this not to name and shame them (in my experience they're no worse than the rest), but just so that anyone in any doubt can look them up and confirm that yes, this is a real company, I am not making this up, and yes by any reasonable interpretation their website does in fact offer the service I have requested. I filled in their web form and submitted a request on Wednesday evening, and I have heard ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from them. It is now of course FRiday evening which means the earliest I'll belikely to hear anything is MOnday, which is my only weekday off work next week, which is therefore the only day next week when it would be feasible to arrange collection of the car... and the following week, neither of my days off is a week day, and arranging extra time off at short notice is, um, problematical, to say the least.
So I'm going to try this appeal again:
Would anyone - you, your friends, your family, you neighbours budgerigar's boyfriends great aunt Selma - like a FREE CAR? Perfectly serviceable, good little runner, great fuel economy, just needs a couple of bits of vandalism fixed and oh, a new steering wheel fitted 'cos some bastard nicked the old one. These are very small expenses for anyone who might be in the market for AN ENTIRE WORKING CAR. Alas they are also expenses beyond my reach because I bring home 700 quid every 28 days, the landlord takes 380, the arrears on my council tax is currently 220 per month, and what with other fixed bills for the next few months my total living allowance is about tuppence ha'penny a week. And I should be spending my "spare" time and energy trying to do something about *that*, and instead I keep getting my head stuck in a loop fretting about *this*, because apparently in this totally fucked-up "must have everything brand new and perfectly working" economy you have to spend a significant chunk of money just to *GIVE* away AN ENTIRE PERFECTLY SERVICEABLE FUCKING CAR!
It needs to move NOW because it is making Mike and Ali's life even more miserable than it currently would be anyway, what with all the cancer and hospital trips and everything. I'm pretty much resigned to our friendship being irretrievably and permanently dead over this thing, but that doesn't mean I want the mess to go on ANY LONGER THAN NECESSARY.
I am seriously considering (for the umpteenth time) just finding some good strong rope, threading the thing up one evening and manually towing the bugger out to some place where someone might do the decent thing and just NICK or DESTROY THE ENTIRE BLOODY THING... Except that the steering's probably locked so that I can't tow it any further than blocking the road outside Mike and Ali's place anyway. Is there anyone with something like a wheeled jack, that could be fixed under the front just to get the steering wheels off the road out of the way?
Or anyone with ANY *practical*, "workable* ideas what to do?
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
pbristow) wrote,
