Back to London where the garage staff are rude and unhelpful and want money for the smallest thing. How I miss my homeland.
I rang my local VW garage - in Chiswick - and told them the problem. I expected them to give me an appointment, but they told me just to bring the car in and they would deal with it when they could.
I duly complied, but once I had got there I was kept waiting in the undermanned reception area until one of the overworked and slightly grumpy staff members could attend to me.
I had been to this garage before, for my service last year and for a couple of other (usually self-inflicted) problems with the car and have found the service almost uniformly incompetent and arrogant (but the VW people seem to have it cleverly sown up so that you have to use their garages so they can behave how they like).
The stressed man seemed to be having some trouble understanding my problem - "So your engine is overheating," he stated.
"No," I said, "It's just that there's a warning light flashing telling me that my coolant is low. I took it to a garage in York and the nice, friendly man there filled it up with water for me..."
"Was the engine hot when you did this?"
"No, it was after the problem had been going on for a few days. I just want the tank drained and new coolant put in and maybe someone should check there isn't a leak."
"We can't fit you in today, but I can make an appointment for you tomorrow..."
"Oh, but on the phone he said.... oh never mind. Yes, book me in for tomrrow."
He asked me my registration number and I told him and he typed it into his computer.
"You've not been here before then," he informed me.
"Yes I have four or five times."
"No, you haven't. You're not in the computer."
"Well the computer is definitely incorrect about that, because I know I have been here."
"No you haven't. You're not on the computer. You can't have been here."
He asked me to repeat my registration number and then again confirmed that the computer, to borrow a phrase from somewhere, said no.
Although I was beginning to suspect that maybe I gone mental or been the victim of some Total Recall style brain-washing, I continued to insist that I had definitely used this garage before. I remembered because of the poor service and brusque nature of the staff.
If only I had had access to Warming Up, I could have shown them this entry to prove both that I had been here before and how I had similarly been dicked around then.
"Let me see you car," he patronised me, assuming that it was me who had mistaken the number-plate of the car I had had for 4 years, rather than his computer (and had he known my intense interest in number plates then this would have been doubly insulting).
A quick trip outside confirmed that the number I had given him was miraculously the same as the one on the car and he reasserted, "You haven't been here before."
By now I was slightly annoyed. "I have definitely been here before mate. If you want I will show you my log book with the stamp in it from this garage that shows you serviced my car last year."
He decided to humour me and to prove that I was wrong. "What's your name and address?" he asked.
I told him and he typed it in.
There was a beat.
"Oh, we'd put it in with an X instead of the Y," he explained. He didn't apologise or offer any kind of comment on his previous behaviour. He booked me in for the following day. I drove home. I had wasted over an hour on this nonsense which could have been avoided if the man on the phone had simply told me that I should book in.
I hate the real world.
