7342/19862
I went to look at upgrading my tour/family car today, not just because the radio skips around annoyingly, but no not because of that. I like the Sharan I have, but they have stopped making them. I was thinking about getting a second electric car but I don’t think the network for electric cars is good enough yet to risk having an electric tour car and there’s a two year waiting list and we have no space for a second electric car anyway. I wasn’t really intending to buy anything today and mainly just wanted to see if the 2021 Sharan was any better than the 2015 one. It turned out not really - they didn’t even upgrade the mildly crappy entertainment centre, which was all I cared about. But I enjoyed the test drive and did wonder whether it was worth getting a newer car to see me through to the point where I will have no choice but to go electric (by which time the cars and network should be better).
The sales team was good though and they gave me a surprisingly high valuation on my current car - he’d asked me what I thought it was worth, but I didn’t know and didn’t want to guess, which was lucky as he offered me about 10 grand more than I was expecting (but I know very little about cars). He asked if there was anything he could do to make me go for the deal today- or at least put down a deposit - and I tried to get £600 more off. He went off to see what he could do. The manager of the dealership had come over and asked me for a photo with him and I said that had to be worth a couple hundred of quid.
Now I don’t know if they were working me (obviously they were a bit, that’s their job) or if this was a genuine error, but another guy came over to say the price they had quoted me for my car was wrong and based on it only having done 13000 miles rather than the actual (and rather low, partly due to me not using the car for two years cos of Covid) 50,000. He said he would honour the original quotation (which was a few hundred pound more) but couldn’t give me anything more off. If I was being grifted I didn’t really mind. As I said, I had £10,000 more in my pocket than I’d though I had. But I wonder if anyone else has experienced that particular light con. They had all the figures to back it up, so it would have been a lot of work and quite rude (after the photo and all), but that doesn’t mean they hadn’t done it.
I sort of doubt it though as they were keen to make a sale. And they then gave me some money off my next two services as well. I am sure they did OK on the deal, but I was happy and went for it anyway. They’d given me a potential plot idea if I ever write a script about car dealers, so when you’re dealing with a comedian, you’re always the one being conned. We can make more money out of your little scams then you can ever dream of.
So I ended up buying a new car - which is nearly exactly like my car. Except the radio works and it has a little indicator in the wing mirror that lets you know if a car is in your blind spot, which might become annoying.
They wanted me to buy extended warranty and paint and alloy insurance (pointing out that I was getting £900 less for my car cos of all the bumps and scratches. It’s true that I will almost certainly bump this car too, but all those insurances cost about £900 and they have to be making money off them, so I declined that like a pro.
Before that I had a fascinating chat with Rebecca Wragg Sykes about Neanderthals (and what their cocks might have been like obviously - though for once I didn’t ask, she just told me anyway!) It will be out as a book club next week. I love that the guests on this series are often part of a long game of tag. Alice Roberts had recommended Brenna Hassett who recommended Rebecca who also mentioned a book coming out later this year that I definitely want to read.
I also started listening to Dan Schreiber’s new book which contained the incredible and frankly unbelievable fact that the song Free as a Bird uses a sample of John Lennon saying “Turned out nice again” at the end, but in a salute to their earlier work the sample is played backwards and appears to say “Made by John Lennon”
Impossible right? Great book and Dan will be a guest on Book Club in a couple of weeks (so all the Fish guys will have been on it by then, the book writing maniacs).
And more snooker loopy action tonight too, in an utterly thrilling frame.
Watch here
The second RHLSTP on 6th Feb will be Josh Widdicombe and timkey. So
BOOK NOW.
