Archive for July, 2006
Light Fantastic
A VW owner ponders
For about the 4th time one of my headlights has failed but this time I decided not to take it to the dealer to get it done. Why, well that is because the local garage said they would charge me £6.00 while the VW garage was going to be £48.00. Why am I even going to a garage I hear you ask? Well that is because it says in the manual that this is too technical. Having just watched the guy who I paid £6.00 do it, I now know I too could do it in seconds. Surely it is in the interest of car manufacturers to allow and encourage folk to do this maintenance?
One pearl of wisdom on “Light Fantastic”
Provide common sense...
Divers going down
a football viewer asks
I have watched about half a dozen of the recent world cup and diving now seems to be standard. FIFA says that they don’t want to have a retrospective punishment system and the video ref used by rugby would slow the sport down. Can you recommend any system?
Provide common sense...
Telephone etiquette
A phone user asks
when leaving a message on someone’s voice mail an incident occurred that caused me to burst into laughter. As I did not know the caller should I have hung up and started again and left only half a message or continued to battle it? Or something else?
2 lacklustre pieces of inspiration on “Telephone etiquette”
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Consultant G Says:
July 6th, 2006 at 9:02 amTricky. No doubt there is a book devoted to this somewhere. You do not say whether this was a wrong number that you dialled, or a number you dialled ? If wron number I guess it would be polite to say sorry, wrong number (even though it costs the person) rather than have them wonder who called.
If it was the correct number, and it was not an unsolicited call, then just leave your name and say you will try again later.
If it was to try and sell the person double glazing, then I hope you roast in Hel. -
July 14th, 2006 at 3:49 pmI think you should have allowed yourself to laugh out loud, and then described the funny situation to the person you were leaving the message for, thus spreading the hilarity. Of course if the initial reason for your call was to finalise details of a funeral (or something of similar gravity), this maybe wouldn’t be the best course of action.
July 14th, 2006 at 11:33 am
There are several considerations here. First, common sense dicates that you should not pay £48 to change a bulb. Secondly, you should examine whether using a non-VW personnel violates any warranties (and then consider whether VW will ever know). Paying £6 is reasonable, however if you are moderately technically minded, and are familiar with the technique common sense dictates that you should change the bulb yourself. Always be wary of people who are trying to make money from you.
More importantly perhaps, you should consider why your bulbs are failing so frequently.