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Oh dear oh dear oh dear! That was me uttering under my breath as I slip on my Mr Grumpy hat. I just read about a Fiat driver who took his car into an independent garage to diagnose a problem. The problem was a faulty turbo unit.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

The garage called a Fiat dealer and was given the price of the replacement re-conditioned part as £399 which the customer agreed to pay. However, when the part arrived it also arrived with a bill for £542 with no explanation, an increase of £140. The independent garage said that they would have to pass on the increase but provided no explanation.

After querying it Fiat explained the increase by saying, ‘Many components are improved and upgraded over time but, on this occasion, it seems the old unit was still on the system, even though it was no longer available, hence the different price.’ However, no doubt as a gesture of goodwill the customer was given £150 worth of vouchers to be used against service costs and parts over the next 12 months.

What a load of bull poo! First of all why are dealers and manufacturers so crooked and secondly why are customers so bloody naïve? There is such a thing as the Sale of Goods Act that protects buyers of goods and an Office of Fair Trading from whom you can get advice and support so why are people writing into magazines and newspapers who guess at the answers to legal problems?

Let me explain the situation we have here. Don’t confuse this transaction with walking into a shop and buying something on the shelf that has a price ticket attached. The price ticket has nothing to do with the contract of sale it is what is known as ‘An Invitation To Treat’.

The shopkeeper is not obliged to sell the item to you at the price on the ticket. It is a suggestion, you then make an offer to buy the goods at the price on the ticket and the shopkeeper normally accepts. If the shopkeeper has made a mistake when pricing his goods he doesn’t have to sell it to you at the mistaken price.

That is a fact! However, this isn’t the case with respect to the turbo unit. The independent garage entered into a contract with a Fiat dealer to supply a part for a car. The dealer agreed to supply the part and the garage agreed to pay £399 for the part, in turn agreed with the customer. That’s it, end of story, turn out the lights on your way out!

If either party fails to perform then they are in breach of contract and the aggrieved party can seek compensation. In this case, if the dealer agreed to supply a part that no longer existed that was his problem not the garage that ordered the part or the customer. If, in order to perform their part of the contract, the dealer had to supply a more expensive item he has to suffer the loss, not the garage or in turn the customer.

This is absolutely ridiculous and Fiat probably know that this is the case but have screwed the customer – it’s simply not on. When will the car industry start to act honourably but more important when will consumers wise up? Oooh I get so angry! By Graham Hill

Bits&Pieces: I think most of my readers know my feelings about statistics, most of them leave me scratching my head thinking – so what? Someone, whoever decided to carry out the survey, needs to get a life.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

For example did you know that Seat drivers are most likely to make an ‘at fault’ insurance claim? Really??? Oh there’s more, Kia and Mini owners were next most likely to claim with Subaru, Smart and Fiat owners putting in the least claims.

Astonishing or what? So who carried out this totally pointless survey? Money Supermarket that’s who. Totally bloody pointless – Money Supermarket – get a life!

The AA has warned that fuel prices are set to rise by 5p per litre over the summer months. Apparently petrol stations have already started to pass on higher wholesale prices to customers at the pumps.

They said that costs had already increased by 1p per litre in July – not at my bloody Tesco, more like 3p!

Who do you use to insure your car? Think twice about Swinton as they were fined £7.4 million for miss-selling policies between April 2010 and April 2012. They were found guilty of using an ‘aggressive sales strategy’  over the phone and failed to tell customers that some of the add-ons were optional extras.

I can see that it won’t be long before we start to see congestion charges in all towns and cities. Cambridge, who dropped the proposal for a congestion charge 3 years ago, are now considering this as an option to reduce traffic gridlock. Before going ahead they will need to convince local businesses.

A friend of mine, not known for dating the brightest sparks in the boxes of fireworks, changed his car for a Chrysler 300C a couple of years ago, you remember the car, a big old bus with the looks of a Bentley if you changed the grill for a Bentley style honeycomb jobey! As a result he has had much success with the ladies believing he is driving around in Read more »

My car review of the week is a bit of a supercar. It’s  Fiat but not just any Fiat it’s the Maserati Granturismo MC Stradale. It’s difficult to think that Maserati and Ferrari are both owned by Fiat but they are, in the case of Maserati since 1993. This beast of a car has a grill that looks like a shark’s mouth full of teeth ready to devour anything that gets Read more »

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I know I’m getting pretty old and I don’t see things as I did when I was younger and I do yearn for some of the things that we enjoyed when we were younger but I don’t crave for 60’s music, black and white TV’s or Ford Cortina’s. When BMW brought the Mini up to date I thought it was brilliant but I could never get my head around the retro Fiat 500. It Read more »

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Insurance company Swiftcover has revealed which car is most likely to be vandalised. It listed the top 5 vandalised cars with the number one slot being taken by the Lexus IS. They suggested that this could be down to the Steve Coogan character Alan Partridge who was linked to the car in his series. The top 5 cars in its Vandalism Index are: Read more »

You know I like to search out great deals for my customers and boy have I found a real Bobby Dazzler for you!! How would you like a car which comes with a free servicing package? Not for just 3 years or even 5 years but 7 years. That’s right, a whole 7 years. Before you look for the Vauxhall style lifetime warranty catch, ie. restricted to 100,000 miles Read more »

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Hello John, wanna buy a motor? Well actually a motoring school, the biggest in the UK, BSM. So how much you gonna pay for this luverly motoring school? A quid – done John! Sold to the AA at the back of the room. That’s actually how much the AA paid for BSM after going into administration at the end of January. The company went through a management buyout in 2009 when it was bought for £10 million but according to reports has struggled ever since. The company has 2,100 instructors Read more »

Has diesel had its day? For the first time in 10 years we saw a drop in diesel car sales compared to petrol sales. The proportion of diesels sold to petrol dropped to 41% compared to petrol, 58%. The proportion for the previous year was 43%, an all time high following 10 years of year on year increases. The move has been brought about by improved small petrol engine technology. Manufacturers have turned their Read more »

There are now 3 EU research projects under way to trial ‘talking’ cars, which can communicate with each other and road infrastructure such as traffic signs, lights and congestion management centres. Vehicles will receive information about hazards ahead such as congestion, accidents, oil spills, potholes, debris etc. Drivers will then be alerted by dashboard communications. Developed into prototypes by three Read more »