Sunday, 19. September 2010
Sunday, 19. September 2010
According to Experian, the credit reference agency, automotive fraud increased by 35% during the first half of 2010. 34 in every 10,000 applications were considered potentially criminal. The majority were recorded in the second quarter showing an upward trend. First party fraud overtook third party identity fraud during April to June as the most common type of attempted fraud. First party fraud is typically where individuals attempt to hide adverse credit history or misrepresent their employment status to try and secure credit and other Read more »
Saturday, 18. September 2010
Graham Hill’s in depth review of a car takes me back a little to probably my most favourite car to drive. No it wasn’t my 7 Series BMW, which I actually loved or any of the prestige and exotica cars that I have driven over many years of being in this business. Strangely it was back in the early 80’s when I drove a Renault 25 V6i. It was gorgeous, at the time it looked great, it drove wonderfully with a cabin that felt a cross Read more »
Friday, 17. September 2010
As most cars have in car computers fitted these days wouldn’t it be a great option to have incorporated, whereby you input the cost per litre of the fuel that you put into your car and at the end of each journey or possibly during the journey, it showed you the cost of the fuel that you’ve used. Now wouldn’t that stop a few unnecessary trips, especially short trips that might return on 10 miles to the gallon compared with the average of say 40mpg. Any views? By Graham Hill
Thursday, 16. September 2010
The AA has revealed that we are seeing a North South divide open up when it comes to fuel. Apparently prices are rising faster in the south than in the north. Recent drops in oil prices should have resulted in pump prices dropping but the garages in the south seem reluctant to pass on the savings. The average price of a litre of petrol in the north is now 115.5 pence but in the south it’s 117.2 pence. The gap has opened Read more »
Thursday, 16. September 2010
My gadget of the week is a tool. It’s made by Dremel and is simply called the 8200 multitool. It’s a cordless electric battery operated tool that can cut, sand, grind and carve. It is claimed to have twice the speed of its rivals and has reduced weight due to the size and weight of its smaller lithium battery that takes around an hour to charge and can hold that charge, according to Dremel, for up to 2 years. The increased Read more »
Wednesday, 15. September 2010
Beware of service intervals. As most people know service intervals have been extending and it’s not uncommon for cars to have 18,000 or 20,000 mile service intervals. If you are a low mileage user this could suggest that if you had a car for 3 years, covering around 6,000 or less miles per annum, you wouldn’t have to carry out a single service to retain the car’s warranty. But this is unlikely to be the case as most Read more »
Tuesday, 14. September 2010
Moving on to legitimate parking fines, it turns out that local authorities may follow the Westminster council lead and name and shame the worst culprits for not paying their fines. It seems that some of the worst culprits are the very wealthy and Westminster has taken the unprecedented step of announcing the worst offenders on it’s website. It would seem that many of those that refuse to pay the fines are Arab Read more »
Tuesday, 14. September 2010
There was a lot of euphoria when the Government announced that they were going to ban the clamping and towing of cars parked on private land. The ban comes into force in November 2010, under new laws set to stop unscrupulous clampers from charging ridiculous amounts of money, to either have the clamp removed, or get your car back from a pound where the car has been towed to. However, before the anti- Read more »
Monday, 13. September 2010
On the 14th September I attended a meeting of the good and great in the vehicle finance industry at the London offices of Grant Thornton. The purpose was to debate the challenges of the industry which would be reported in the journal of the industry, Motor Finance. There were many conflicting views but the bottom line is that we are still in for a tough time. Clearly there is a lack of liquidity in the vehicle finance Read more »
