Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Trials of purchasing a car

Can you tell from this photo how irritated Scott is here??? This picture captures the scene of our experience at the Volvo dealership last night when we thought we were going to pick up our newly purchased car.....we ended up leaving there WITHOUT the car because the dealership could not go to the post office before it closed to pay our road tax - SO - we could not take the car off the lot. Post office, you said? HMM? Yes, EVERYTHING happens here in the UK at the post office. It is bizarre but it is just the place things are done here....

Neither of us were too thrilled about not being able to collect our car last night, but Scott was especially not happy since I pulled him out of work at 5pm in order to drive the 30 miles to the dealership, so we could arrive before they closed. On top of the dealership not having paid our road tax on the car in time, we also were having an issue with our new car insurance company sending through our insurance verification to the dealership. We had a print out of the verification from an email but the dealership said they needed a copy straight from the insurance company.
So, Scott called the company three times during our visit to the dealership and spoke to the India based customer service team to try to get the paperwork pushed through to England. 

Happily, today, we have sorted out these issues - the insurance paperwork was collected, road tax was paid at the post office, and the dealership delivered our new car to our town. We only received 1/8th of a tank of gas in this new vehicle, but I guess to request a full tank would just be picky at this point....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like typical UK inefficiency and bureaucracy. I sometimes can't figure out how this country runs! But glad to hear it worked out.