Direct line car bodywork repairs - a good deal?

Lucky me. My car bonnet paint-work got damaged in a hotel car-park.

OK, I've been insured with Direct Line for 14 years, and haven't made a claim since 1997. So I ring up. They tell me that there is an excess of £125, and no courtesy car. They refer me to Rackhams of Ipswich to fix it.

Rackhams reckon that a machine polish of the bonnet might well take out the damage, and the price be less than the excess (which is good of them). I have to leave it with them for a day, which means a day of leave lost. They don't do a bad job; but somehow there is a dark mark now visible under the paint at the front of the bonnet. I see it instantly. Price is £2 less than the excess; a little surprising to be so close to the exact figure of the excess. They convince me to go off with the car that way. But part way home I get cold feet. I call in at Marshalls Vauxhall, and their bodyshop tell me it's no good and needs to go back.

Back I go, and it has to go in for a week for a respray. Of course I need a car to go to work. So I go to 1car1, who are just around the corner. They lease me a Vauxhall Corsa for a week for £85, including insurance, which is excellent value. In fact 1car1 are very good to deal with indeed, advising me on special deals and to book via the website. They give me an air-conditioned car, although the price didn't theoretically include this.

Rackhams ring up during the week. Do I want the stone-chip damage on the bonnet fixed as well? If I don't, it will look terrible. Of course I want the bonnet prepared for spraying -- what kind of game is this? I say yes, and learn it will cost £30.

Is Rackhams trying to diddle me, I wonder, so I ring Direct Line. The claims line tell me this is normal. They will pay for the respray, but not to prepare the bonnet for the respray (!). In short it's a fiddle by the insurance company to sneak out of necessary work for the repair.

Since I'm getting a respray, I ask about my scratched wing mirrors. Oh no, say Direct Line. That would have to be a further claim, and a further excess! At £125 per excess, it won't be worth a claim.

Rackhams do a good job indeed, and I am happy with the quality of the work. 1Car1 take the car back, without trying to swindle me in any way, and I will certainly use them again.

But DirectLine? I'm not a happy bunny. Their excess is so high that you're paying most of the cost. A respray is perhaps only £200 anyway. Their way of sneaking out of preparation cost me extra; so did their refusal to supply a courtesy car. The price is good, when you insure; not so good, when you come to claim.

Charging me up - getting new phone batteries

My Nokia 6230 takes a small BL-5C battery. I've had it for a few years, so the battery doesn't take much of a charge any more. Getting a replacement has been a struggle, tho.

My first port of call was Amazon. Lots of those batteries there... until you discover that they're all practising a scam -- ask £4 a battery, and then £9 postage! Lots of stuff about 'genuine Nokia' batteries gives the impression of lots of counterfeits around, eh?

Anyhow, I order two: "Nokia Genuine Battery for 6230 Bl-5C Li-Ion Nokia Sealed product" - £8 each plus £8 P&P.

A day or so later, a tiny jiffy bag flops through the letter box. Posted first class letter post (cost less than 50p), it contains, loose, a single (1, not 2) BL-5C battery, not in any kind of wrapping at all, as if it had come straight out of the back of a phone. The P&P was clearly less than a pound. Back it went, and, to their credit, they made no fuss.

Bruised, I try ordering direct from Nokia online. They stock the batteries, but want a lot. Total order is £35! I order, sit, and wait. 8 days later, I look on their site, and it has not despatched. I email them and ask when it's available. No answer is received. Next day I telephone their customer service. I get an Indian who tells me that the order has been cancelled and that I should talk to my bank. As far as he is concerned that is the end of the matter. Considering the quantity of books I have bought over the last week, I know better. Nokia, it seems, don't care about customer service at all.

I'm not going back to Amazon. I want a reputable supplier. In the end I try an online advertiser again, Foneshop.com. I ordered two today, £23 including next day postage. Let's see what arrives...

Ipswich Hospital - robbing the sick?

I went to see my GP today, and he asked me to do a sample and drop it in to Ipswich NHS Hospital for analysis. I drove up there, parked... and found that they wanted £2.50 for the privilege. I was there around 10 minutes in total.

Petty officials can be very mean and very impudent when they think that they can get away with it. It's hard to imagine such a nasty tax on the sick -- worst, of course, for those poor souls who must go there regularly.

The moral of the story is that the NHS probably needs to be abolished. It's sad to say, but what can you do with so rotten an institution? It's not as if it is free for most of us. It costs £100bn a year; since there are around 25 million workers in the country, that means each worker pays around £4,000 a year for the health service in tax. Most of us probably get about £15 a year of value from it. You could get a pretty huge amount of care for that sum, privately.

I'd rather have a proper NHS. But at the moment, we pay...and pay, and pay ... for one which is cheapskate in every respect.

I noted today that Rose Gibb, who was 'chief executive' of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in Kent, and was forced to leave after a dirty-hospital scandal, is sueing for 'compensation' (See The Great Simpleton: Rewarding failure goverenment style). In my opinion she deserves to hang. What can you say, however, about an institution that handsomely rewards greed, impudence and negligence, at the cost of our health and lives?

British Gas - shortchanging the customer?

I've had a British Gas homecare agreement for years. They used to service my boiler every August. In 2006, I got no letter arranging an appointment for this; I rang, eventually, and it was done in November. In 2007 likewise no letter arrived; I rang in January and it has been done today. Not that they serviced it -- today BG call it "an inspection".

The engineer managed to turn off my pilot light and couldn't restart it. This was very bad news, and somewhat annoying. I don't need to have someone come out to disable my system, after all. But then he announced that he would have to call someone else to fix it. "I don't carry parts" he said. "You'll be lucky to get someone today". "You need a technician". When I queried whether the service engineers used to carry parts, he confirmed that they did. "We used to do services in the summer and concentrate on breakdowns in the winter."

Fortunately it was merely being difficult, and restarted after a few attempts and a long wait to reset the thermostat. But I feel swindled. British Gas forced me to take half a day off work. If there was work to be done, that's fine; but to make me wait even longer, possibly a day or so, if they manage to break something?

I want my boiler serviced every year. But in fact they're stretching the window longer each year. And they don't service it, they carry out "an inspection". And then they won't fix any fault they find?

Cunning rascals

After blogging on the Royal Mail scam, whereby they charge you an £8'international handling charge' to receive your parcel if customs decide to levy VAT on it, I thought that I would try complaining. The industry is regulated by PostComm, so I went to their web site. This said:

• Contact Royal Mail
  
• If you get no joy, try Postwatch
  
• Otherwise you can sue (ha ha)

So you cannot, in fact, complain to Postcomm. It looks as if it is just a quango.

Anyhow I complained to Royal Mail who sent me a long canned email suggesting that I complain to HM Revenue and Customs. This, of course, was disingenuous -- it is Royal Mail who impose this charge -- indicating that Royal Mail know full well that they're engaged in a scam.

I then complained to Postwatch. I got back a long canned email from them, which was interesting in that it retailed the Royal Mail line and then added:

"Issues relating to customs and excise is outside Postwatch's remit therefore we cannot become involved in disputes regarding this matter."

In other words, because Royal Mail claim that this is to do with customs, they can charge us what they like?!

Clearly this is a loophole in the law, which Royal Mail have discovered and are abusing for profit. Nasty, nasty stuff.

One other interesting snippet:

"Customers can refuse to pay these duties and charges, in which case the goods will be returned to sender at Royal Mail's expense."

If only we could all do that, and specify that another operator be used.

Royal Mail "International handling fee" scam

This is a good one!

I'm rarely in when Royal Mail deliver, so I often come home to a little red card on the mat telling me to come down to the sorting office and collect it.

In January I ordered some software on Ebay from a US supplier for $150, or about £75. Postage was $19, or about £10.

Then I came home to find a grey card on the mat. This demanded £21.45 in charges. The duty is merely VAT, at 17.5%, or around £12, so I scratched my head a bit at this.

Down I go to the sorting office. I query the charge, and they shrug and say 'nothing to do with us'. The parcel is presented, plus a sticker on the side, which says that the Royal Mail have added their own 'international handling fee' of £8!?!

And so it proves. A look at their web site reveals that a year ago they imposed this charge -- almost equal to the cost of international parcel post.

Clearly this is a rip-off. They've been paid to deliver the mail. If they want to put a sticker on it, that costs nothing. If they take money for the government, that costs almost nothing either. So the fee is just profit.

Is it really legal for Royal Mail to invent charges of any size, as a ransom demand, on mail for which postage has already been paid? Really? But who can afford lawyers in our country?

I don't much appreciate having to pay Gordon Brown £13.45 out of money which he has already claimed tax on at 46% (22% income tax + 11% 'national insurance' tax + 13% 'employers' -- as if! -- 'national insurance' tax). But Royal Mail are taking the p***.

Interestingly the sticker has two different telephone numbers on it; one is for HMRC about the VAT. But the other, added to the bottom, reads "Queries about contents or handling fee should be referred to Royal Mail International Tel: 08457 740 740". I imagine that HMRC got tired of getting irate phone calls, and insisted on Royal Mail printing this number as well. So they know, and Royal Mail know, that a scam is being perpetrated.

Adam Crozier, the CEO of Royal Mail, who thought this one up, is paid over £1m a year to invent ways to steal from the public like this. I don't know where he lives, but I hope his neighbours make his life hell.

See also:

http://paulm.com/inchoate/2005/04/customs_royal_mail_clearance_scam.html

The regulator is Postcomm. Their website is mainly about referring you to someone else! I've emailed a complaint to Royal Mail, so when they ignore it I can escalate it through their tree of people.