How do people rely on their car to get to a 9-5 job?

EnPointe

CliveOfIndia said:

If you own a car then you accept that there are times when it will be in the garage.  If you are unable to book the garage for a time outside of work hours, there are a few options.

Some garages will lend you a courtesy car for when yours is in for a routine service.  Granted, these tend to be the larger franchised dealers, so you'll be paying more than you would to have the work done by your local friendly independent mechanic.

Aside from that - bus/coach, train, lift-share with colleagues.  Hire car if push comes to shove (yes, this'll cost, but for stuff like MOT and servicing you do at least know well in advance when you'll need it).  Work from home if that's an option with your job?

Sure, you can't plan for the unexpected stuff like breakdowns or whatever, but MOT and servicing is known months in advance so you can plan for it.

exactly this 

rollingmoon

400ixl said:

Not sure what car the OP had that needed servicing every 6 months. Very few outside of high performance cars need this

Some years ago my OH was commuting to a job in a different city, to the tune of 25000 miles a year. Service interval on her Fiat Panda 1.2 was 12000 miles = service every six months.

400ixl

rollingmoon said:

400ixl said:

Not sure what car the OP had that needed servicing every 6 months. Very few outside of high performance cars need this

Some years ago my OH was commuting to a job in a different city, to the tune of 25000 miles a year. Service interval on her Fiat Panda 1.2 was 12000 miles = service every six months.

Yes, but that is not the norm for a commune where the average mileage used to be 12k a year and is now even lower.

I could counter it with the most annual mileage my car has covered in the last 4 years is 3k miles per year. But that is not anything usual either.

Neither example really helps in the context.

rollingmoon

400ixl said:

I could counter it with the most annual mileage my car has covered in the last 4 years is 3k miles per year. But that is not anything usual either.

It might be, I only do about 3000 miles a year in mine. I gave you a perfectly valid example of a bog ordinary car that was having a service every six months; I don't imagine it's the only one out there that does.

Elliott.T123

Mark, from all your posts on other topics I am assuming you have a Monday - Friday office job.

Solutions to not having a car for Service / MOT's:

1. Book a car into a garage that offers courtesy cars
2. Book into a garage that is open weekends
3. Book them into the same place for both at the same time, cut 2 days to 1

You mentioned snow...

Yes, there are times you may not be able to get to work, a few years ago I missed a full week of work, if I remember it was "Beast from the East" I used to live at the bottom of a steep hill and owned a rear wheel drive car. Combine the two and there was not a chance in hell of getting out of the road. The company did get a little grumpy as only two of us lived south of the office and the other 50+ staff lived in the local city or north and had a lot less snow. A picture to show how bad it was quickly cleared that up and they were understanding. Asked us to work from home as best we could.

I could equally say that living in London there were 4 days of tube strikes this year. How does anyone live with that uncertainty that is out of their control. It sounds like hell to me relying on them not to strike to get to work. Give me a car and my own certainty any day over the hell that is living in London!

Stateofart

Millions upon millions cope with the same sitaution, it's eminently doable.  I do the MOT and service at the same time, ask for a courtesy car and if they haven't got one walk to the 30 mins to work.  Some will drop you off.  Most are open at least an hour before business hours so you can drop it off, the same at the end of the day.  For multiple days use a bus, but that's rare. 

Also, do your research.  Buy wisely, which means reliable and easy to maintain older/cheap cars (Toyota) or invest in reliable newer cars that will last (Volvo). 

Mark_Glasses

@silverwhistle I've never been one to use the car just to go down the road unless I had a lot to put in my boot. 

Prior to moving to London I did live in the middle of town near a train station. The job I did had a bus stop near by but the service was once an hour arriving at 5 past the hour and we started at 9:00. Starting at 9:05 was not an option, someone new tried to do that and got sacked as a result. The train service was every 30 minutes so in order to get the bus that gets you there at 8:05 I would have had to get the 7:15 train. Alternatively you could make the hour long walk from the train station to the office which went though some horrible housing estates and across busy dual carriageways, but then the later train wouldn't give you an hour to get there. So we're talking a 2 hour journey via public transport vs a 30 minute journey in the car. There were other companies nearby so I don't think this was an unusual situation.

@RandomTourist working from home was never an option before I moved to London

@EnPointe OK

@rollingmoon service was every 6k miles

@400ixl I was doing 12k a year and service was 6k. We're going back nearly 20 years so maybe things have changed.

@Elliott.T123 I've found in London there's a lot more lenience with these sort of things. We've all been late for work due to tubes being suspended or being stuck in a tunnel but often our managers are experiencing the same thing. My job prior to London was very particular about being on time. Working from home was never an option, if you couldn't get to the office at 9:00 then you had to take it as annual leave. The only lenience they had was if you had a doctors or dentists appointment when they said book it first thing in the morning and stay late to make up the time. It wasn't just that company who were particular, I once temped somewhere and got laid off as soon as I asked for a bit of time off to go to the dentist.

@Stateofart I know lot's of people do it, I've just never got my head round how they do it

Thanks for the replies everybody. I think it's time to stop this thread before it gets out of control.