The MF pipe dream

Another update. Yesterday I drove down to Shropshire as Im a bridesmaid for a friends wedding in June. So I had to try my dress on as it needs some alterations. As I am in the North, this !!!8216;cost!!!8217; me quarter a tank of diesel. Although I had nearly a full tank anyway before setting off so I didn!!!8217;t actually spend anything.

Upon my return home I then went to bride-to-be family!!!8217;s house (they live in my home town) as I have said I would drive them down next month for the wedding. I booked the accommodation for them online (the wedding reception is to be held at a beach campsite in Wales) so they owed me money back for that. So I got £65 back from them. I!!!8217;m also taking one of their friends with us, he still owes for the campsite. I will put it towards an overpayment when I get it.

Today I have driven to the beach, it is such a gorgeous day. Kids have played out for hours in the sand and best of all its free!

Hope everyone is enjoying the bank holiday weekend.

Oh how I love surprises of the 'good' variety. Just checked my email account and had an e-mail from my gas/energy supplier saying 'Your statement is now ready'.

I logged in to my energy account. I am *drum roll please* £72.15 in credit. I read the statement page and it says 'we will refund this back to your account within the next ten days' :j

I didn't even know they gave refunds unless you specifically requested them. I always thought the money just remained in your energy fund to gear up for the winter months?

Anyhoo, any guesses where I am going to send the money when it lands in my bank account...?

Have a great day y'all!

Well darn it! My car has decided to pack up. :mad:

I have one of those weirdy handbrakes that is basically like a switch that you pull but when you want to move the car you just accelerate on the pedal and the handbrake comes off automatically. That seems to be broken so the car would not move before. Seems to be an intermittent fault as it has not worked a couple of times today then when I have left it alone for a while then come :j to it, it worked again.

It is booked in to go to the garage tomorrow morning. Luckily I have been off work today (it was my sons sports day at school) and I am off work tomorrow so lets hope they can fix it.

I will have to pop out soon and pick my other son up from the child minders. Hope the car works.

Tomorrows forecast: expensive!

Sooooo....yesterday happened.

My car completely packed up on me. I was due to take it to the garage first thing in the morning but nope! Intermittent fault had become full-on fault. The damn thing wouldn't go! It would start up all right, it just wouldn't accelerate due to the handbrake not coming off!

What happened next - well I rang my insurance company as I seem to remember buying breakdown cover or something when I renewed my policy in April. After being on hold for ten minutes or so I get through to the customer service department and asked them to clarify if I had actually bought it. They said I have Roadside Assistance - not the same thing apparently!

The man on the end of the phone asked me where my car had broken down. I said at my house. He then asked me "is that less then quarter of a mile away from your house?" to which I reply "yes". The chap then said that I'm not covered for a breakdown as Roadside Assistance only applies for breakdowns more than quarter-mile from my house :eek: Not helpful!

So after a quick search on't web, I found a vehicle recovery firm and called for them to tow my car to the garage it was supposed to be going to in the first place. That was £35.

Turns out it was the rear brake calliper that had broken and the brake fluid had leaked out! :mad:

I think I know what caused the fault.... At the wedding at the weekend me and my pals stayed on a huge campsite in North Wales. Said campsite has great tarmacced roads at the entrance/exit point and near the shops/showers/pub etc. If you keep driving round the site eventually the roads stop being tarmac and become dirt track roads with inches of sand on them and HUGE dips in the roads. Driving along them even at 10 mph is like being drunk at sea in a storm!! The car was bouncing around all over the place even though I tried to dodge the worst of it.

There was one giant pothole-type dip that was particularly nasty. More of a moon crater. Even though I drove slowly on the campsite, it was hard to see with the sun being so bright, and with all the weight in my car (3 passengers + shed loads of camping gear) I went into this dip at rather a nasty angle. The car almost clanged!! It felt like a sharp jolt under the chassis.

Now as I mentioned, this campsite was pretty huge (massive in fact) and because of the location of where we were, if you wanted a shower for example, or even just to 'nip' to the loo, you had to drive there as we pitched our tents at least a mile away from the shower/loo block. So not only did I manage to clunk into this pothole/crater once, I actually did it twice while we were there :eek: I'm such an idiot!

Weirdly though, on the Sunday I drove back home in stop/start traffic up the M56/M6 back to the North West. The journey home took me 4 hours in total, fully laden with camping gear plus three passengers. No problems with the car whatsoever.

Monday I drove to work (up M6 to Lancaster) as well as dropping the kids off where they needed to be on the way. then drove back home again, picking up the kids on the way back. Again, the car had no issues.

Tuesday is when the car starts playing up intermittently. Wednesday it !!!!!!s up good and proper!!

I blame those pesky potholes at the campsite.

Anyway to the point, as well as the £35 in getting the car carried off to the garage on a recovery truck, getting the rear calliper replaced inc labour and VAT set me back a further £193!! Safe to say I don't think that £70+ refund from my energy supplier is going on an OP this month!!! Nor is it likely I'll be making any extra OPs this month either but we'll see.

At least the car is fixed and safe to drive now. I count myself very lucky nothing serious happened.

£44 per month was the cheapest price they offered me for broadband, phone and usual digital tv channels. Hardly seems worth it. Just told them I'm going to shop around and likely will cancel their services soon.