Like Selling Ice

05-09-2011

So apparently I, along with the ladyfriend, have the ability to sell ice to Inuits. At least if you take 'ice' to mean 'Megan the oh so irreparable Megane' and 'Inuits' to mean 'Romanians looking for something car shaped'.

I am going to be honest here, I thought the only way I would get rid of her (the car that is ) was if I drove it into a field on Halloween and handed some "miscreants" a box of matches.

I mean I couldn't even get a scrap yard to take this damn thing. But, being the chancers that we sometimes are, I created an ad online to try and flog the car. Then the ladyfriend "dressed up" the ad (I would have almost considered buying the car myself) and we waited for the influx of nothing.

Except that didn't happen. Yesterday after a few calls of interest I managed to convince one Romanian bunch to take the car from me. We met away from the apartment, because I ain't stupid, and they had a look at the car. After the test drive they seemed happy enough and haggled me down a bit on the price.

No, I did not give the car away, but I wasn't going to stand firm on the price for one simple reason. When I went to start the car to meet them the temperamental bitch wouldn't start. At all. I had to use a few tricks to get the engine running at all. It was almost like she 'knew' that today was the day for her to depart my ownership. I had started her the day before, no problems. Then, the day she needs to start, nothing.

After much swearing and some disbelief the engine kicked in and I was out the gates like a bat out of hell.

Megan is the Romanian's problem now.

In other car related news I finally managed to get through to the "helpful" people down in Shannon. The only way I could get through was to sit with my phone on loudspeaker for about half an hour, waiting for somebody to pick up. Finally they did and proved to be mind numbingly useless in every aspect.

For starters she seemed inclined to be happy enough to just say "Yes, that car is registered to you, goodbye." When I stopped her before she hung up and returned to her tea, biscuits and gossip magazine the conversation got more annoying.

To a computer minded person removing something from a Database is not a big job. Yet apparently updating this database, which she had right in front of her, was not within her powers. She could tell me I owned the car (which I don't) but do nothing about it. After trying to explain that I wasn't trying to claim a car but in fact the opposite I realised I was talking to a brick wall. I had to admit that I had, at some point, owned this car but had sent the paperwork down to them.

"Oh," came the reply. "Then it must have gotten lost here somewhere."

"Well great, let's fix that."

"No, can't do that. You will have to fill in another form I send up to you."

I'm not going to lie if she had of been standing in front of me I would have killed her.

So I told her to send the form up to me.

"What's your address?"

"The one that is on the screen in front of you," I said.

"I can't see your address."

"Then how do the eFlow people get it?"

"I gave it to them."

"But you don't know my address now?"

"No."

"But you gave it to eFlow? For a car that I don't own? Because you lost the paperwork?"

"Yes."

"So now I have to fill out more paperwork because the job wasn't done right the last time?"

"Correct, sir. What's your address?"

After the inner torrent of swearing died down and the twitch in my eye returned to normal blinking I told her my address and left it at that.

Yet another fine example of some elements of a sector that could be culled without causing detrimental problems. Useless doesn't even describe this sort of thing. A new word is going to have to be invented.

Blue_jester