I don’t do this often but I’ve just had an interesting discussion with DRT Autos used car sales and servicing company in Clydach Swansea. A brief history; I saw DRT Autos advertising a few cars on ebay and decided to pop up to Clydach and see what used cars they had in stock. A rather nice Mazda MX6 caught my eye and we started it up and made the basic checks. I spoke to the owner who seemed very defensive when I asked about his returns policy/warranty. He told me outright, they’ll bring it round, I’ll go for a drive and if anything’s wrong, he’ll give my money back.

The day came and DRT autos did indeed deliver the car, pointed out the absence of one brakelight and then left… no test drive, no checks, no nothing. I sorted out the insurance and went for a quick spin around the block. (I’m not used to manual cars so didn’t put any pressure on it.). I picked up Yovina in it, dropped her off and picked her up the next day. Looking outside the window, I noticed a large puddle, after investigation it was spewing water from the waterpump. Driving it in this condition will damage the engine, so it’s housebound. Also checking through MOT rules (which is due shortly), the handbrake cable was dangerously loose, one other rear light was missing, and the drivers seatbelt didn’t retract smoothly… Thus making it unfit for purpose under the sale of good act. It also makes it dangerous. Non-essential problems include interior boot light full of water, the heater blower and a/c didn’t work. The latter are convenience items and therefore not much hassle for me to fix.

I called DRT Autos straight away and started with the Water pump which they said they would sort. 3 days later, I called them back and they now want to charge me for the repair work and part!

After research, selling a vehicle in this condition is illegal and I am fully in the belief that they are completely liable to repair these issues or offer a full refund. They unfortunately aren’t liable for the heater resistor pack I bought, the Haynes manual or spare bulbs. I will be contacting Trading standards in the morning because DRT Autos is not conforming to UK law, have given me a rather expensive and dangerous oversized paperweight when I asked for a car, which I could drive, road worthiness should have been assumed. Trade Centre Wales have just been fined £5000 for a similar case.

In the meantime, I have no car to speak of and am fuming. I have places to go and more importantly, Yovina needs to get to work every day!

*UPDATE 9th March 2010*

Phoned the garage back, I’ve decided to get them to do the work paid or not. If they do charge me, and it wasn’t just an error, I will then go through trading standards. I spoke to the same guy who said the mechanic had a heart attack and is in hospital so they probably can’t do it this week… Part of me wants it to be true so that they’re not just making excuses, the other part doesn’t because well… heart attacks aren’t good. He also told me it should be ok to drive provided I keep topping up with water… do I believe him? I’m not sure. Posted this question on an MX6 forum so will see what the replies are.

I occasionally watch these ‘customs’ docusoaps on TV where they send drug sniffer dogs into airports and cut open children’s books to find stashes of cocaine in the cover. It’s all fascinating stuff, and it’s amazing to see what people try and get away with.

I’ve always wondered however, what happens if they get it wrong? What if they cut up an expensive camera only to find it filled with the usual set of electronics, or deface a child’s toy to find it completely empty or harbouring a little sand from the beach?

Today I found out, they just put the pieces back in the box and deliver it. A friend returned a USB 3G modem and cable from Australia by post. Thankfully the modem survived, but the cable is unusable:

There were no stickers on the package, no apology, no £5 cheque for a replacement cable, just a broken cable and bits of surgically removed plastic! I don’t know if it was done by UK or Australian customs, I don’t know why, they didn’t even bother to properly reseal the package, it was just stuck down with the same glue Jen used to package it to start with and dropped through my letterbox by the postman.

I hope this doesn’t happen too often, think of those children opening a stuffed bunny birthday present only to find it had been decapitated by some overzealous customs official.

Thank you whoever you are, for not cutting up the modem and various other things I have posted from abroad. Next time, a little post-it with a handwritten ‘Sorry’ would have been enough for something of this value. At least that way I’d accept it’s part of your job to destroy other people’s things.

After buying a tripod for the animal rescue video project (more on that later), I decided to experiment. This is my first attempt at a virtual tour. If I can perfect the technique, perhaps we can offer it as a service. For the time being however, there are too many niggling problems at the moment.

Not bad, but could be better. Click and drag image to view. (may take a while to load on slow connections)

Some people have commented on my use of ‘coffee expert’ mentioned in blogs, business cards and website. I once worked as a manager of a coffee shop in Hemel Hempstead. My proudest achievement there was trebling the coffee bar turnover by arranging outdoor seating with the council, at the time it was strangely unheard of, at least we were the only ones doing it.

Anyway as part of my training I had to learn everything there is to know about coffee from it’s origins right through to taste variations of different beans, altitudes and even soil types. After what was a surprisingly interesting course, I could make an educated guess on the regional origins of any unblended quality coffee from just one sip.

The ’serving suggestions’ part was a much shorter course unfortunately so we never covered coffee art. Check out below, it’s much easier than it looks, I’m going to try some!

Google have been approaching the social market for some time, rumours have spread about the potential to buy Twitter, at one point Facebook were also eyeing up this microblogging platform before taking their own steps and adapting their news feed into a media rich frenzy of status updates, chipmunk videos and people finding strange objects in their farms.

Today Google have launched Google Buzz, it does everything the ‘better’ facebook version does but has the portability of Twitter, it also allows you to integrate all your existing social networking activities into one including Google’s own profile pages. Finally with Gmail integration, it’s easy to keep up to date without an extra window. It works on iphone and android mobile devices out of the box. so head down to http://buzz.google.com and watch the official Google Buzz video below.

So far I’m following just a couple of people, none of whom have actually made their first update, it’s a little quiet but as Google have a huge number of subscribers already to it’s other services, who knows where this will end up.

Will it replace Twitter? Not yet, Facebook tried and haven’t but there is potential for it to grow quickly with it’s subscriber base so watch this space.

Google talk hasn’t replaced Live Messenger, Google voice hasn’t replaced Skype, Google Docs hasn’t replaced MS Office and Google’s Chrome hasn’t replaced Firefox. However Google Mail, Youtube, Google Reader, Google News, Google Maps, Google Skymaps and Google Search have all rocked the world. Perhaps I’m sceptical about Google Buzz, but only time will tell.