Posts

Contactless card payment thresholds are being increased from the current £20 per transaction to £30. Be interested to hear of anyone in the retail world who accepts contactless payments and get their opinion?

Assuming it's good news, speed of flow through the tills, more convenient for consumers, but are there any downsides? Do you pay any extras for receiving contactless payment or is it just part of a normal PDQ machine these days?

With your consumer hat on, is there anyone who refuses to use contactless as an option?

Will confess to being initially sceptical, especially with security scares of people wondering round crowded areas with rogue machines collecting transactions in the early days, but the technology has been around for quite a long time now. Having it in places like pubs and fastfood outlets seems to make sense, especially if you are rubbish at remembering your pin number 

Seemed to have the opposite, January saw a spike of Tradespeople, but I was wondering if it was the bad weather, as they weren't up a ladder or digging a road up? Instead on the PC's and doing some marketing?

That said, we do quiet down a bit in the Summer holidays.

Good news though, lucky you 

Ok, so it's comedy/entertainment and prob shouldn't be in general business discussion. But it's on in 5 mins so in a rush, and I love it

But why has this series started at episode 7? What happened to episodes 1 - 6? Or is my BBC iplayer playing up?

Just not quick enough Ray

Great to hear back from you then, have missed your rants and ramblings about the justice system 

Great feedback Michelle. Other than media negativity your the first person I know of who has actually used the service. 

Certainly seems to be a master class in PR!

I am a self confessed Landrover buff/bore, after being introduced to them in the military and spending hours of fun bouncing over fields and sand dunes or the misery of getting wet everytime it rained.

It is historically an example of superb British ingenuity, a post war stop gap vehicle built by Rover, based on the wartime jeep and made with as much left over aircraft aluminium as possible due to shortages of steel.

The one thing that has made it a legend is the over engineering in the base model, which allows it to be abused and used for applications and roles it's designers couldn't have imagined!

From the 1948 series I to the present day defender, the similarities are unmistakable and from the 1950's series II onwards, the body shell has hardly changed! Huge technological advancements saw the series III turn into the 1980's Landrover 90 by moving from leafspring suspension to new fangled coils springs and a new windscreen, but basically the same body. As the axles were a bit wider, someone had a brainwave to stick on some rubber wheel arches. Proper British thinking 

The late 1980's and 1990's saw a rebrand from the L90 to the "defender" to build on it's military roots and success. Still basically the same wagon, same square box body, usual variety of engines, some ok, some awful, most obtained from the parts bin of Rovergroup or who ever owned it at the time. Build quality was always traditional Rovergroup, awful and the butt of jokes worldwide "10,000 rivets driving in formation". But the design was still simple, could be fixed by a DIY mechanic, or a blacksmith in the African wilderness. But she was showing her age and more modern and cheaper Japanese rivals were starting to eat market share.

The naughties saw the landrover getting more and competition from rivals and signalled the beginning of the end. Lots of rumours it would be axed, it couldn't pass various regulations in different countries. Airbags? Modern crumple zones in a square Meccanno set? Then there were worries about the future of Landrover. Vehicles started to get a makeover with better heating systems (the curse of owners for decades), the windscreen vent flaps were welded shut and electronic gizmos started to get added to the dismay of traditional owners. Heated seats? Hill descent control? In a defender? 

So she laboured on, under new owners Tata who seemed to have finally found the marketing secret Landrover needed, but looking more like a model Tata would like to forget. She got burdened with more accessories than you can shake a stick at, and enough electrical gizmos that would electrocute you if you tried wading through a river  

But fair play she's managed to survive regulation after regulation and a design dating from the 40's has stayed in production until Dec 2015. Not bad, and I don't care what anyone says, she's British 

But if you still want to get one post December, you still can! Landrovers used to be license built by a Spanish company called Santanta who started license copies, then progressed down a slightly different evolutionary path, with Landrovers that looked like Landrovers, but seemed just a little odd. Santana went pop in the 90's but just before they did, the flogged all the tooling to an Iranian firm (what embargo?) who started production (and still do) of local Landroverish Pazhan's.

To be honest, they look pretty good 

Here are my former 90's, although the first (red one) was actually a 100", a long wheel base series 3, cut down and put on a Rangerover chassis. Total bodge and ran like an absolute dog 

My 90 county was awesome. Petrol V8, best engine LR ever made, took it too many a quarry and had lots of fun. Only downside was the 3 miles to the gallon consumption and 100 mile range Just after I took that picture, it ran out out of fuel on the drive..

Current landrover is very shiny, Tata built, build quality is superb, (why now and not in the 70's and 80's?) and far too nice to take off road...

So any other Landrover fans, or anyone miss the demise of another British icon?

Or is it just something that was well past its sell by date?

Well last weekend the art of negotiation, haggle and patience was pushed to the limit.

We have been looking at getting some minor work done on the house, replacing the end fascia, weatherboard (or whatever it's proper name is). Had already had a couple of quotes, miles apart, when the phone went, and one of the companies said they happen to have an assessor in the area. If we wanted he could pop round and quickly see exactly what was required and give us a quick quote.

In my naivety and optimistic view of the world, I said yes...

Told the wife Bert the assessor would be round in 20 mins for a quick quote, so we would delay the family day out (operation wear out kids) and plugged the nippers into cbeebies.

Bert turns up, and within 30 seconds realised we were in for the full classic double glazing sales pitch, complete with fully working models of guttering solutions and replacement joists, none of which was relevant to us.

Trying to speed the process up, concious that cbeebies will only hold attention for so long before they start clubbing each other to death, all attempts fell on deaf ears, as a well used and total sales pitch monologue poured out.

Our expectation is for the job to be circa £500 - £900 and we had a quote which seemed to match our requirements and with a (locally) well known firm.

Once talk came to finance options blah blah, our patience was getting very stretched and politeness was slowly descending into sarcasm as we tried to push him along and get to the point.

If we need finance, then your quote is too much!   But on the pitch plodded....

After 2 hours, repeated trips back into the lounge to separate two bored kids and constant "get to the quote!!" remarks, we finally got there.

We had already made it clear we are not interested in the double glazing pitch approach, where the price is reduced by 50% after an hours haggling and phone calls to the office, just give us your best price. To which he assured us we don't do that, that's why we are different. 

When he finally announced the quote of £3,500 we gave him 20 seconds of stunned silence, before quickly trying to end the experience and escort him out of the door.

But no, there were reductions, for helping with their promotion xyz would come off, the price started to fall. When we said we had a quote we thought was fair, he rubbished the idea saying it couldn't be a reputable firm.

We didn't have to, but told him the name who are a large well known group, to which he ridiculed them slating their poor quality blah blah. We are now trying to shoe horn him out of the house as he pleads to be able to phone the office and see what discounts he can make. But got him out of the house and watched him put all his models in the back of the beat up Mondeo. Great image 

I got a bollocking for wasting 2 hours of our life we will never get back, and seemed to prove the point that the ridiculous "state a massive mark up price model" is alive and well and some tradesfolk just like to play a game and waste as much time as possible. Or call it pressure pushy sales for the vulnerable, as part of the pitch was scaremongering which we laughed at, but some folk could genuinely worry.

The whole thing could have been done in 20 minutes, he could have given a fair and decent price, not rubbished the competition, and we would have seriously considered using them. Although very tempting to name and shame, I'd like to think it's not representative of the whole sales force.. 

or is it...

As quotes go, does it get much better than that? ..from God to Jeremy Kyle 

Disclaimer, if Gods not happy he might send a plague of locusts through Wales, if Jeremy Kyles not happy he might invite you on his show  

Just chased me up again this morning, think I'll reply with a link to this thread 

Fantastic news, way to go Trena! 

I think anyone else trying to shark you will keep their distance