next entryOn The Mend
I've got everything crossed, including my fingers!
I'm not in work today, but that by no means that I'm lazing around being fed grapes by an Adonis who panders to my every need. Far from it. Today you see I'm on a TV transportation mission.
It starts off early, and by 11.30 am I'm pulling up outside the TV dude's house who I'd arrange to meet today to pick up the TV on the grounds that I needed it back because the insurance company needed to see it. To my surprise as I'm pulling up, he's pulling out of his driveway, and as I roll down the window he tells me "oh, you were late and I have to go out". I tell him however that since its 11.30 and I'm on time that I'd like to pick the TV up. We get the TV into the car and then the discussion of money arises. He tells me that he usually charges £125 an hour, and he'd spent 4 hours on the TV!! So I tell him since he'd told me it was roughly going to be £50 for the work he'd done so far I wasn't willing to give him his £500 that he'd requested. I told him all I had was £80 (which was a lie) and thats all he would get. Begrudgingly he took the money - if I'd have been a bit braver I'd have just driven off without paying him a penny, I had the TV loaded up so there was nothing stopping my apart from my debilitating honesty. Next time I will listen to Evil Abi.
TV in the back seat and good riddance said, I then head off to Maidenhead to the authorized dealer (J F Associates - website doesn't do them any justice) to drop the TV off to its 3rd home in as many days.
They are very helpful the bods behind the counter, and tell me that they'll do their best to get the TV fixed before next week but they will have to order the power supply for Pioneer, as the one spare one they had has gone to another customer who beat me to it. That's fair enough - so I leave them to it and ask them to ring me as soon as they can confirm its the power supply or let me know if its something else and give me a quote for fixing it.
I head home, and sure enough at around 4pm I get a phone call from the service centre. Its good news too! It was the power supply after all, and since they are super dudes, they are going to let me have the spare power supply so the TV will be ready to pick up tomorrow! Yay! That only leaves on problem, I'm in work tomorrow so theoretically I can't pick it up. I make a quick phone call to my boss and ask him if it would be ok if I came in at 10 rather than 9 and worked my lunch break, which he was happy to let me do - and then ring the TV people back and tell them that I'll be at their place at 9 on the dot to pick it up.
What goes around comes around...
So it's good news - the plasma isn't going to cost £500 to fix and it's now been fixed by people who seem to know what they are doing and have a plentiful supply of certificates to prove as much. And I am more than relieved that Phil and I won't have paid out extortionate repairs for something that was free to fix, we haven't wasted a lot of money on a TV that will never work again, and we haven't had to buy a new TV either.
I am now officially indebted to the powers that be for a run of good luck which has been very fortuitous. No doubt the shit will hit the fan in the future... ying and yang and all of that :)
Posted by Abi on the August 18, 2005 9:31 PM
If you had the time you could have argued with the guy. He didn't fix the TV and I doubt he can prove he did actually work on it.
I suppose he didn't give you an invoice for 80£ so you can still strike back by reporting him to the tax collectors or whatever similar Inquisition you have :)