We recently acquired a crack in the car windscreen. It had been struck by a stone a few weeks before but although the stone made a very loud bang at the time, we couldn’t see any damage. Later a crack began to snake out from a spot just by a windscreen wiper, the area we missed when looking for stone damage.
Mrs H rang the car insurance phoneline and without having to wait in a phone queue she found herself speaking to a bot which first of all explained that it was a bot. It took all the details then transferred the call to a person who by then had all the information passed on by the bot.
This person then sent Mrs H a link to the Autoglass website which automatically assessed the crack as unrepairable, ordered a new windscreen and booked us in for a mobile repair on the next available day. The mobile repair chap turned up on the appointed day and on time, replaced the windscreen and off he went.
Our overall impression was how remarkably slick it all was. The modern world can be slick when systems and processes are defined, built and refined by people who know what they are doing.
It is perhaps unfortunate that it also creates an ever-widening contrast between people who know what they are doing and the usual suspects.
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Probably because there are big sums of money involved, IT servicing the automotive industries is often excellent. I've been comparing insurance this morning. Apart from the eye-watering increases in premiums, the systems run by confused.com etc. are very fast and easy, compared to the old procedures, which used to take a lot of repetitive work and phone calls. And having your registration and tax and MOT details online is a big help.
In Cambridge, our VW dealer video'd the MOT and servicing, and you could download the entire process with his commentary. "Now this is a bit worn, but well within acceptable levels..."
Sam - we get the videos too and it's easy to forget how much these things have changed. The windscreen we needed was just picked up automatically via our registration number. A while ago I had to buy a replacement wing mirror glass, the one I needed was just picked up from our registration number too.
Would that everything ran that smoothly.
And all this on the day that the Golf Scrobmobile goes in for its MOT and 'an interim' service!
I had a problem with the front passenger window opening on its own, and usually when it was pouring buckets!
Of course they fixed it - for a cool £65.00, because the 'system' needed 're-coding', and the laborious job of a chap with his hands covered in grease, listening to Radio 1 and fiddling about with a keyboard somewhere under the bonnet, entitles one to a vision which would be unheard of back in the days when the Cortina wouldn't start because I'd flooded the bloody thing and tried to jump-start it on the hill outside...
On the verso side, my brother, on the phone to me from the peoples republic of Islington, has related his dissatisfaction with the two 'builder-decorators' they had in to do repairs to his partner's house. He said their decorating skills were inferior to his amateur own; and they had enraged him and his girlfriend, by painting a plain hardwood window seat-cupboard with white paint without asking! Could I help as I used to be a professional paint remover? Yes I could. So that's a trip to London for a working visit, for me before Xmas! The amount of work expense and effort, the incompetent generate!
My advice? Don't employ builders you don't know and have no inkling of the capabilities of.
It depends who is defining the requirement,( do they know what they really really want?), how a contractor is selected (Does a good lunch and slick presentation trump a knowledge of who the shyster chancers are), how the system is tested before entering service, how the service is launched and who pays for the service and any remedial work.
There seems to be a difference between private companies cautiously spending their own money, and taxpayer funded organisations. Can't think why.
James - the contrast is almost depressing. Not quite but almost.
Scrobs - and it wasn't such a huge effort opening windows with a little handle.
Tammly - yes, personal recommendation is best. It's what we go for if at all possible. Online reviews are okay, but can be misleading as I found when a plumber tried to tell me our central heating boiler was leaking so he could install a new one. Never used him again.
Doonhamer - yes, in my experience there is a major difference between private companies cautiously spending their own money, and taxpayer funded organisations. I've seen it - too many fingers in the pie, too many bells and whistles, unclear procedures and processes.
Yes, I had exactly the same experience and was just as surprised at the ease with which it happened. More surprisingly, my car of the time was 25 years old, so the windscreen wasn't just off the shelf
Bucko - that's encouraging because we aim to keep our car for as long as possible. There is too much uncertainty to consider changing it.
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