I’ve been without music in my car ever since. So, I felt now was the time to buy a CD player with MP3 player functionality. I thought I’d use Halfords as they offer store fitting, and they’re fairly cheap. I didn’t want anything fancy, just something to play music – surely their site would see my right.

You’d have thought.

I chose a CD player very quickly, went through their system to see if it worked in my car and found I needed an adapter harness. No problem, thought I might. I added the items to the cart, went through to the payment screen and entered my card details, which failed…

There is of course nothing wrong with my card, so I tried again. This time I received an unfathomable error message:

CMN3101E The system is unavailable due to “CMN0412E”

Well useful. I tried again and received the same message.

I gave up – but after checking my phone realised I had received two confirmation text messages of the order, but no email confirmation. It looks as though I’ve ordered two, somehow. I emailed Halfords the following message:

I am trying to place an order on your website but I keep getting the following message:

CMN3101E The system is unavailable due to “CMN0412E”.

However, upon checking my phone I have now had TWO confirmation texts – but no emails. Has my order been received? The ref number in the text is #12131662 and the order value is £105.41 for a car CD player, adapter and store fitting in Cheadle.

I then get a standard response saying they’re having problems, blaming their IT department, and saying that the website would be working again by Thursday evening. They added that the order had not been received. So I replied, somewhat cheekily:

So – does this mean I still cannot order from your site? Do you recommend a competitor I could use?

They came back later today saying their site is working now and I can try again. OK, let’s have a go I thought. I did, my third attempt to order, and instead of processing the order with the 5% online discount I should have received two days ago, it went through to ‘collect and pay in store’, before displaying the following, really helpful error:

Generic Error

The store is currently experiencing problems. Try again later.

Try clicking here to return to the page you came from.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

As I’ve been entering my credit card details into this pigsty of a website I’m a little concerned to say the least. When you run an ecommerce website it’s imperative that your website instils trust in the customer. Halfords website does not, it just doesn’t work.

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Check this video out, and watch out for the monkeys!

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I went to Chester today to shop for shoes, and being a sized 12 it was very difficult (but I’ll rant about that another time). I entered the car park and parked at the bottom, next to the Pay Station. When I put a £2 coin in the machine, it came back out – together with another 2 £1 coins. I was £2 up already, result!

However I didn’t have a ticket, so I tried the £2 coin again. It came back out. Then I tried a £1 coin, and it came back out. I then made my way up to the other Pay Station in the car park (and by this time it was starting to snow heavily) where I tried both the £2 and £1 coins again. Same result; they came back out.

I went back to the first Pay Station, where my car was parked, to find a woman having the same problem. I told her that neither machine was working, and she couldn’t get a ticket either. I saw that some cars had tickets, but others didn’t. Assuming the machines were now full, I went into town to shop.

When I returned around 3 hours later I found I had been given a £50 fine for not displaying a ticket.

Obviously I’m not paying it. I tried to pay the £4.90 for 4 hours, but neither machine would take my money. No way am I paying a fine when the fault lies with the Pay Stations that didn’t work.

I’ll appeal this and let everyone know what happens. If I have to go to court I will. If they get away with this they have carte blanch to charge everyone £50 for parking there.

No doubt quite a few cars received fines today, which must strike them as unusual.

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Throughout the last year and a bit I’ve been mentioning how my trouble with my now ex-wife has caused me no end of problems, including how she committed fraud on my car with Direct Line and how her family changed the locks in my house when I lived there.

Well, it was supposedly all sorted this January when the financial settlement was decided and I paid her a substantial amount of money for the house and the property contained within it. One of the conditions of the settlement was that I wouldn’t mention her, or her family on any website and I wouldn’t make any attempt to get Direct Line to compensate me for the error they made as that would encourage them to reclaim the £6,000 odd they paid her.

I was happy with that. The money I’ve lost out on as a result of paying for a car loan for 18 months while the car was unusable I should be able to get back from some of the furniture in the house I’d just paid for.

However… when I entered the house in January this year, she’d stolen more items from it. More items that I’d paid for, that were noted down on a list written by her, and was signed in a court. Among the items stolen by her and her parents was a full bedroom furniture set, including two wardrobes and a chest of drawers.

I couldn’t believe it. My attempts to get hold of her solicitor proved fruitless as he’d washed his hands of her and said I’d need to go through her. She was no longer receiving legal aid so he didn’t want to know. When I got hold of her father he said she needed the stuff to sell because she didn’t have any money.

I’d just given her £10,000 cash!

Unbelievable. Well, as she’s already broken the terms of the settlement, within a matter of days it has to be said, I consider it null and void. I will now be approaching the financial ombudsman to pursue Direct Line for the full amount that I believe they owe me, and if that means they have to get the money from her, then so be it.

What’s the point in making an agreement in court, in front of a judge, and paying someone a settlement if they’re just going to steal the items you’ve just paid for? The legal system in this country is fucked up.

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Very suspicious indeed.

Well, I’ve now had a complaint for my use of the term ‘thieving gypsy bastards’, from the Thames Valley Gypsy Association. The complaint reads:

From: Joseph G. Jones [info@gypsy-association.com]
Subject: Unpleasant remark

Please remove the term “Thieving gypsy bastards” from your website, as a community we find the term offensive.

If you wish to call the garage names feel free, but please leave us out of it.

Besides which it makes you seem like a racist.

Reagrds

Joseph G. Jones
Thames Valley Gypsy Association

Joseph found my website because I rank on the first page of Google for the term ‘Thieving Gypsy Bastards’. This site tends to rank for most phrases it uses, and will no doubt rank again for the term for this particular blog post.

However, as you can see while the original post does rank for ‘thieving gypsy bastards’ it doesn’t actually have a go at gypsies at all. It’s referencing the garage and the fact that my car was stolen from there. If I were to remove the post, my site would no longer rank for the term and more, anti-gypsy posts would rank in Google in its place.

Therefor, my post being there is helping.

Plus, the term ‘thieving gypsy bastards’ doesn’t reference gypsies at all, it’s a reference to a comic strip in Viz, which is infamous and even has its own Wikipedia page. An extract from the page reads:

The comic got in trouble with the United Nations after featuring a strip called ‘The Thieving Gypsy Bastards’; unbeknownst to the Viz editorial team at the time, Gypsies are regarded as a race under UK law and thus the comic was guilty of racism. During the resultant court case, UK newspaper The Sun ran a story revealing that the principal Roma man who initiated the action against them was in fact also being tried for, and was later found guilty of, handling stolen property.

Hilarious!

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If however when my car was stolen I’d actually had some form of tracking installed, like I’m considering now that I have it back, there wouldn’t have been an issue. GPS tracking is now inexpensive and a real solution to people like me who are obsessed with their cars.

LandAirSea Systems are a leading GPS tracking provider used by private, commercial and even government clients. This means they have the technology and the coverage to ensure that when my car next goes for a drive by itself that I’ll know where the sucker is.

One of the key benefits with this system is that it’s compatible with Google Earth:

The Data Can be downloaded and view in Google Earth simply by plugging the Tracking Key into the USB port of a computer

What I also like is the fact that the magnet used is so small it can be placed under your car seat, and it’s water resistant. Though of course if my car ends up in the sea, knowing where it is won’t help me much.

This YouTube video should help to show how incredible this product can be.

I’m seriously considering this. If anyone so much as touches my car or even jokes about touching it after what happened I tend to attack them physically.

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They’re the imbeciles who paid out the wrong person when my car was stolen, recovered and then fraudulently claimed on by my ex-wife. They then placed a stolen marker on the car saying they wanted me to hand it over to them, and refused to speak to me on the matter. Over a year later they admitted via letter and taped phone call that they were in the wrong and should have done more to discover the true owner of the car earlier, but insisted that they were not responsible for my car being frozen in limbo during that time.

Obviously they were responsible, they’re the idiots who paid out the wrong person and refused to speak to me. They have ADMITTED their error in writing, yet they still say they won’t compensate me.

Well, now I’ve beaten RSA so convincingly, I’m turning my attentions to Direct Line Insurance. They either compensate me to the tune of what I have demanded, or this thing escalates to the likes of which they couldn’t possibly imagine.

Do you think they’ll buckle? Do you think they’ll stand firm? Cast your vote now.

Incidentally this website now ranks on page 3 of Google for Direct Line Insurance, and page 1 for Direct Line Insurance Claims Department. The stats for this site read like a veritable list if car insurance related terms and companies. Talk about bad press!

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As I drove towards them they started to shut, usually when this happens the sensors realise there’s something in the way and they stop, and reopen. Not this time. They bloody closed on my car, forcing me to reverse back out with the gate trying to take the front of my car off.

I’ve been here since March now, driving the Celica and a courtesy car and this has never happened. 2 days driving the Z3 and the sodding gates try to crush it.

I swear the car is cursed. Hopefully a bit of T-cut will sort it out, but there’s a very noticeable mark on the driver’s side front wheel arch right now. Great way to start the day!

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I’ve told RSA and they said to get it quoted on and they’d pay for it. Fine.

However today, after selling the Celica, I tried to drive the BMW. Not a frickin’ jot from it. Flat, dead, lifeless.

I called the AA and they looked at the car, performed a test on the battery and found it was leaking power. Seems the battery was completely useless and needed replacing. Also, the connections were loose which showed it had been jump started recently. By BMW perhaps to get it on the flatbed?

So I’ve just spent a further £80 on a new battery with the AA, which of course had this car been fixed in July 2006 when it was RSA’s responsibility to do so I wouldn’t have needed to. Being sat idle for 17 months takes its toll.

Guess I need to phone RSA again on Monday and get them to pay for this as well.

I hope this is the last of it, I really do.

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