Be Excellent To Each Other

It's just the "This old man, he played one" song, slowed down with different words.

Which is why they must all die, before they destroy more of the basic building blocks of musical excellence.

Tori Amos's breathy whispery cover of that on her 'Caught A Lite Sneeze' single is my fave thing by her. It is very breathy whispery. It is then followed by her cover of Chas 'n' Dave's 'That's What I Like'. Not so much.

I thought you liked purple things.

I LOVE Bear in the Big Blue House!! Cha cha cha!!

Barney and Bear pale in comparison to the creepiest thing on kids TV. The Wiggles.

This reminds me of that story where some little girl in the USA saw a real bear while out camping and ran toward it with her arms out for a hug. I think you can probably guess how that ended.

The bear sued for $400,000 and went on to host a short-lived chat show on America's favourite news channel, KBBKW.

The creepiest kids' tv thing I've seen for a while is the midnight garden, or something like that. It's faintly cute but moderately creepy, and the fact that it's sometimes cute makes it somehow worse. It also shares the faintly hallucinogenic feeling of some of the best 80s children's tv, and as a bonus, features a brand of nonsense-speak names and words that unshakeably strike me as vaguely racist. There's at least one episode about the "ninky nonk", for instance.

GET THAT PIC AWAY! >.<
Seriously though, what the FUCK is up with kids tv?! Does anyone remember 'Button Moon?' I mean...I couldn't eat with utensils for years of my life after that, jeeeez! I was quite a scared child, now turned into a scared adult!

Ah good, my new avtar is working

Also...'My name is iggle piggle, iggle iggle iggle, iggle piggle'
THAT is in my head everytime I hear 'Night Garden' mentioned. I look after a friend of mines kid sometimes and she LOVES it! Macca Pacca is well weird >.<....now Gaz knows why I get all the nursery rhyme and kids tv stuff right on the Quizzes we are so gonna win tomorrow!

Just thought it was worth mentioning I've drained off the bank holiday's excess anger into this blog post.

Ah, I feel much happier now, even though it is work tomorrow.

*smiles*

Mate of mine is an ex-car salesman. He's got some stories - but I pass any offer through him, to see if it was bullshit. FOr instance, my and my wife got our Skodas on a "Cost price plus a quid" deal and I thought it was too good to be true, but he pointed out that the dealer will make more off the bonus from the manufacturer for shifting stock than they will on the car anyway.

But yeah, if you went to the Toyota dealer I think you went to... (On St Marys Way?)

Should I be looking to decipher some sort of code from "MAGICALLY WANTED CUNT" or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely?

We considered going to the Stockport one, however we went to Macclesfield first (nearest to gf), and then Altrincham today.

I think my tactic now will be to ring the dealer and be very concise about the deal I want on the phone. Something along the lines of 'I want the car for this. If you can sell it for this, let me know, otherwise I'll not waste my time'.

If you want, I'll get the name of a guy at RRG Stockport. My father in law got his car from them, ironically after being pissed about by the Vauxhall dealership down the road. They waved bye bye to 20 years of custom, right there. (And that stupid fucking woolly mascot thing is quite clearing wanking himself off in the window.)

A name is good and gratefully received, but will it get me the deal I want?

Edit: Obviously I say 'me' but I don't mean me, but I just can't in good conscience send the gf out to negotiate with a dealer herself. She's not like me.

Well, I can always get him to pre-warn the bloke!

I can't help but wonder exactly why you're getting a brand new car instead of a used Aygo. This one is only £4,500 for example.

Although that's a 3 door. This is a 5 door and is about the same price, but has much lower mileage and is a year younger.

Or indeed the second hand Citroen C1 which is the cheapest of the 3 badges this car is sold in.

It'd take my gf 4 years to put 22k miles on a new car, so if it only loses 4 grand in that time then that's a bit of a bonus She, like me, wanted new just to preclude any possible problems from a previous owner/dodgy seller, and wanted the warranty, and of course, wants the fuzzy fun feeling of a new car.

Fun update!

Yesterday we ran her details through a car broker website which, as we speak, is contacting Toyota dealers country wide for the best deal on the Aygo. The Macclesfield branch have obviously noticed the enquiry, because the salesman from Saturday rang her at 9am this morning to try to revive the sale. She told him the terms - £7.5 for the car and £3.5 on the part-ex, please.

He started talking about how he could 'maybe fiddle with the interest rates' on the financing, but cheerfully she wasn't buying it. Why do salesman think the only objective when buying anything is to pay as little as possible for as long as possible? Fllnnnngd.

The 5d 2007 model I listed above will still have the manufacturer's warranty on it (typically 3 years, so down to 2) and it's highly unlikely that they're driving it hard enough to cause problems if they've only put 7,800-odd miles on it.

The "fuzzy fun feeling" of a new car is frankly over-rated, especially at such a price premium. Still, not any of my business what you guys do with your money.

No offence to you or your gf, comical, but it genuinely surprises me how much of their hard earned cash people are prepared to part with in return for the New Car cachet. And on Finance, are you mad??

About the only worthwhile thing you get with a new car is the new car smell, and even that supposedly gives you cancer..

You're as likely to get *more* problems with a brand new one anyway - time and again I hear about people dragging their new purchase back to the dealer half a dozen times in the first year, at great inconvenience to themselves. The shine soon wears off that.

And wow, haggling with dealers over the price? No wonder you're permanently furious - this is the type of thing I'd go to almost any length to avoid, including just paying the bloody sticker price.

Still, you're doing it so we don't have to, right?

I see your logic Gaz, and I do agree. If you want it new you pay the piper and recognise you're paying over the odds for that priviledge. Personally I'd never had a new car, so I'd like one at least once, just so I now what it's like.

As for the gf, well, it's her money, and if I wasn't there screaming 'NO' in the dealer's face she'd have bought something way over the odds (moreso) already.

The principle of my blog post remains the same though, the car could be second-hand but the rules still apply. They're cunts, they lie, and they're overcharging you regardless.

Another update

Just to remind you - she wanted the 3 door Aygo for £7500 (list price £8045).

The dealer has just rung back again to offer her a 3 door Aygo with air conditioning (not as standard, is an extra that normally costs £500) for £8277. What's more, this would be a second-owner car, as 'apparently' its currently registered to the dealership as it was 'supposed to be a spare show car'. They've come down on the finance though, 5.9% instead of 8%.

Either way, I've told her to tell them to fuck off. This is the same deal abstracted into a different form. On Saturday they offered her £200 off the list price without air con. All they've done here is added the air con and offered her £200 off the cost of the extra. It's the same deal. She'd want the car + AC for, at most, £8000 for this to be an improved deal, otherwise I've told her to stick to her guns and demand £7500 for the basic model that isn't some second-owner bullshit.

Man, I love it.

I bought nearly new from a car supermarket, no haggling to be had there.

Which is why I paid a smidge over half retail for a 6 month old car with 4900 miles on it.

Ain't that the truth. The transit I got last year had the suspiciously low mileage of 45k on it - on a 10 year old van? Well I went for it anyway, and it's been OK, but it's nowhere near as smooth to drive as my dad's one, which is the same age and has 230K miles.

Good lord

Buying a new car is akin to buying coffee from Starbucks. It's about fours times as much as homemade own-brand stuff, but zillions of us buy it anyway 'coz we just want it'. So 'OMG NEW CAR = AIDS' arguments aside...

Dealer has rung back, upset that we're not taking his offer. She restated, once again, that she wants it at £7500. Now he's tried to tell her that she must remember that they're not really getting £3500 for her car, but actually £3000, and they're 'making up the loss themselves'. Well cry me a fucking river.

Anyway, she's told him its what she wants, and that she knows its not an unreasonable price because she's checked it out on a car brokering website. He's gone off now, again, to 'see what he can do'. Why do these people, in the face of an unmoving ultimatum, keep coming back with the same old shit repackaged in a different box?

Sure, if you can afford to walk into the dealers and drop the 10k or whatever and drive off - I can see that, in fact I almost put money down on a MiEV which isn't even out until the end of next year.

But to borrow money to do it and even then spend ages at the counter trying to get a large discount off the asking price and arguing the toss? Hell, even going to multiple different stores to try your luck when you get knocked back?

Well, you appear to be able to deal with that so fair enough, and I am enjoying reading the saga

I'll tell you what I reckon though, these guys have a price they'll want to get for the car, and they'll try to get that from any angle as you've discovered. Under some circumstances they might flex a bit more than usual: but they're only going to do that on cars that aren't moving.

If you're looking at some unfashionable wagon with poor MPG, and it's been sitting on the dealer's lot for a year, yes, *then* they'll flex. Or if they've bought a batch of cars cheap near the end of a revision as a "get you in the door" pile-em-high strategy, you'll get a good deal then.

But a *lot* of well heeled people are trading down to small modern cars these days simply because it's sensible, and they're going to pay in cash and aren't going to expend time and dignity trying to get £500 knocked off.
So I think you'll be struggling to get them to move on an Aygo, especially one they'll have to transport in, because they just don't need to bother.

Quite. Just nick their ladyshave.

I will, at some point in my life, buy a new car. My current car was one year old, and my next one will probably be 4 years old or so. There's something important about buying a new car, regardless of the sense it makes.

And Road Tax!

There are only a few cars that I would ever consider buying new - the Nissan GT-R, the Corvette ZR-1, or (should they ever start production again) the DeLorean DMC-12.

And first registration fee!

And smoke-free pack!