I’ve just participated in Innocent Drinks’ “Buy One, Get One Tree” offer and I now haz a tree:
Category: Life: Personal
From my other half whilst watching TV last night:
TV: *baby squeak noise*
Other half: Should babies squeak like that? Well, I guess it’s been in water for nine months so it’ll probably be rusty.
I know she was kidding, but still funny! 😀
I so regret getting a car. Since I purchased it about 6 weeks ago it’s needed:
- New drivers side wing mirror after somebody hit it once I was parked up outside my house (4 weeks ago): Approx £8
- Small paint repair on the passengers side after I got a scratch in either the local Tesco or work’s car park (2 weeks ago). Approx £
- A new drivers side front tyre as the one the car came with had a slow puncture (Friday). Approx £40
- Another drivers side front tyre as when I was staying at a Days Inn hotel on the M62 last night, somebody “speared” it and hence once I got home from Yorkshire it was flat. Approx £40
And those costs exclude two tanks of petrol so far (£40 each time), car insurance (£730), breakdown cover (£70) and the car itself. It’s tax is due in January and an MOT next year and I’ve still got to get it through a service (as it’s service history is unknown).
Why did no one warn me of all these “incidental” costs?
I’ve been quite busy of late doing the following things:
- Trying to care for my poorly other half
- Finding a new job (as the one working for a local web based collaboration software company didn’t quite work out as expected: it was more systems administration then development work)
- Buying my first car – a 2000 Fiat Punto mk2 1.2l Petrol car. Did you know that the Punto’s look was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro who also designed the Daewoo Matiz (another car I was considering) and more importantly a car designed for people my height (6ft 2) – the famous De Lorean DMC 12 which may be going back into production. I’d like to buy one (if I had the cash), but I’ll have to learn about the little Punto first
- I’m also trying to kick start my small business a bit – I’ve got a new website sortof up and running (it’s just finding the time to finish it) and it’s already had 3 orders with absolutely 0 promotion/marketing of it!
And that was the news in Richy World!
My partner and I (cool, I sound like the Queen) are currently reviewing our car insurance policies and so we’re just getting a few quotes.
So I proceeded (now I sound like a police man) over to Tesco.com and used their car insurance policy quoting system. Underwritten by “UK Insurance Limited (UKI)” and with a URL in the format https://uk1.tesco-insurance.co.uk/insurance/motor/PLBxxx/yourdetails.do;jsessionid=sss we received a quote of £469.39. Not bad, but I wondered if my bank (Nationwide) could beat that quote – so I went and used their insurance quotation system…
Nationwide Car Insurance is underwritten by Churchill, but also has URLs in the format https://uk1.u-k-i.com/insurance/motor/PLBxxx/yourdetails.do;jsessionid=sss . Hang on – those URLs look familar, and could U-K-I stand for UK Insurance Limited as used by Tesco… I wonder how we managed the much lower quote of £387.45 from what appears to be the same company with the same details (even the excesses from Nationwide were lower!).
U-K-I.com appears to be registered by RBS INSURANCE SERVICES LTD (rbs.co.uk) via Netnames. Same as churchill.co.uk (where we earlier got a quote of £413). So Churchill= UK Insurance Limited (UKI) = Royal Bank of Scotland.
So three quotes from between £469.39 to £387.45 for the same drivers, the same car, at the same address – all from essentially the same company… Interesting….
Things like this make me want to spend time finding out out of all the many insurance companies out there, who are actually “differently owned” from the others. But I’ve got better things to do with my time (as my GF lays her hand on my shoulder and reads what I write 😉 ).