They fixed my car after the accident, but didn’t replace the towbar despite the insurance company saying it needed fixing, cos they were confused about the electrics despite me imploring them to fit a standard German 13 pin socket. Leaving me having to cross the continent towing a van on a potentially unsafe towbar and effectively uninsured.

So I made them replace it, which they did, but they’ve replaced twin 7 pin electrics with single 7 pin trailer only electrics! WTF? What the hell were you thinking? What did you do with all the extra wires? Oh, he doesn’t need those, they can go.. God almighty..

So now I’m left without a fridge all day on my 4 day trip back home. **** marvellous.. GRRR!

Diddums.

no fridge for four days during your continental tour ….some serious middle class woes there dude

Damn right diddums. They took my car and made it worse. Why don’t you take the frickin stereo out whilst you’re at it?

Because the stereo is the only thing that drowns out your incessant, spoilt whining? Seriously mate, the world is crap, life is hard, on a scale of one to ten, not having a fridge in your wankavan is somewhere in the double figure negative integers. Get real.

Can you not find out which wire has charge and then wire it to the battery of the caravan yourself? You could probably take the wire out of the caravan side plug and wire direct to this fro your spare wiring . 30 minute job surely.

I had a fridge once

Look at it this way. When you get home and take it to a English garage to sort it out, you can agree with the mechanic about how crap German mechanics are. Look at it as a gateway to a male bonding session with a real engineer.

Because the stereo is the only thing that drowns out your incessant, spoilt whining?

Ello? Spoiled? Do you know what spoiled means?

I took the car in for a job, they fked it up, I’m cross with them. I ranted on here as catharsis, with fair warning. You can re-word that however you like to make yourself feel better if you like, but I’m not gonna care either way.

I’m gonna have to pay a garage to fix their bodge when I get back, so yes I’m cross. As would anyone, I suspect. BWD if you took your car to a garage and they ballsed it up leaving you in the lurch, I’m sure you’d just just chuffed to bits wouldn’t you?

Junkyard – more complicated than that – I need the right connector for a start, then I need to get the right feed out of the right place on the ECU/trailer control unit about which I know nothing. It needs to be 35A or something I think.

Spoiled is what your milk is gonna be on the way back!

🙂

Well not that any of you care, but it turns out the garage weren’t stupid after all, just uncommunicative.

On a hunch, I thought I’d check under the car to see if they’d left any of the old wires behind, and it turns out that they had actually re-used the existing wiring completely but because they only had a mount point for one socket they zip tied the other one out of the way completely behind the bumper. I’d never have seen it if I hadn’t crawled under the car looking for it.

So a reasonable course of action given the circumstances, although not what I asked for (I told them to fit standard German 13 pin electrics) but they could’ve bloody well told me what they’d done! Pretty daft, but less daft than I at first thought.

Did you think to ask?

I found out that it wasn’t 13 pin last night at about 8pm, discovered the hidden plug at about 8am this morning on the way to work. I was going to call them this morning as soon as I got to work. So yes, I did think to ask.

And to think,

you never have trouble with cars 🙂

Have you thought about writing a letter to the Times? They’ll probably send someone out to interview you for their next Holiday’s special in the Sunday Supplement. Something about the horrors that can befall unsuspecting middle class whingers travellers abroad.

They could do a moody photoshoot with you with your arms crossed staring into the middle distance. Next to a sign saying Das Shizen Garage, silhouetted against a German sunset

You could do a film script. Hollywood would definitely buy it. It’d be like a modern day version of Midnight Express! To serve as a warning to others

I found out that it wasn’t 13 pin last night at about 8pm, discovered the hidden plug at about 8am this morning

It took you 12hrs to find it??? Your knees must be sore!!! Have a nice cold beer 😉

you never have trouble with cars

Cars, no. Garages, yes 🙂

Binners – bite me.

😉

Actually… could I make a constructive suggestion. I’m sure they have the equivelent of Halfords in the Fatherland. How about

one of these

problem solved

LOL @ Binners

Ahhh, molly. I feel your pain.

The dry cleaners haven’t placed the creases quite where I like them in my suit. There’s no way I can wear it like this 🙁

When are you back in the UK??

At this rate, never.

Although the original plan is Tuesday 🙂

Is there a mrsmolgrips who gets garage/car/etc frustrations vented at her 24/7?

LOL… what’s the ETA for Lilgrips MKII?

You should come ride some dirt.

Yes, there is, known as Mrs Grips on here. In return for listening to me rant about garages and whatnot, I listen to her talking about weaving and yarn, and complaining about mumsnet 🙂

Yeti ETA for EvenLi’lerGrips is 18th-26th.

Some dirt would be nice yes please.

molgrips, do you actually ride a bike or just talk about VAG all day on here?

I ride a bike plenty. It’s quite hard to do that when I’m at work though. Posting on here is much easier.

There’s no way I’d piss about on here all day if I had anything better I could be doing!

Verbal diarrhea is the non-stop flow of words, namely verbs, from the sufferer’s mouth. This may lead to internal bleeding, and also infestation of sellotapeworms within the victim’s stomach. Symptoms include: constant talking about irrelevant subjects; having no friends; slow realisation that your own stomach is digesting you; rejection from society; disownment by your parents; having multiple orgasms, and ejaculating highly concentrated hydrochloric acid, and having no friends.

constant talking about irrelevant subjects; having no friends

Aka the chat forum..?

AKA Molgrips’ home from home?