Test drive

The air con in our car isn't working and it's boiling hot in UK (abt 27 deg cel). Thinking that the air-con unit is spolit and will cost us alot of money to fix it, we thought of prehap replacing the car with another second hand car. Shortlisted a car (Ford Mondeo) at Peterborough and we drove there on Saturday. The car dealer location was a petrol station turn into a second hand car sales.

The car looks what we expect, looks new and we made a request with the person-in-charge (seems to be only 1 person and we think he's the owner) to have a look inside the car. A moment later, he hand us the keys and left us alone to look at the car and he carry on with vacuuming his office...... Weird, shouldn't he try to sell us the car?? Or is vacuuming his office too impt... or prehaps he thinks that we wouldn't buy the car, so what's the point???

Anyway, we were satisfy with the car after inspection and process to ask him for part-exchange for our old car and to test drive his car. Because the MOT of our old car is running out soon and the air-con doesn't work, he only quoted us £200 for our old car!!! The annual road tax for the car is new which cost us £185 and is only 10 days old.......... deduct the road tax, our old car value = £15!!! OMG!!

We didn't bargain the price yet, thought we test drive the car first. However the owner wasn't keen for us to test drive cos he want us to decide on the part-exchange price first and that test driving his car will dirty the car.......What???? Nevertheless, we managed to persuade him to let us test drive the car. He drove the car out for us, place the licence plate, etc and with Sam at the driver seat and me near the passenger seat, he said 'ok, it's all yours'...... Errrrrr, he's not coming with us to test drive the car?? He's trusting us not to drive the car away and never come back?? Or is vacuuming his office that impt!!

During the test drive, we realise that the air-con in the car wasn't working too and it seems there's a intermediate problem with the car initially when the air-con is switch on. We were too honest lar and returned the car back to the owner and queried him as to the air-con and the intermediate problem. He mentioned that the air-con just need re-gassing and will be fully re-gased after we bought it and the car comes with 3 months warranty, so no need to worry. As for the intermediate problem, it was working fine when we show him what we meant, so unable to get an answer.

Anyway, we didn't buy the car cos why didn't he re-gas the air-con beforehand and want to wait till we bought it and that intermediate problem, hmmmmm, all too dodgy. Prehaps all along, he knew that he's not going to sell the car, so vacuuming seems to be a better option for him than a wasted time with us.

However, his response made us think that our car might also just need re-gassing in order to fix the air-con. So on Sunday, we drove to Halford for their air-con servicing which cost us £50 and the air-con in the car is fixed!!! Finally!!!

Drove the car today (Monday) to the garage for full service + MOT and received a call later in the afternoon that the brake pad needs changing. All in all, the full cost of change + service+ MOT comes to £311. Ouch.......

Looks like we might need to replace our old car soon as repair cost are on the increase.