Update, well not much of an update....but thankfully I called the dealer before setting ovv on the 30 mile round trip to find that the car in question isnt actually at the dealership, it's at a colleagues house ( part ov the sales team) and they are ov work atm through illness and not expected back till after xmas. After having a brief chat about the car, it does infact only have halagon projector headlights and no TSR. Not much of an upgrade on our current Focus other than a newer plate and almost 7yrs of warranty. There's also no scuff plates on front sills and deffo no HUD which I already knew. So back to the drawing board I think.

13 minutes ago, Wino said:

are ov work

not enough 'v' s 😉

5 minutes ago, unofix said:

not enough 'v' s 😉

Perhaps the the car was lacking in the Va Va Voom. 

8 minutes ago, unofix said:

not enough 'v' s 😉

Here's two more vv 🤣

7 minutes ago, Wino said:

Here's two more vv 🤣

How rude!!

3 hours ago, iantt said:

@stephenford will be driving a Renault Zoe by then. 🤣🤣🤣... Maybe not.

@StephenFord will be saving the Dolphins in his brand new Citroen Ami at a very reasonable £19.99 per month 😂   Including TWO new headlight tulips 🤣

https://www.citroen.co.uk/ami

16 minutes ago, unofix said:

@StephenFord will be saving the Dolphins in his brand new Citroen Ami at a very reasonable £19.99 per month 😂   Including TWO new headlight tulips

£19.99/month?? You think I'm made of money?? LOL

after last weeks temperatures i thought hell HAD frozen over

52 minutes ago, Jimpster said:

after last weeks temperatures i thought hell HAD frozen over

Not with the amount of gas I was using at home!! 3 times as much as last month!! ( Just had gas and elec bill. Ouch) 

TBF i got the £66 governmet thing so said s*d it and kept warm

35 minutes ago, iantt said:

Not with the amount of gas I was using at home!! 3 times as much as last month!! ( Just had gas and elec bill. Ouch) 

Checked ours yesterday and were up to £65 so far this month on gas alone, compared to our usual £45pm for both gas and electric. Not paid a bill for the last two months due to the Government's fuel payment thingy or whatever it is.

14 minutes ago, Jimpster said:

TBF i got the £66 governmet thing so said s*d it and kept warm

If you're on certain benefits you may also have got an additional £25 cold weather payment last week.  I transferred mine straight into the electric account and did the same as you, thought f*ck it, heating on as and when needed this month!

I am not in the market for a new car quite yet ... but ... if I was ... I'd definitely look at the latest Honda Civic.

yes i got the £25, dont get me started on benefits. Previously i got DLA albeit at the lower rate meant i was minted, When they moved me to PIP i failed to qualify even tho i still had the same ailments and now more. Tried 6 times even apealed, got nowhere gave up. so atmo living frugally while costs are high.

1 hour ago, Jimpster said:

yes i got the £25, dont get me started on benefits. Previously i got DLA albeit at the lower rate meant i was minted, When they moved me to PIP i failed to qualify even tho i still had the same ailments and now more. Tried 6 times even apealed, got nowhere gave up. so atmo living frugally while costs are high.

Did you get any help with the applications or just kept sending the same thing?  I completely messed mine up first time as I didn't understand how the scoring system worked.  I naively assumed I could just write a realistic account of a day and they'd take what was necessary for scoring.  But it didn't work like that.  They're not interested in your ailments, just whether you can complete their specific tasks reliably and to an acceptable standard.  Also when you say appeal, did you take it to tribunal or just a mandatory reconsideration?  MR's very rarely change the outcome.

What will you buy instead of a Ford?

I think that TOYOTA is an oneway option because i used to love those cars...(had 3 of them for 20 years!!!)...i sold my old Corolla thinking that diesel was going to be the future of my way of transportation because of the cheaper price than petrol. But i was wrong...Russian-Ucraine war was the catalyst about the global petroleum price. So i bought a new Ford Focus Ecoblue (1,5lt/2020 model)

I really love Corolla's...These cars are decent and eventually more european than ever.

I think that a hybrid sport version of a Corolla would be my next car....Or a Peugeot 2008 or 3008 petrol...unfortunatelly, diesel is dying ....My Focus in 5-6 years from now is going to be another's problem...

Problems untill now:

a. Burns A LOT of engine oil (not acceptable for a new car, adding 750-900 ml / 9.000kms or 5.600miles)

b. Double Mass Flywheel rattling like crazy when engine is cold. The matter is that the dealership says to ignore it. It makes that noise since i bought it as a brand new car with 0 kms on the odometer!!!

c. Very very very veery expensive services in dealerships here in Greece (oil and filter change with a brake fluid change with vacuum procedure and a new cabin filter costed 360 euros!!!)

d. Lack of power till reach 1800rpm with the 2nd gear. I can not see the difference with the Variable Geometry Turbo.

e. Even it has 31 kg of torque you have to push it hard to accelerate fast enough to overtake a car even with the 4th gear.

After all i understand it is only 1,5lt engine and i do not expect a lot of it. Greece has a lot of steep uphills on the national motorways.A LOT!!! And my car does not make it easy on them sometimes.

Anyway i thought that 31kg of torque in combination with the 120 hp of power would be enough for the greek countryside but i was wrong.

Have a nice evening all of you with health and prosperity!

 

1 hour ago, Alexis94040 said:

Have a nice evening all of you with health and prosperity!

Lol, difficult here at the moment with most of the health service on strike and, like you, soaring energy prices.

But all the best to you, anyway, Alex!

On 12/20/2022 at 10:38 AM, iantt said:

So in the next few years , what  cars in the current  ford  range will still be available.

Ironically, after announcing the axe on some (most?) of its most popular models, I was reading a report this morning that Ford are predicted to have the highest market share in 2022.

1 hour ago, TomsFocus said:

Did you get any help with the applications or just kept sending the same thing?  I completely messed mine up first time as I didn't understand how the scoring system worked.  I naively assumed I could just write a realistic account of a day and they'd take what was necessary for scoring.  But it didn't work like that.  They're not interested in your ailments, just whether you can complete their specific tasks reliably and to an acceptable standard.  Also when you say appeal, did you take it to tribunal or just a mandatory reconsideration?  MR's very rarely change the outcome.

got help and did it myself, even went to the council help hub and theytold me people worse than me were being denied, madatory reconsideration. never gone beyond as at times my head dont work properly and am scared if i push too hard they take my licence off me

 

3 hours ago, Linds said:

I am not in the market for a new car quite yet ... but ... if I was ... I'd definitely look at the latest Honda Civic.

Well worth a look imo. I posted brief impressions of a recent test drive elsewhere on here but was pretty impressed.

Main negatives for me were buttons for PRND rather than a shift lever which is easier for my knackered left hand to cope with, and the size, which is more than we need now. I had a Civic about 20 years ago and that was about half a metre shorter and a good bit narrower. The current one is about the size an Accord was back then.

4 hours ago, Jimpster said:

got help and did it myself, even went to the council help hub and theytold me people worse than me were being denied, madatory reconsideration. never gone beyond as at times my head dont work properly and am scared if i push too hard they take my licence off me

It's definitely not as easy to get as the media has working people believe.  They just fuel more hate.  

I had to go through tribunal to get mine.  Scored 0 points at MR.  Don't think they even read it, just copy and pasted the same reasons for refusal as the initial assessment.

I can definitely appreciate risking a licence.  If you ever did want to try it again, feel free to drop me a PM as I've got a fair bit of experience with the process now.

thank you for the offer, when life settles down i may try again.

@Jimpster, @TomsFocus Don't want to turn this into a benefit thread, but on a slightly lighter note my bro in law went through a lengthy process with ESA which he has just been finally awarded.

He started in March and by September hadn't even managed to get an interview/assessment. I've experienced delays trying to get stuff for my late mum, but this seemed silly so I investigated what was happening.

He'd visited the Jobcentre in person but been told he must make an appointment by phone. Every time he rang the number given, he said they just hung up on him when he started explaining what he wanted. I thought it a bit odd so eventually rang the number myself and spoke to a real human being (after a bit of selecting numbers etc) in under 5 minutes.

As part of the process they "triage" by voice response and I realised that at the point where the message said something like "Please tell us what your call is about. For example, If it is about a jobcentre interview, say "jobcentre interview" " , he'd not followed that instruction, and just launched into a diatribe which the machine couldn't follow and therefore cut him off. And he'd been doing this for weeks!.😀

 

 

 

20 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

As part of the process they "triage" by voice response and I realised that at the point where the message said something like "Please tell us what your call is about. For example, If it is about a jobcentre interview, say "jobcentre interview" " , he'd not followed that instruction...

From experience, when confronted by phone systems of this nature, I find the response of, "I want to speak to a human..." usually gets you through to an actual person...

30 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

From experience, when confronted by phone systems of this nature, I find the response of, "I want to speak to a human..." usually gets you through to an actual person...

The same is true of online chat bots in most cases