Last night I was looking at quotes for car insurance. This
morning my Facebook feed was full of adverts for insurance companies. There’s a
sign of our times.
With nothing happening on-line I took the dogs for a walk.
We went up to Longbeech Woods again. The road to the car park is the narrowest
you ever did see, and in the car park was a humungous camper van and a smaller
one too. There wasn’t a lot of space left. Apparently that car park is on some
web site used by camper van people who are too mean to pay campsite fees which
using a proper campsite incurs.
As I said a few days ago, for the most part these campers
aren’t doing much harm and if I had one I’d want to save on campsite fees too.
But having one van taking up half the car park is taking the piss, isn’t it?
Yesterday I mentioned that a new geocache had gone live in
the woods. It gave us a target for today’s walk. We walked a mile and a half to
where it was and I spent far too long hunting for something which wasn’t really
that hard to find. And then the rain started. And all the dogs tried to roll in
something foul. Fortunately they all missed, but Bailey then ate whatever it
was. For all that she is smallest she is certainly the most disgusting.
There was then an entertaining few seconds as we passed the
half-way point. Bailey launched a play-attack on Morgan, and they had a play
fight. They do this from time to time and to anyone listening it sounds as
though they are trying to murder each other. Pogo heard it and came running up
shouting… and then was completely stumped. Which one should he tell off? Which
one should he protect? He barked loudly at both and then found himself having
to fend off a play-attack from Treacle.
We walked for three and a bit miles and in that time didn’t
see anyone else at all. And the rain soon stopped.
We came home. I made a cuppa and phoned the insurance
people. The last time I phoned them I was on hold for over an hour before I got
to speak to someone. Today the phone was answered in about twenty seconds. That
was an improvement. I told the nice lady that I’d been sent the details for the
policy renewal details for my car’s insurance. I told her that her company was
planning on putting the cost of the insurance up by over two hundred and fifty
quid. I told her that was too much, and that I’d been on Go Compare and had
quotes for two hundred quid less than they were proposing. She asked all sorts
of questions and blathered on… after a while I stopped her. I told her she was
blathering meaningless words. The bottom line was that I wanted a serious
reduction in their price or I was going elsewhere. She said she needed three
minutes to review my data (oo-er!)
After two minutes she offered me their top-of-the-range
policy which included pretty much everything her company had to offer for less
than a tenner more than I was currently paying. Not two hundred and fifty quid
more. Ten quid more. I’ve mentioned car insurance renewals before; both on here
and in conversation with friends and colleagues. I’ve met so many people who
don’t look at the price of the insurance when it comes up for renewal but just
pay it. A ten-minute phone call saved me two hundred and fifty quid this
morning.
And here’s another saving… Leave yourself short of money
for one year and put as much as you can aside. Then in the next year pay for
your insurance policy in one go rather than paying it monthly. You effectively
save two months’ money if you can get the cash together to pay in one go. Having
left myself skint a few years ago I now pay car and house insurance in one
yearly amount and save quite a bit.
I’m very mean…
I then drove into town. Yesterday our holiday money
arrived. Where we’re going next month is a tad off-grid. The locals will want
American dollars for anything we might want to buy and aren’t going to be
overly keen on giving out much change. Consequently low denomination notes is
what we want. The hundred dollar bills the bank sent yesterday are of no use to
us.
I went to the bank. The chap there said that maybe their
branch in Maidstone might be able to change them. I pointed out that I was in
Ashford, not Maidstone. He suggested the bureau de change in the shopping
centre. I went there, and after the silly old bat at the front of the queue
stopped showing off to her mates I explained my story to the woman behind the
counter. She immediately knew which bank I was with. She said that bank’s
foreign currency people always send out high denomination notes and their local
branch always send people to her. She said she’s not supposed to change notes
from one denomination to another, but said she’d change up half of them.
I then went to Santander and NatWest; neither of whom dealt
in foreign currency. One of them suggested two other places I might try. Other
than saying that both involved a car trip I won’t say where. One place wasn’t
interested at all. The other was brilliant. They too weren’t supposed to change
notes from one denomination to another, but when I suggested I sold the dollars
to them, then bought back low denomination notes they realized I wasn’t trying
to pull a fast one, and they swapped the money for me.
By the time I’d been all over the place and finally got
back home the day was half gone. We had a cuppa and scoffed the cakes I’d
brought home for lunch, then I set about solving a geo-puzzle which looked as
though we would be walking past it later (we did). You can see the puzzle here; in theory
the solution is obvious. In practice it took some farting about. But after half
an hour (or so) I had the thumbs-up from the checker.
“er indoors TM” eventually finished
work. Despite a rather windy evening we took the dogs down to the Leas at Folkestone
for a little walk. And with walk walked we came home. I fed the dogs, “er
indoors TM” went to the kebab shop. We scoffed kebabs
whilst watching the second episode of “Celebrity Race Across the World”.
I took a rather strong dislike to some chap being a prissy
princess refusing to take a night bus.
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