I have posted a few news items about my decision to switch to an electric car. The EV journey continues.The surveyor from Ohme came yesterday and checked the installation requirements for the charger. He seemed shocked that I’m collecting the car a week today, and said he’d emphasise that the installation is urgent.
Today I spent over two hours on the phone. I first called Fish Brothers Skoda to check that my car had arrived and there was no problem with collecting it next week. That was all OK. The next call was to the RAC to sort out insurance and breakdown cover. We sorted the insurance relatively quickly, but the breakdown cover took much longer. A payment for two years worth of breakdown cover, on my current diesel car, was taken from my account today. The RAC person I talked to had to speak to his manager, then he had to talk to sales, finally I was put through to sales. I explained again that I was changing cars and wanted to change the car covered on 30th December. Apparently, you can’t do that, so he went through the various packages available for the new EV.
I was pleased to learn that the breakdown cover for an EV is around half the price of a diesel or petrol car. Perhaps that’s because there are a tiny fraction of the moving parts to fail. I chose the package I wanted, Then I had to provide again the payment details that they already had. They had only taken the renewal payment for the diesel car cover this morning. Now all we had to do was arrange for the diesel car cover to cease on 30th December.
He told me that wasn’t possible. I had two options. The first option he gave me was to remain covered until next Friday, then phone again to cancel and get a refund. The other option was to cancel today. I told him that I couldn’t face another phone call so I’d rather cancel now and take the risk of breaking down without cover for a week. I just made it to the lavatory with seconds to spare!
When I recovered sufficiently to check my email, I found I’d received a survey request from Ohme. They asked how my installation had gone. There were three questions which required a ranking from 0 to 10. After each question I had to explain why I had given the score. I gave three 5’s, and explained that the installation hadn’t “gone”. The surveyor was excellent but I’d love to know when my charger is due to be installed. I’m really looking forward to collecting the new car. I think I’ve cleared most of the hurdles now, fingers crossed for my continuing EV journey.