Pea alert
In 1996 she-who-must-be-obeyed decided she wanted a new car and duly chose a spanking new Rio Verde (green) pearlescent Vauxhall Corsa Premier 1.2. As she's a nurse, the car would regularly be parked on the shonky hospital car park, protected only by poor lighting and convicted sex offenders (a post for another time), so she opted to pay an extra £270 for the official Vauxhall alarm system that was Thatcham category 1 rated.

Unfortunately, the alarm was a dealer-fit item, and we subsequently discovered that they didn't know what they were doing.

The alarm was of the type that automatically armed 30 seconds after you got out of the car, and required you to reset it by going back into the car and pressing a dongle against a dashboard-mounted plate.

In practice, this meant that the missus just had time to park outside the house, lock the car, find her house keys and open the front door to the house, before the alarm set itself and immediately went off. At the end of a late shift, or in the early morning following a night shift, that made us very unpopular with the neighbours.

Over the course of the next couple of months, when we could spare the time from work, the car went back to the dealers five times. On each occasion, they completely failed to find any fault. In the end, I told them I wanted the alarm removed and a full refund.

They removed the alarm promptly enough, but pissed about when it came to giving us back the money. They claimed that they couldn't refund us until Vauxhall had approved the refund. Unfortunately for them, I knew enough of the law to know our contract was with the dealer and it was their responsibility to pay us back. It was irrelevant if they ever got their money off Vauxhall.

After seven weeks of snotty phone calls and snottier letters, we'd had enough. The dealer's premises was adjacent to a small council-owned pay & display car park, so we formed a plan.

As an impecunious, then childless, couple, our weekend days were often spend lazing around doing very little so we decided we'd park the Corsa next to the dealer's entrance and make a small protest.

We covered the car in balloons and mounted two big printed signs on it saying "(name of dealer)'s customer service is rubbish if you have a problem with your car" and "expect to fight to get your money refunded even if you're legally entitled to it" (or something like that). And we stayed there all day Saturday, and returned on the Sunday, passing the time by reading newspapers, writing out our Christmas cards and drinking Thermos coffee - oh, and chatting to numerous potential customers who came to find out what had pissed us off so much.

We were also approached a couple of times by staff asking if they could help, before they phoned someone senior and were obviously warned off. Before we left on the Sunday, we told them that unless we got our money back, we'd be there the following weekend too, and every one thereafter.

By a strange coincidence, the cheque was ready for us on the Monday, along with a letter saying they didn't want our business any more. Surprise, that.

Yes, I know it was a petty and fairly weak protest, but we felt better for it and, hopefully, contributed to them losing the Vauxhall franchise the following year.

Apologies for length, monster drugs, etc.
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Sun 5 Sep 2010, 17:28, 4 replies)

That is win
and fully deserved too by the sounds of it.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Sun 5 Sep 2010, 17:52, closed)

good job :)

( zacherynuk @echo off, Sun 5 Sep 2010, 21:23, closed)

I clicked
It was neither a petty nor a fairly weak protest
(whiskas loved by 8 out of 10 cats, Mon 6 Sep 2010, 0:28, closed)

What is it with dealer-fitted alarms?
I have had friends and colleagues that have experienced no end of issues with dealer-fitted alarms.
My own relates to Mrs S's car (the Shitbox Lancer) which had a cheap dealer-fitted alarm that sort-of worked ok. Then one day it shat itself completely. Had to get the AA guy to come around as we could not deactivate the alarm and the siren just would not stop. So as AA guy and I stood there staring thoughtfully at the engine bay, I spotted a connector between 2 sets of cables that terminated at the alarm. 'Here goes nothing' I thought, and disconnected it......
Silence! Turn key, engine starts!
AA guy asks what I did, so I showed him. "You shouldn't be able to do that at all!" he said, adding that whomever fitted the alarm had utterly no idea what they were doing, and wondered how many other more expensive cars from that dealership had similar setups....
(Sebulba continues to fight evil with evil....., Mon 6 Sep 2010, 19:40, closed)