Things you always wanted to know the answer to [Vol. 3]
Discussion
Shakermaker said:
SpeckledJim said:
droopsnoot said:
Do main dealers (Vauxhall, Ford etc.) pay for each use of their diagnostic equipment? Having heard several tales of people taking in-warranty vehicles in for faults and being told it's £80-odd to put it on the machine (seemingly regardless of whether the car is in warranty), I wondered if that's because their diagnostic machine software is licensed on a per-use basis. Anyone know for sure?
No they don't.It's a very expensive bit of kit, and lots of expensive mandatory training goes with it, so instead of baking those costs into their standard hourly rate, they bill it as a unique menu item.
Charging to check a broken car that's in warranty is out of order, IMO.
That said, lots of people will bring a car in when there's nothing at all wrong with it, so it's a filter of time-wasters, I suppose. I don't think the manufacturer will compensate a dealer for time spent on a warranty investigation that goes nowhere, because there's no fault.
Edited by SpeckledJim on Friday 1st December 14:09
The fault was with something that was in warranty, and consequently i was not charged.
And stops some of the "the mudflap is resonating between 48-50mph on Tuesdays and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next" crowd.
Jonnny said:
DRFC1879 said:
Jonboy_t said:
Jonnny said:
How does a Super Market decide how much to discount something by? Do they take it down to their cost, is it below cost to make something rather than bin it? Does the out of date stuff go in the bin? Does the oik on the gun have control or is it now computerised centrally and he just prints the ticket?
There's LOADS of factors around what drives it - way too many to really list! Sometimes it is just discounted by whatever the bods in Commercial think they can get away with without losing money. Other times it does actually lose money, but the losses are outweighed by incremental sales (called a Loss Leader - drives punters in and they buy other stuff while they're there).Most big ones will have rebate agreements with suppliers too, whereby they say "we usually buy this pen at £1 cost price, but if we sell 1million of them, you need to give us a 10% back based on the quantity we bought". They can then use this 10% rebate to offset against the reduced profits from discounting the product.
Bear in mind that most big chains will generally have a margin of about 30% on anything they sell (so they buy the pen for £1 and sell it for £1.30), so there is plenty of room for them to drop the price to drive the sales in order to get that lost revenue back through their rebate agreement.
With out of date stuff, it depends on the stock type really. If it's perishable, they can be required by law to bin it safely. If it's something like a chair or a table, it's down to the store and/or Commercial people to agree how to manage it. I work for a big retailer and the majority of our stock is non-perishable, so we produce a big list every month/quarter/year of all our clearance stock that's out of date or out of season, give the store the cost price back to their P&L for it and then tell them to skip it/donate it to a local charity.
Price label wise, usually it's centrally loaded onto store databases, but that varies from retailer to retailer depending on what type of system they use.
On everyday groceries I know one retailer sells products on promotion in numerous stores where they don't have an ongoing listing and has an algorithm which works out a price per unit to clear out remaining stock within a set time period post promo. E.g. if a big store sells 10 units a day and has 15 left over at the end of a promo there may be a few pence reduction but a smaller conveience store sells four a day and has 15 left over it'll go to half price to clear out swiftly. The supplier will agree a clearance sum for these promos.
MartG said:
227bhp said:
...stuff...
Again, that is not what you originally askedAnd for f
ks sake, for the final time, atmospheric pressure has fk all to do with delivery of water to your house ! I'm a qualified engineer so I know what I'm talking about ! The only instance where air pressure is used to deliver water is onboard a ship, where having a large mass of water at the top of the ship would cause stability issues, so air pressure is used instead.
oceanview said:
Do the DVLA send out fines if you don't tax your car? If so, how long after the tax was due?
I saw an advert on TV saying that they're out tracking untaxed cars but surely they know which are untaxed and it cant all be unregistered, off the radar cars, that they don't have owner details/address for??
The adverts which they're pushing at the minute state 'tax it, or lose it'.I saw an advert on TV saying that they're out tracking untaxed cars but surely they know which are untaxed and it cant all be unregistered, off the radar cars, that they don't have owner details/address for??
Completely failing to mention the third option, of SORN it.
The 'wet beer mat holds a pint of water in an upside down glass' trick.
After reading about it on here, yes it works
you can even shake the upside down pint glass up and down quite violently and the water stays in.
Now, before I amaze everyone by trying it out with a pint of beer in the pub later....
Beer has bubbles, which I guess reduces the vacuum that keeps the liquid in.
Anyone done the trick with beer and how are the physics changed?
Ta.
After reading about it on here, yes it works
you can even shake the upside down pint glass up and down quite violently and the water stays in.Now, before I amaze everyone by trying it out with a pint of beer in the pub later....
Beer has bubbles, which I guess reduces the vacuum that keeps the liquid in.
Anyone done the trick with beer and how are the physics changed?
Ta.
Ayahuasca said:
The 'wet beer mat holds a pint of water in an upside down glass' trick.
After reading about it on here, yes it works you can even shake the upside down pint glass up and down quite violently and the water stays in.
Now, before I amaze everyone by trying it out with a pint of beer in the pub later....
Beer has bubbles, which I guess reduces the vacuum that keeps the liquid in.
Anyone done the trick with beer and how are the physics changed?
Ta.
It won't work as well with a carbonated fluid, as over time the total volume of liquid+gas increases, so the beer mat would be pushed off (either upside down or right way up).After reading about it on here, yes it works
you can even shake the upside down pint glass up and down quite violently and the water stays in.Now, before I amaze everyone by trying it out with a pint of beer in the pub later....
Beer has bubbles, which I guess reduces the vacuum that keeps the liquid in.
Anyone done the trick with beer and how are the physics changed?
Ta.
SpeckledJim said:
Shakermaker said:
SpeckledJim said:
droopsnoot said:
Do main dealers (Vauxhall, Ford etc.) pay for each use of their diagnostic equipment? Having heard several tales of people taking in-warranty vehicles in for faults and being told it's £80-odd to put it on the machine (seemingly regardless of whether the car is in warranty), I wondered if that's because their diagnostic machine software is licensed on a per-use basis. Anyone know for sure?
No they don't.It's a very expensive bit of kit, and lots of expensive mandatory training goes with it, so instead of baking those costs into their standard hourly rate, they bill it as a unique menu item.
Charging to check a broken car that's in warranty is out of order, IMO.
That said, lots of people will bring a car in when there's nothing at all wrong with it, so it's a filter of time-wasters, I suppose. I don't think the manufacturer will compensate a dealer for time spent on a warranty investigation that goes nowhere, because there's no fault.
Edited by SpeckledJim on Friday 1st December 14:09
The fault was with something that was in warranty, and consequently i was not charged.
And stops some of the "the mudflap is resonating between 48-50mph on Tuesdays and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next" crowd.
Case in point was someone who took their car in to a main Ford agent for a service, after the service various warning lights appeared which were entirely coincidental, but dealer was adamant that £80 would be needed, for a check. Actual problem was a loose connection on an injector (don't dissect this bit, it's all third-hand), possibly knocked during service, but I wondered why the dealer didn't get the car in first. Just poor customer services, then.
Ok - seasonal one this - come new years there is always a bagpiper who wanders around the local pubs playing For Auld Lang Syne (sp?)
Is this a guy the council pays to keep us drones in festive cheer? Does he do it to drum up trade for weddings etc? Is he actually OWNED by the council under some bylaw and they keep him cryogenically frozen, a bit like Walt Disney and they just unfreeze him and wheel him out at Christmas?
Is this a guy the council pays to keep us drones in festive cheer? Does he do it to drum up trade for weddings etc? Is he actually OWNED by the council under some bylaw and they keep him cryogenically frozen, a bit like Walt Disney and they just unfreeze him and wheel him out at Christmas?
paolow said:
Ok - seasonal one this - come new years there is always a bagpiper who wanders around the local pubs playing For Auld Lang Syne (sp?)
Is this a guy the council pays to keep us drones in festive cheer? Does he do it to drum up trade for weddings etc? Is he actually OWNED by the council under some bylaw and they keep him cryogenically frozen, a bit like Walt Disney and they just unfreeze him and wheel him out at Christmas?
OFC it's a local council conspiracy to keep the sheeple happy, everyone knows it! it's the same guys that runs the ice cream vans in summer.Is this a guy the council pays to keep us drones in festive cheer? Does he do it to drum up trade for weddings etc? Is he actually OWNED by the council under some bylaw and they keep him cryogenically frozen, a bit like Walt Disney and they just unfreeze him and wheel him out at Christmas?
Hmmm mm... Kemble or Kotor? 
twice in the list of smilies?TheLordJohn said:
exelero said:
Why is a weekend in Cumbria more expensive than a week in Spain?
'We' wanted to go to the Cotswolds for our honeymoon, 5 years ago.Ended up in Montenegro for a week for 1/3 of the price.
Probably because domestic transport is a ripoff in the UK. There is no useful airport for Cumbria with regular flights from anywhere else in the UK, so any journey from anywhere outside Lancashire or Northumberland is going to involve a very long drive or train journey. I looked into doing the train from Bristol and it was obscenely expensive, as it is to get to Manchester for some reason, so presumably anywhere past there is even more. The cost of accommodation is also going to be higher because the costs of everything here are going to be more expensive than Spain. As we don't have a huge nationally important tourism industry with tower blocks of hotels, there are not going to be the same deals up there than there are in Spain.
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