Bankstone supremo Vic Tysoe stumbled upon a surprising and not a little disturbing discovery this week following a family trip to his local VUE cinema complex.
To save you jumping ahead to get to the punchline, let us apprise you right upfront that the discovery in question was the shocking revelation that apparently ‘not everyone loves insurance companies’.
It was on a perfectly ordinary Monday evening, the evening of Monday 28 October 2013 to be precise, that Mr T parked his unostentatiously luxurious executive saloon outside the aforementioned VUE premises, thereafter proceeding in an orderly fashion to purchase several fistfuls of jumbo hot dogs and giant buckets variously of spongy popcorn and watery rattly coke, and ultimately to take his seat, alongside other similarly provisioned Tysoes, in the auditorium.
Vic advises Bankstone News that the film he saw, a work entitled simply Rush (presumably a documentary charting the illustrious career of the twiddly squealy Canadian rock gods of that name) was excellent, highly recommended etc. But that – as you will soon enough learn – is scarcely the point.
Stumbling back out of the dimly lit cinema into the savage glare of the carpark arc lights, deaf from the Dolby surround sound, nauseous from such heroic snackage, Vic was greeted by the sobering sight of his freshly smashed front passenger side window and, shortly thereafter, by that of the snaky tangle of wiring and cabling left trailing from the gaping void where once a perfectly good sat nav had sat.
Trundling purposefully back inside the cinema, Mr T proceeded to engage in a brief forensic dialogue with a teenage theater manager who confirmed that CCTV footage would indeed be available for Mr T’s perusal should he care to accompany the VUE representative to a dingy backroom.
There it was that Vic enjoyed a less diverting sequel to the evening’s main presentation, as he watched in glorious grainy black and white a number of ‘scumbags’ making free with his motor fully one hour and ten minutes earlier (probably around the time when Geddy Lee was explaining how he began using a Rickenbecker Bass/Guitar double neck incorporating a 4001 bass and 480 12-string guitar during the recording of the A Farewell to Kings album).
“Reporting the incident to the police was painless” Vic reports, “unlike the drive home in the rain with no side window and Mrs T constantly complaining about the ingress of water and why couldn’t she drive?”
Reporting the incident his insurers was similarly painless. As was following their instructions to call out Autograss, who came out promptly to repair the smitten window.
It was on Friday morning (i.e. today) that things began to go awry, when Tysoe took his car in to his local VW dealers to obtain the quotation requested by the insurers, he met with a troubling response. “Is this an insurance job?” the dealers asked warily. Upon being told that it was, the dealers informed Mr T that it would be best he took his custom elsewhere as “we don’t like insurers”.
“And why, pray, might that be?” enquired a somewhat flummoxed Tysoe.
It might be, the dealer responded, because:
– insurers do not pay for work on the spot, like ‘normal’ customers
– insurers do not understand VAT, and
– insurers argue endlessly over our perfectly reasonable £85 per hour workshop labour rate.
Seems there’s no pleasing some people. But, in the meantime, what should Mr Tysoe do about getting his motor fixed?
Answers on a postcard please to [email protected]
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