It’s a Swindle

Disaster. The buggy has broken down. No less than 3 ½ months old and already it’s had to slink off down the paternal pit lane. The 360 swivel front wheel has decided to relinquish the only responsibility of which it was asked, which was to swivel. The news came whilst returning from the corner shop with the morning papers. From smooth flowing front wheel action to knackered supermarket trolley action in the space of 150 yards. No problem, I thought – it’s obviously still under guarantee, I’ll just phone the shop and all will be well.

Or so I thought.

It turns out that it has certain components which conveniently fall outside the conditions of the guarantee, under a mysterious category known as “maintenance”. To be more specific, the front wheel. “The 360 swivel front wheel is not included in the guarantee sir, it’s your responsibility,” said the man at the shop. “Well how am I supposed to fix it,” I replied, “there are less complicated combustion engines.”
“You will find an Alan key was provided with the product upon delivery sir,” he went on “this should be sufficient to fix any maintenance related issues.”

I’m not sure what “product” he was referring to, but it definitely wasn’t the nightmare of nuts, bolts and cogs I was currently wrestling with. Imagine trying to crack Fort Knox armed only with a cocktail sausage. It was worse. Added to which was the sheer hilarity of not being able to find a single component with which the Alan key would actually fit. All this inevitably ended with a second, slightly more heated phone call to the increasingly annoying man at the shop who cheerfully informed me that they had an engineer on site whose job was specifically to fix the wobbly front wheels that aren’t covered by the guarantee and that always occur on this particular model, usually about 3 ½ months after purchase.

“How much?” I groaned.
“Ninety pounds plus VAT sir.”
“Tell me about the Alan key again”