amolkarnik

Sorry to hear mate. Hope its sorted out quickly.

Happy Birthday guys.

Try and find someone to 'assume' the lease. I have seen adverts on Autotrader where someone takes up the contract on your behalf. I know the finance company will usualyy want to carry out the usual credit checks. Lexus may want to charge for this as well.

Damer - A few people on this thread have confirmed that you can insist on your car going to a garage of your choice. In my case DL were sympathetic and havent raised objections to this choice of mine except for a weak attempt to sway me in the direction of their 'approved' body shops. TonyGoose - I agree that there might be an overlap between Lexus approved bodyshops and insurer approved bodyshops. When approaching the bodyshop thru Lexus the bodyshop works under instructions from the dealer (therefore, indirectly the car owner). The same body shop will work under instruction from the insurer when approached thru the insurer. In case of going directly to Lexus, you have the added protection of being able to escalate any issues to Lexus GB (whatever thats worth). My expereince with Lexus has been good so far. I work in the financial services industry and I dont trust them. Its quite as simple as that. Just my two-pence.

Quick Update - Spoke to the insurers and they are happy to let me get the car sorted at a garage of my choice. The process will now take a lot longer. I have to take the car to a Lexus garage to get a quote. This will go to the insurer, who will then send a loss assessor to look at the car and confirm that the quote is acceptable.

Happy B'day mate. I've been all over LOC, but didnt notice your bday. Hope you have a good one.

Good to know that I can insist on main dealer attention to get this mess sorted. Is there a London Lexus dealer who might be better than the others. Bromley is my local. I dont think there might be damage to the B-pillar but the door sill seems a bit out of shape so a new door (?) might be a reality. There was no injury, which is why the cops left. I'll keep you guys posted. Thanks for your help again. Is this is attitude that makes LOC a great place to be.

Agree with you Dave. This happened under the blackwall tunnel southern approach. The story so far is that Directline are going to arrange to get their approved body shop to fix the car. I suppose it might need a new drivers door, plus a respray of the right rear door and some work around rear wing/rear bumper area. I am pretty certain Lexus will invalidate the warranty if the work isnt done at a Lexus dealer (who in turn might use the same bodyshop). Should I insist that the work is done ONLY by an approved Lexus dealer (I dont know if I have a legal position on this as the policy fine print probably says that the insurer could get work done at any body shop)? If the insurers establish blame with the third party, I have nothing to pay and if they dont, I am still going to have to stump of £250 as my excess. Why not get them to fix the car at the dealers.

Thanks guys. I shall make a trip to the accident site later today and take some pictures. Will also try and draw some pictures to present to the insurers to strengthen their case.

Last one

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More pictures

Some pictures

Involved in an accident this afternoon at 1330 hours (at Woolwich, London). Serious damage to the drivers door and some scratches to the rest of the right side. No injury. A Volvo estate ploughed into the car. I didnt see where he came from, but I suspect he either jumped a traffic light on my right OR overtook me from the right and tried to cut across. The cops came but since there was no damage, asked us to exchange details and let the insurers sort it out. I have contacted my insurer (Directline) and they've been good so far. A repairer will contact me tomorrow to pick up the car and get it fixed at their body shop. They will guarantee the repairs so that the warranty will not be affected. I have a £250 excess on that policy. The other guy gave me his details, car registration number, Insurer Name etc. and Directline will be making contact with his insurers to establish blame. Any tips on what to look out for? I will post pictures of the damage a bit later today and my neighbour (an industrial loss adjuster) has suggested that I go to the site of the accident and take some pictures.

I emailed every dealer in the SE (London and the home counties). Less than half of them bothered to respond (shame!!). And the most expensive quote came in at 50% more than the cheapest one. Strangely the most expensive quotes were not from dealers within M25 but outside. The cheapest quote was a London dealer.

Just out of curiosity - are the dealers required to use a certain grae of oil? What happens if they use crap oil and you end up with some form of engine trouble? How can you prove its down to bad oil? Who remains responsible for fixing the damage. IMHO oil, tyres and petrol are the last think you should compromise on. Its false economy. For no particular reason I was thinking of Shell Helix (synthetic). Is that suitable?

Thats reassuring. I think most Lexus dealers are much better than the average main dealer. Besides a bad experience almost always gets publicity. Not all good ones get that. Should I be expecting a drastically different driving experience after the service? Should I look to supply my own oil? If yes, whats the best make and what quanity do I need?

My car is due for its 10k service now and I have booked it in at Lexus Croydon mainly because its not too far from where I stay (Bromley is the closest dealer) and their quote was the cheapest + 15% gold discount. Some otehr members have express some amount of dissatisfaction with their past experience with Croydon (see - http://www.lexusownersclub.co.uk/forum/ind...owtopic=13650&). Should I cancel this apointment and go elsewhere? If so, what M25 area dealer would you guys recommend? Twickenham/Guildford come to my mind.

I finally put in my order today at Dell. They have a Dell outlet website (link from www.dell.co.uk). These are order cancellations or customer returns and are refurbished and sold will a full Dell warranty. I have got a Dell Dimension 8300 with Intel P4 3.0 with a MoBo (875 chipset), 2Gb 400 MHz RAM, ATI Radeon 9600Pro 128 MB graphics card, 200 GB Serial ATA HDD, Soundblaster Audigy2 sound card. Comes with XP Pro, MS works bundled. Supplied with standard keyboard and mouse. No monitor. They have bundled in a Creative 64MB MP3 player free. Paid 900 for this, which I reckon is about 250 quid less that the original market price. Word of caution - not all offers are that good. I have been looking at this website for 2 weeks now and snapped up this PC as soon as it came up for sale. Thanks everyone for their help.

Anyone looking at building their PC's should have a look at the Guides section of www.anandtech.com. They have some good recommendations. I have decided to go ahead and build a PC based on an AMD 64 processor. Especially since this is a 64 bit processor, I think it will be fairly future proof. The downside is that 64 bit processors are still a bit expensive.

fluff34567 - This PC is over 3 years old and was bought on the cheap. Its an AMD K6(2) processor with 550 MHz, 312 MB ram, onboard graphics (16 MB) and sound card. not to sure of the motherboard. I am not sure of the form factor. I hope its an ATX but might be an AT. In any case I dont see too much sense in upgrading this as I would like to get rid of W***ows and install Linux on this PC. Like I said, I;d prefer to replace this PC with one thats got good quality of basic components. I dont care too much for features like 6 speakers etc that are of little value to me. Mesh seem to do some top quality computers but have heard nightmares about their service. Like Fidgits idea of building it myself. Will give me something to tinker around with for a few weeks.

I am looking to replace by existing PC with a new one. I am not really interested in all the frills that DELL throws in like printers, speakers and the lot. What I really want is a good quality computer with lots of memory a good processor, a good graphics card and a good hard disk. Any of you guys have any recommendations? Are any members here PC assemblers? Thanks.

I;ve had my car from new since may last year and donea bout 6500 miles. Its due for a service in 2 weeks. Do they check tracking as part of the 10k service? Should I pay extra and get the dealer to have a look? I drive around town mostly and very rarely drive the car hard.

I buy the concentrate from Ha****ds. Not the upmarket F1 stuff and I cant see a reason to spend twice as much for some alcohol and soap. Works fine for me. Unless anyone out tehre things the F1 stuff is really much better.

The tyres in question were dunlops, though there was mention of michelin as well