Fraud and Warp Coils: Part Two (Citroen have Warp technology?)
To recap: it's September 1995. We'd just survived eight months in France and then this happened. Someone stole my identity and grabbed our life savings. And in the midst of everything we have to get our car serviced...
I scanned the Yellow Pages again. This time looking to see what services they did advertise. Perhaps they didn't use révision any more? Perhaps they'd anglicised it to le service as they'd done with le parking and le shopping?
I found plenty of garages offering 'service' - but when I checked the dictionary I found this could mean after sales service. But I also noticed the word entretien appearing again and again in the ads. I looked that up in our dictionary and found ... car service. I could not believe it! I checked the dictionary again for 'car service' and found révision - no mention of entretien at all. My faith in our dictionary crashed. What good was it if they didn't cross-reference all the terms? Were we really supposed to check through all the French words just in case there was another word for the one we wanted?
But we did have a new word and with it a new lead.
The next day we decided to take a detour from our normal shopping route and cruise the main road outside St. Gaudens where all the big garages and car dealers were. With any luck we'd find one offering entretiens for Citroens.
We soon found one offering entretiens pour tous marques. At last! Armed with our revised script, we entered.
"Do you service cars?" seemed on the superfluous side as an opening question at a garage specialising in nothing but the servicing of cars, so we skipped that one and went onto the next.
"How much does it cost to service a Citroen AX?"
"What kind of service?" came the reply, or words to that general effect.
The conversation was wavering but still on script.
"A full service," I countered.
"Non. " He shook his head.
This was not the right answer. 'Non' could only be used on questions one, three, eight and nine. I knew - I had the script. And would have pointed out his error if he hadn't then asked me how many kilometres we'd driven.
A glimmer of hope. He may have started ad libbing but he'd asked me a question I knew the answer to - 160,000. And I could see the way back on script. Obviously he wanted to know how many kilometres the car had done to determine the type of service required.
He then asked me how many kilometres were on the clock when we'd bought it? This was not so good. Why would he want to know that?
"155,000?" I answered dubiously, anxiously fingering the script trying to spot the next likely question.
Which was unintelligible. Equally so when he repeated it slowly. I looked at Shelagh and she looked at me. And then both of us looked back at the mechanic.
Who started speaking very quickly and waving his arms. We caught odd phrases, enough to know that something was très important and somehow the mileage was the key. It sounded like 'warp coil'.
"Did he just say warp coil?" I asked Shelagh.
"That's what I thought," she answered, relieved, I think, by the fact that she hadn't been the one to raise the question. We might not know much about the internal combustion engine but we knew all about warp coils. But did Citroen really have warp technology?
We turned to face the mechanic with renewed respect.
He was still in the throws of trying to explain what would happen if the warp coil failed while we were driving. But he didn't need to. We'd watched enough Star Trek to know that the warp engines would have to be taken off-line and the moment that happened a Romulan warbird would de-cloak off the starboard bow.
So, we definitely had to have the warp coil looked at. We nodded sagely.
He liked that. Expensive but necessary, he said.
"How expensive?" I asked.
"Perhaps 500 francs." And then he asked us what else needed servicing.
Not again!
"A full service?" I repeated, determined to claw the conversation back on script.
"Non, too expensive," he replied.
I couldn't help but wonder what kind of garage we’d walked into. I'd been so used to hearing reports in England about garages overcharging and performing unnecessary work, that I couldn't conceive of one turning down work on the grounds that it would cost too much.
I turned to our back-up list. After our last encounter at a garage, we'd prepared a list of car parts we'd like looking at - just in case.
I opened with vidange.
"Oui," he nodded.
Good start. "Brakes," I continued.
"Non, too expensive."
What? How could checking the brakes be too expensive! He then went on to explain he'd have to take the wheels off and if the brakes were Ok it would be a waste of time.
"Were there any problems with the brakes?" he continued.
Not really but...
He said he'd give them a road test if we wanted but nothing else unless he found a problem.
We struggled through the rest of our list. Meeting more nons and shakes than ouis and nods. Perhaps the French only serviced their cars when something fell off.
But we booked our rendez-vous. Nine o'clock, Tuesday. Today.
(next instalment: Dilithium Crystals all over the Roundabout)
I scanned the Yellow Pages again. This time looking to see what services they did advertise. Perhaps they didn't use révision any more? Perhaps they'd anglicised it to le service as they'd done with le parking and le shopping?
I found plenty of garages offering 'service' - but when I checked the dictionary I found this could mean after sales service. But I also noticed the word entretien appearing again and again in the ads. I looked that up in our dictionary and found ... car service. I could not believe it! I checked the dictionary again for 'car service' and found révision - no mention of entretien at all. My faith in our dictionary crashed. What good was it if they didn't cross-reference all the terms? Were we really supposed to check through all the French words just in case there was another word for the one we wanted?
But we did have a new word and with it a new lead.
The next day we decided to take a detour from our normal shopping route and cruise the main road outside St. Gaudens where all the big garages and car dealers were. With any luck we'd find one offering entretiens for Citroens.
We soon found one offering entretiens pour tous marques. At last! Armed with our revised script, we entered.
"Do you service cars?" seemed on the superfluous side as an opening question at a garage specialising in nothing but the servicing of cars, so we skipped that one and went onto the next.
"How much does it cost to service a Citroen AX?"
"What kind of service?" came the reply, or words to that general effect.
The conversation was wavering but still on script.
"A full service," I countered.
"Non. " He shook his head.
This was not the right answer. 'Non' could only be used on questions one, three, eight and nine. I knew - I had the script. And would have pointed out his error if he hadn't then asked me how many kilometres we'd driven.
A glimmer of hope. He may have started ad libbing but he'd asked me a question I knew the answer to - 160,000. And I could see the way back on script. Obviously he wanted to know how many kilometres the car had done to determine the type of service required.
He then asked me how many kilometres were on the clock when we'd bought it? This was not so good. Why would he want to know that?
"155,000?" I answered dubiously, anxiously fingering the script trying to spot the next likely question.
Which was unintelligible. Equally so when he repeated it slowly. I looked at Shelagh and she looked at me. And then both of us looked back at the mechanic.
Who started speaking very quickly and waving his arms. We caught odd phrases, enough to know that something was très important and somehow the mileage was the key. It sounded like 'warp coil'.
"Did he just say warp coil?" I asked Shelagh.
"That's what I thought," she answered, relieved, I think, by the fact that she hadn't been the one to raise the question. We might not know much about the internal combustion engine but we knew all about warp coils. But did Citroen really have warp technology?
We turned to face the mechanic with renewed respect.
He was still in the throws of trying to explain what would happen if the warp coil failed while we were driving. But he didn't need to. We'd watched enough Star Trek to know that the warp engines would have to be taken off-line and the moment that happened a Romulan warbird would de-cloak off the starboard bow.
So, we definitely had to have the warp coil looked at. We nodded sagely.
He liked that. Expensive but necessary, he said.
"How expensive?" I asked.
"Perhaps 500 francs." And then he asked us what else needed servicing.
Not again!
"A full service?" I repeated, determined to claw the conversation back on script.
"Non, too expensive," he replied.
I couldn't help but wonder what kind of garage we’d walked into. I'd been so used to hearing reports in England about garages overcharging and performing unnecessary work, that I couldn't conceive of one turning down work on the grounds that it would cost too much.
I turned to our back-up list. After our last encounter at a garage, we'd prepared a list of car parts we'd like looking at - just in case.
I opened with vidange.
"Oui," he nodded.
Good start. "Brakes," I continued.
"Non, too expensive."
What? How could checking the brakes be too expensive! He then went on to explain he'd have to take the wheels off and if the brakes were Ok it would be a waste of time.
"Were there any problems with the brakes?" he continued.
Not really but...
He said he'd give them a road test if we wanted but nothing else unless he found a problem.
We struggled through the rest of our list. Meeting more nons and shakes than ouis and nods. Perhaps the French only serviced their cars when something fell off.
But we booked our rendez-vous. Nine o'clock, Tuesday. Today.
(next instalment: Dilithium Crystals all over the Roundabout)