Buying a car, the story continues...

Turns out the lease company took so long to make me an offer that the two Yeti units with DSG I had to choose from last week were both sold during the weekend. The available DSG Yeti will arrive in Finland after, wait for it, a freaking 4 months from now!!! Of course there are cars on the way to buyers who have factory ordered theirs, but there doesn't seem to be any system in place to re-stock to replace cars that were already sold.

So, no Yeti for me and the search continues. It's more and more interesting that Finnish car dealers are reporting slow sales while the European car manufacturers are complaining about overcapacity and oversupply. Both are beginning to sound more and more like utter bullshit to me...

Consumer rant: buying a new car - how hard can it be?

Moving back to Finland meant also the need to get some wheels. I've used company leases before and thought this was the way to go this time too. I did some research and ended up with an idea to buy one with one of the new small, turbocharged petrol engines attached to a dual-clutch manual gearboxes, which can be run just like automatic. My only other requirements are cruise control and A/C so I'm not really basing this on emotional factors despite my worship of Top Gear TV show.

Why? I'm not the greenest person out there but want to help the environment for my part so going to a smaller engine is logical. Of course saving fuel is also economical and helps the economy too by saving oil, which eventually will run out. Our family really needs an automatic my bum left knee and wrist issues my wife's has now and again, so going with the environmental theme a manual box operated like an automatic is the best fit.

The two logical choices then are Ford with their 1.0l turbo engines and Powershift gearbox and VW brands with 1.2l turbo with DSG. Both engines produce some 100+ bhp and gearboxes give you normal clutch pedal-less auto without the increase in fuel consumption and performance. The selection is easy as the Ford engine is not even available in Finland, at least on the Focus. I settled with the cheapest option for a small family car with these specs: Seat Ibiza ST. So, off to the shops I went, test drove the thing and wanted to buy. Problem is, I couldn't. They were about to introduce a facelift in the Geneva auto show and didn't have any models with my two requirements in Finland.

They didn't know how much the new model would cost either. This was in early February and the estimate was that they'd have a price list in a couple of weeks. More than a couple of months later they still haven't been able to tell the leasing company how much the new model will cost. Once they can do that, I am looking at a 10 week delivery time to actually get the car. To make matters, not maybe worse, but at least a lot more annoying, they've been very economical with the facts as the different delay excuses have been piling on. To top it off I have a 2nd hand Ibiza I've been driving around and seeing bits fall off it hasn't really convinced me that I should really wait that long for this car.

I finally gave up this week and ordered another car. Keeping with the original spec I added another: I need to get the car soon. So I called around a decided on getting a Skoda Yeti instead of the unavailable Seat. We drove a Roomster before and Yeti is another quirky small car from the VW-owned car maker in the Czech Republic. They promised the car in two weeks.

The downside of this is the Skoda alternative is more expensive with it's quasi-SUV looks, although the car I'm getting is 2-wheel drive. It's got more boot space and even Top Gear liked it.

What I can't get my head around is how can one expect to survive as a car dealership when you don't sell cars? Also, if you can't sell a product to the customer, who in their right mind thinks that customer is ever getting back once they find out you're just stringing them along and breaking every promised timeline?

Why friends don't let frieds fly Blue1

I'm in Finland, but just had a very Kingfishery (an Indian airline teetering on the brink of bankcruptcy) no-fly experience with a local airline, Blue1. I arrived to the airport early, e-checked myself in, went through the security check and camped beside the gate 14A to fly to Oulu. The scheduled boarding time came and went, but I was much more alarmed when suddenly the gate label was changed from Oulu to Brussels.

I went to have a look at the departures board and saw that my flight was cancelled. Sure the weather was not perfect, but mine was the only red blinking island in a vast sea of green.

There are other airlines flying to Oulu every morning and my cancelled flight was the first one to go, so I went to the transfer desk to get a seat on either of those. Not much luck there, as you can see.

I went to ask the SAS/Blue1 lounge if there was anyone who could help me and they kindly told me I need to exit the airport area and go back to the Blue1 ticket office only to find that I was hardly the only person with the same problem.

The flights I could've taken took off well before the queue even inched forward for the first time. Blue1 took great care to make sure every person on their cancelled flight missed every one of those - of course this way they save money as their worst case scenario turns into a re-schedule to a later flight of theirs or full refund - a ticket on any of those competitor flights is undoubtedly the dearest option. They'll refund the flight tickets, but the lost time, groupwork and 90€ of cab money are mine and my employer's losses. I'm not holding my breath to hear back from them, but I've posted a link to this post to their feedback form in case they'd like to comment or compensate.

Companies nowadays try very hard to define an identity. Here's an excerpt of Blue1's lofty corporate goals, which financial realities seem to have thrown out the window:

Blue1's more than 400 employees are actively and daily involved in thousands of passengers’ everyday life. With Blue1 a new era of air travel is created of the courage and passion to our own work and importance in our customer-focused perspective.

I must say I'm pretty pissed off about the airline now - it's one thing to cancel a flight and at least make an effort to take of the affected passengers and another to cancel a flight and make absolutely sure no customer gets any help to keep their commitments.