Rachel Pens

Back in January I decided I would write. This was my plan: write daily or weekly and then build momentum to eventually write a book. I have a lot to say. But here I am at the end of June and I’ve not done much. It was a huge surprise though to see that I’d hit 100 views – thank you to those of you who stopped by and stayed long enough to read what I had to say.

Today though I think I need to talk about dodgy car dealers.

The internet is a great thing. Lots and lots of stuff available with a few clicks. It’s great for looking for cars. Especially specific cars with specific extras. People have flash websites too. And, apparently, only post positive reviews.

Do I need to say more (as the sweat trickles down my body in this insane climate change highlighting heatwave?).

I like to think I am smart and relatively savvy. When the car first broke down (after 3 days), I recognised, most magnanimously, that these things do happen. All would have been good had he not accused me of doing something I didn’t do.

Reg flag to a bull.

When I was a kid I was constantly in trouble in one way or another. It ALWAYS seemed to be my fault. I was always working hard to make amends, to get rid of the anger and the silent treatment dished out as punishment for my supposed crime. It wasn’t that I was necessarily blamed for doing something I didn’t, more that somehow, whatever happened, ended up being my fault.

Having been raised by a dodgy salesman, I figured that I was up for a fight.

However, what I have learned is that when you work to be good, kind, patient, then you don’t know how to play the dodgy, dealing, manipulative, coercive games. You don’t realise that you were being played from the very moment you showed an interest.

Is there a point to this? Apart from never try and kid a kidder?

People play games. We all play games. It’s how we keep ourselves OK, how we make sense of our world, how we keep our identity intact. And we find people to play our games with us – this is all very unconscious of course. In order to play a game we need a hook. Mine was a shiny car. We could have played the game fine if the car had broken down just a few days later. But it went wrong when it broke down within the traders window of legal responsibility (oops). Again, we could have played his game fine if he hadn’t made the mistake of accusing me of doing something I didn’t. The game switched. Now I feel we are playing to the death – or until the Court makes him pay up.

How do we avoid such games I hear you ask? That’s a tough one because it happens on such an unconscious level. If I hadn’t been raised by a dodgy dealer and been handed responsibility that really wasn’t mine, then perhaps I would have not responded the way I did and we wouldn’t be here now (I would still have the car but it would be due to breakdown again because that’s how this man operates). So our histories play a huge part in the games we play and the people we play them with. When we aware of the games we play with others, and the usual negative payoff – we can disengage, walk away, test drive another car. Sometimes though, we play and play and play to the bitter end.

There is more to this story. There is the part of feeling completely powerless despite having consumer rights. There is the frustration that the bodies the are supposed to protect consumers like me have had their funding cut and merged into bigger organisation that can’t effectively do their jobs. There is the ‘shitification’ of the services we pay for not actually doing what we pay them for. And then there is the cost of fighting this stuff alone – which is a bit cheaper than fighting this with a lawyer.