They think it's all over.

It's not yet.  This is my yard this morning, stilll masses of snow everywhere, frozen again overnight with a bitter howling east wind yet again. We are now in our eighth month of winter and it's far from over yet according to the forecasts. I'm sick of it.

The car deal has gone haywire too. They have  not been honest with us about this car, and it seems that it is actually a bit of a scam that the dealers do in order to get cheaper cars as demonstrators from the manufacturer and then sell them as new.  As a result, the manufacturer requires them to keep the V5 registration document for three months minimum. Unfortunately, that is not only illegal for us to own the car and not notify the DVLC of the change of ownership, but it also invalidates the insurance.

So the situation is that we are waiting to hear from them if they will park the car up for the next 11 weeks until we can legally register it, because they cannot afford Skoda to know what they are up to using this ruse to undercut the proper selling price of the car. That makes little difference to us, because we thought we would have to wait 12 weeks for one to be manufactured anyway, and this one is still a higher spec at a lower price than we thought we would be able to get.

The dealer meanwhile is shocked. Apparently this is industry standard practice and we are the first people to point out that it would leave us breaking the law  in failing to register as keepers of the vehicle, and that we would be uninsured on top of that.  There are probably dozens of people driving around uninsured because of this. They'll get a shock if they have an accident or theft that results in a total loss and they have to send in the V5 to the insurers!

More news on that tomorrow. And some riding weather, I hope!

C.