Some news for you!

[TheInsanity1234]

The dealer also very kindly offered to throw in free rubber mats (incredibly useful in the Yeti) if I purchased the "return to invoice" insurance for £349. The mats were £40, meaning the insurance was only £309 in real terms

I suspect you could find GAP insurance significantly cheaper elsewhere had you shopped around. Dealers love these extras (diamondbrite/supaguard etc paint protection is another common one). £50 if that cost to them, mark it up to a couple of hundred then offer the punter a "discount" on it

Anyway, hope you enjoy your new car. I think until I passed 30 I never really found my insurance getting much cheaper, I just bought faster cars

I have yet to actually purchase the GAP insurance, I decided to leave it until I pick the car up before making my decision.

I've been doing a spot of research today, and found I could get a Return To Invoice policy from Direct Gap (first one in the google results) which is the same as the one offered from the dealer for... Wait for it... £95. That, plus £40 for a set of rubber mats is still much cheaper than £349 plus free rubber mats!

Hell, I could get an even better policy where they'll pay you the difference between the cost of the car at the point of purchase, and the pay out from the insurance policy. Effectively, this means (their example) if I PCP a car with a list value of £20k, and it was a total loss 24 months later, and I still had £10k of finance outstanding, and the insurance company would only pay out £7k, DirectGap would then pay me £13k, meaning I end up settling the outstanding £10k of finance and getting £10k to use towards a replacement car. For a Citigo, the quoted price was £129 for 3 years... Bit of a no brainer, if I'm honest.

However, the policy will either cover the difference between the insurance pay out and the list value of a car with the same specification, OR the difference between the insurance payout and the total outstanding finance, whichever is greater. This does mean I can't go and get the car, then crash it within 3 weeks and get a nice big deposit towards another car, as the outstanding finance would probably be more than the list value of the car at that point in time!

But yeah, I'm surprised I didn't have a go at haggling the dealer down to give me a discount on the list price of the car. Probably just overwhelmed by the excitement of getting my own car

[skodatezzer]

Re. dog transport. Would urge you to go for a suitable harness on the back seat (also a suitable seat cover to protect against muddy paws!). That's what I do with my canine companion because a) the most common collision is the rear-end shunt and b) your boot is also your rear crumple zone. She's too precious to risk.

Doesn't that mean that the most common collision is a front-end crunch too?

Well, yeah, but then your dog wouldn't be sitting on the engine. Burn its bum that way.

[fengpo]

I found the power for the Peugeot 107 fine. Overtaking seems to be one of those things that comes when confidence in the skill increases. I'm still at the bottom of the ladder in regards to progress, but a well executed safe overtake makes me feel good for the rest of the drive.

[TheInsanity1234]

Re. dog transport. Would urge you to go for a suitable harness on the back seat (also a suitable seat cover to protect against muddy paws!). That's what I do with my canine companion because a) the most common collision is the rear-end shunt and b) your boot is also your rear crumple zone. She's too precious to risk.

Doesn't that mean that the most common collision is a front-end crunch too?

Well, yeah, but then your dog wouldn't be sitting on the engine. Burn its bum that way.

Having said that, if I'd purchased a Renault Twingo, my dog would've been sitting on the engine...

[TheInsanity1234]

So, I've received an update.

As of about 9am this morning, my car was loaded on to a ship somewhere in Germany, and is now steadily sailing its way across the English Channel...

I had requested the shipping details because I wanted to see if it was possible to track the boat my car is on, but unfortunately "those details are unobtainable at the moment". Well at least the dealer'll let me know when my car is off the boat, and on a transporter to be delivered to the dealership.

EDIT: Turns out it's possible that the dealer said "Your car is shipped" meaning it's been manoeuvred on to a boat, but the boat could still be in port.

So I've been madly surfing the internet and have found a list of potential Vehicle Carrier candidates that my car could be on.

There's one which is at the port of Emden, and its destination is Sheerness in the UK, and there's two which are either docked at an UK port, or have just left an UK port.

There's another one which has just left the port of Bremerhaven and is making its way to the port of Sheerness.

It all depends on what port Skoda use to ship their cars from, and what boats they tend to use.

[Mr Cholmondeley-Warner]

Last I heard, mine was sitting on a dock somewhere waiting to get on a ship too, so maybe they're travelling together...

[TheInsanity1234]

Last I heard, mine was sitting on a dock somewhere waiting to get on a ship too, so maybe they're travelling together...

What car are you getting then?

[Mr Cholmondeley-Warner]

A Skoda.

[TheInsanity1234]

A Skoda.

If you're picking yours up from Fish Brothers, you may very well bump into me picking up mine!

[Synchromesh]

A Skoda.

How enigmatic you are...