Today I had a difficult moment. After owning and driving unleaded petrol cars all my life, Flo’, our new car, is diesel. This morning, around 6.15 am, muscle memory took over. And I put unleaded in Flo’s diesel tank.
The car conked out in Peterborough. Only three or four deliveries in to a morning Amazon delivery route. I’m with the RAC now (always AA, formerly), because they let me pay monthly DD. Rather annoyingly, I was left sat in the car till gone midday!
And not only that, if I’d have called these guys directly, it’d have cost ‘just’ £160. Doing it via the RAC I was charged £240! I’m totally broke, as ever. So this fleecing is not appreciated!
And not only did I spend £240 having the tank flushed. I’d also wasted £30 filling up with unleaded earlier. So that’s £270 flushed away.
Fortunately Flo’ seems to have come through this fine. The Fuel Doc’ guy says that’s the case 90% of the time nowadays. He also told me that, allegedly, on average this – mis-fuelling – happens about once every three minutes, in the UK.
I’ve now done two of those classic ‘I’ll never be dumb enough to do that’ things: locking my keys in the boot (MX5, a year or two back), and now this, filling up with the wrong fuel!
You live and learn thank goodness Flo’ came through it ok.
I had two Amazon delivery shifts: the first was mostly aborted, inevitably (all undelivered stuff returned to depot). The second I managed to complete, with no problems.
Phew… an expensive and quite stressful day. And the day before my ‘day in court’. Not the kind of prep you want for a potentially stressful occasion.