Hi all I booked my car in a good few weeks ago for a new clutch (powershift), had been putting it off for a while and finally decided to bite the bullet. Got the quote which was just over 1k which I was happy with. the day came and Ford (evans halshaw) collected the car, and told me it would be a couple of days, so far so good. I get a call a few days later from the service manager who told me they'd replaced the clutch, and it turned out the new clutch was faulty...and it was the last one available in the UK atm and it could be another 3-4 weeks as it's on backorder. I have another car I can use so I kept my cool, and asked what they can offer to compensate for this, to which I was told there were no loan cars available for a month, and he would speak to Ford about reducing the cost of the work. He came back later and said they would reduce the price by £100! I am without a car until probably the end of June, with only a small discount offered. Additional point - the car is undrivable now as I assume they didn't want to spend 6 hours putting the old clutch back on Does anyone have any advice on what I should be asking for in this kind of situation? I can't help but feel I may have been kind on them when they called!

I'm not a legal expert so I can't advise you on your rights, however perhaps contact Consumer Direct 08454 04 05 06 Also, what brand of laptop is it and which model? I'll see if I can find out what it should have.

On the bottom of the laptop is there a sticker of any kind? 99% of all laptops come shipped with an operating system, and a licence. The sticker is put on the underside of the computer and this has the product key which you can use if you have to reinstall windows. If the sticker says windows xp or vista, and you have windows 7, then you don't have a licence. You're right in that they shouldn't be installing it without a licence, however their argument may be to tell you that you need to buy your own licence. So if you bought yourself a copy of windows 7, you can simply use the licence key from that disc without needing to reinstall everything. When you bought it, did it come with a specification, or was it advertised with Windows 7 etc? If so, then they legally should be including a licenced copy and as they didn't, they should offer you a refund to the value of a copy of windows, or should give you a copy. This isn't a warranty issue anyway so make sure they don't fob you off with "we don't offer support on software etc", which is fairly standard.

Hi there, I bought a mattress from Ikea about 3 years ago, it cost about £250 and apparently their mattresses come with a 25 year guarantee. Now the mattress has totally lost it's shape and is terrible. I contacted Ikea who said they would be unable to action anything without proof of purchase. The problem is I stupidly didn't keep the receipt, and I've no idea which card I used to pay for it as I've had multiple credit cards over the years. I do know the exact date I purchased it as it was the same day I moved into a property. Whilst I realise that I should have the proof, what the manager told me is that they will look up the date on the system to find my transaction. Surely if they are able to do that, then they could look up the date and search for the transaction using the stock number (I used to work in retail and I know the systems can do that). Do I have any legs to stand on? Other than calling up every single one of my credit card companies and asking them to send me statements from that dates (online statements don't go back that far) I really don't have any way of proving I bought it. It just seems as though they are being difficult unecessarily, esepcially as it's clearly less than 25 years old as they were not making them that long ago! Sorry for the ramble I hope someone can offer some insight, for the sake of my back if anything!