Quote:
Originally Posted by Othen
That reminds me of soon after I moved to Virginia (15 years ago), I bid what I thought was a ridiculously low price for a Ford Ranger V6 - and won the auction. I checked the location, to find it was just inside New Hampshire - it didn’t look that far on the map (the only map I had handy was the states map stuck to the fridge).
Six hours on a train the next morn got me there, the dealer collected me at the station and it took 8 hours to drive home. I checked the truck over the next morn to find I’d had no lights at the back all the way! Fortunately roadworthiness is much more liberally interpreted in the USA - it was easy to get the truck through the Virginia light and brake test (sort of MoT, but much less demanding) and I drove the truck for the 3 years i lived there.
After that I checked the distance from home more carefully every time i bought another car or bike!
Alan :-)
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You were lucky Alan! Could have been even further away!
Had a similar one with something i bought on fleabay many moons ago allegedly from Cambridge. They gave me the first line of their address and the village name which (not knoiwng Cambridge all that well) i thought was a district of the city.
Got there and phoned for directions and it turned out the village they lived in was near Peterborough in Cambridge
shire. Some people refuse to acknowledge the difference between the county town and the county.
They lost the sale as i wasn't about to add a 120 mile round trip to my journey for something i could buy new and have delivered for less than the cost of the petrol to go and collect the item from them and pay for it on top.
Not quite the same scale and more their mistake than mine for not knowing where they lived but same general idea.
I now double-check if it says something ambiguous on the location exactly where it is, after all there are many places with duplicated names in different parts of the country (for example, 3x St Ives, at least 2x Watlington, Narborough, Fordham and a few others i can't bring to mind) and sometimes get a rude reply back saying it's in a certain area which gets an equally polite reply of "Oh, i thought it was in <different area>".