‘You can’t get better than a Kwik-Fit fitter. We’re the boys to trust!’ I remember the TV advert well. When I was a child, the sight of the dancing men in blue overalls made me look forward to being old enough to drive a car so I could go to the cheerful cockney geezers to get my flat tyres seen to. A sequence featuring a boy in blue twirling a young girl around the depot floor particularly convinced me of the essential goodness of this organisation. The lyrics were stirring stuff (I’m not so sad that I remember them; I looked up the advert on YouTube): ‘Every Kwik-Fit fitter has to go to school, we teach them all they need to know, each little golden rule…So drive on down to Kwik-Fit, we’ll weigh in just for you, every product’s guaranteed, you’ll love their prices too! You can’t get better than a Kwik-Fit fitter…’ And so on, with much ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ dancing. It warms the heart and makes you proud to be British.
Oh, I know that adverts put a gloss on things, but there was something especially romantic about the Kwik-Fit spiel. The idea that in every town and city in this gloomy and unreliable world there were cheerful, dependable blokes straining at the leash to change the flat tyres of the little Fiats and Peugeots of shy girls in A-line skirts was very seductive. I wanted to believe it when I was young and I still wanted to believe it as I pulled into Kwik-Fit a few days ago with a flat.
I was a bit crestfallen when I was greeted at reception by a monosyllabic grunt from a man who, while wearing blue overalls, seemed not to possess the power of speech, never mind the verve to do a line dance. ‘I’ve got a flat tyre,’ I said. ‘Uh?’ he said. ‘Flat tyre,’ I said slowly. Nothing. But then a cheerful cockney geezer standing at the till piped up sarcastically, ‘You know, mate — tyres, it’s what we do.’ And he chuckled. This was more like it. ‘Exactly!’ I chuckled back. ‘I’ve come to Kwik-Fit because it’s the place for tyres.’ I actually said those words, jauntily, which gives you some idea of how in thrall I was to the whole ‘can’t get better’ concept.
Before not too long, three of my worn tyres were being replaced with a comforting amount of industry and speed while I sat reading ‘The Kwik-Fit Code’ on the wall. It had three pledges, all of which explicitly led me to believe that I would be especially well looked after. When the fitter was finished I paid him £200 and drove away.
Then, halfway down the A3, it happened. At the precise moment I went over 50mph the steering wheel started to judder. I pulled over and rang cockney geezer. ‘I can’t think what that might be,’ he said, unconvincingly. ‘I can,’ I said. ‘It means the wheels aren’t balanced.’ ‘Ah, well,’ he said, sounding confident now, ‘we wouldn’t have balanced your wheels, see, ’cos you’ve got one of them Peugeots with set wheels and we don’t have the adapter for them.’ I pulled out my invoice and a terrible realisation dawned. I had a lump in my throat as I said, ‘That’s funny, because on this invoice it says “wheel balancing — £17.25”.’ There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of my dreams coming crashing to the ground.
‘How could you do such a thing?’ I was nearly in tears. ‘How could you, a Kwik-Fit fitter, say you would do something and not do it, and then…’ I feared I couldn’t get the words out…‘charge me for it anyway…’ Cockney geezer was profoundly apologetic. To put the best possible gloss on an almost impossible-to-gloss situation I suppose it might have been a clerical error with the invoice, although even he didn’t make such a claim. He just said sorry and arranged for my car to have its wheels balanced at another branch where they had the equipment.
I drove the five miles in a sombre mood. On the way a friend phoned and I told her what had happened. ‘Oh, they’re notorious, they always f*** my car up.’ I had to tell her to stop. I hadn’t felt this bad since a child at school told me there was no Father Christmas. This turned out to be untrue, thankfully, and I’m hoping the Kwik-Fit saga will resolve itself in the same way. I’m sure there is a logical explanation. Even after everything that’s happened, I want to go on believing. Apart from anything else, ‘You can’t get better than a Kwik-Fit fitter, we’re the boys who lie and steal 17 quid off you,’ just doesn’t have the same ring.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
Comments