When I bought my new (to me) car in 2015, I took out a payment plan to cover the servicing costs. I pay a small amount each month and that covers the cost of my annual (or, in my car’s case, biennial (or 20,000 miles, whichever comes sooner)) service.

In October, the payment wasn’t taken. I wasn’t overly worried – probably an administration error, and it will be collected next month. It wasn’t. OK, so maybe they’ve stopped collecting because the fund has built up enough to cover a service. When no money was taken in December I thought I better check so wrote a letter to the collection agency.

Meanwhile, my car service had become due so I went on to Google to find the phone number of the dealership. “Citroen Basinghole” should find it. Well, it did, but the name of the dealership wasn’t as I remembered. OK, I couldn’t remember the exact name of the dealership but it was different to the one Google was telling me. It was unlikely there are two Citroen dealerships in Basinghole, but I checked the google map – sure enough, it was in the same place.

I phoned to book the service, explaining that I had this payment plan, but the receptionist seemed to take a bit of time finding my details.

Now I received a reply to my aforementioned letter. “… blah blah blah … the dealership went bust … blah blah blah … as we passed all money collected on to the delaer, you’re stuffed … blah blah balh”. Or words to that effect.

I don’t know whether the new dealership will honour the payments already made, or whether I’ve lost the money – I’ll find out tomorrow. Though at the end of the day it’s only the cost of a service, so not a life-changing amount.

“CS3, why are you starting your homework at 10 pm?”

“It’s not my fault – you told me to watch that TED talk on procrastination”

There’s no answer to that!