On 13/10/08 11:43, "Tim Sinclair" <timsinc@gmail.com> wrote:

that in their tree-culling version would put your motorhome over the
weight limit - in one device that weighs no more than your Fiat manual.

How about if one has a Mercedes? :-))

A good point on the weight of books, though. They are heavier than house
bricks.
--
ErnB
Bristol

Users can subscribe to Tomtom for regular updates of selected maps. Charges
start from £7.95 a quarter. See: -

http://tinyurl.com/5xuu22

Not looked into detail yet so no comment at this time.
--
ErnB
Bristol

Hi Neill,

Thanks for that. I don't get on with their website. which does neither
myself nor the ferry company any good.
However, my wife says she is happy, so I'll let her sort it out. At present,
I don't know when, or if, I will be travelling in the near future, but am
bound to go sometime before the end of mext Spring.

I phoned BF today, premium of 10p per minute. They promised to send me a
brochure.....as soon as they are available. Then I phoned Transmanche, who told
me to press 2....in French. They also said they would send me a brochure, but
said I would have to go onto the internet to get the prices. I said not to
bother, and I didn't bother phoning Sea France. Lets see what my wife comes up
with.

6012





**************

Very true.... but 4 times their value is better than a trolly full of
food...and having been in a Force 9 Gale going round in circles for 2 hours
outside Dover Harbour is'nt something we wish to repeat. (:>)



**************

--- In motorhome-list@yahoogroups.co.uk, "dazcaz" <daz@...> wrote:

This new Sony e-book is nothing new.
I've been reading e-books for about 10 years, thanks to my Palm PDAs.

Forget the Sony thing, it's far too expensive for an e-book reader.

Your opinion.

It's a fair bit cheaper than the Iliad reader I use everyday. With
constant use you may need to recharge the device maybe only once a
week (unlike pda's or cell phones), the screen sizes are more like
that of a paperback (no squinting or magnifying glass required), the
pages do not need holding down in the wind, it uses what is called
e-ink technology so there is no led screen, and you can have hundreds
of novels and other reading material (news feeds, blogs and more) -
that in their tree-culling version would put your motorhome over the
weight limit - in one device that weighs no more than your Fiat manual.

Tim

mike.motorhome wrote:

It's good to see that someone has his warranty. I fixed the elbows
myself with sawn-off biro tubes but Lunar doesn't know that.

Pet Human <pethuman@...> wrote:

Mike, I have read every page on your website, and I'm going to offer a
few comments on the whole.....

And excellent they are. This among other really helpful tips and info
is what makes this site so good: folk out there like 'Pet' willing to
spend time sorting out the wheat from the chaff and put into words
what many of us half suspected anyway.

It's good to have confirmed which wooly thought-out campaigns - such
as that in another thread of the petition to No 10 - to avoid.

Tim

They are a protected species so the NT would need a licence to cull. Hope they have one or else big trouble.

Peter S



. There are so many and they are so bold that
they become a real pest in local gardens (so many in fact that the NT
quietly culls the population from time to time to moderate numbers!). Never
been there at any time of year without seeing quite a few of them.

At 10:37 13/10/2008, Tim wrote:

Not been around much recently so have hopped into this mid thread - but
for what it's worth I read ebooks on my PDA (and now phone - which in my
case is really a pda - O2 XDA) so you don't need a laptop or one of the
silly expensive readers no one is likely to buy.

++++++++++++++++++++++++
That is exactly what I use--O2xda (but II).It does my TomTom(6) and also Memory Map and eBooks(which I stick on an SD card). Easy to obtain second hand as its not necessary to have the latest hi-tech offerings. Oh--almost forgot--its a phone as well.
Regards
BrianM

We've just booked Euro Tunnel (£180) next week.....but with Tesco points
for........£45 return.... and no gales or sea state to worry about . Unbeatable
value.



**************


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Not been around much recently so have hopped into this mid thread - but for what it's worth I read ebooks on my PDA (and now phone - which in my case is really a pda - O2 XDA) so you don't need a laptop or one of the silly expensive readers no one is likely to buy.

Cheers

--Tim


Brian Marsden wrote:

On 13/10/08 09:58, "Fredthegaffer" <fredthegaffer@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

So thanks for the help and hope my feedback helps, but I won't be going again
in a hurry.

I feel like that about most of Britain's resorts. The worst, and one that
really shocked me, was Bognor. We went to Bognor or Littlehampton every
weekend pre-war. They are just rat-holes now. And filled with damned
expensive tat.
--
ErnB
Bristol

By the way I did have my weekend in blackpool. It was worth it, only for the one hour we watched the lights and the company I was with.
On the prom we found that south of Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum are lots of streets where vans can park up.
The street I picked had 7 vans on, and before dark someone from a hotel came out and took fotos of us all on his fone. Presumably he's petitioning the local council.
Quite why I've no idea as there was lots of space, we weren't causing noise or problems, there were no restrictions and there was spaces left on the road all night. I can only assume he's irate that we don't pay his fees for overnight stays.
Some people hate the thought of others appearing to get something for nothing.
I can't imagine going back to Blackpool in a hurry though. The lights are disappointing now compared to some years ago and I worked out that it was on average every 20 minutes that we saw police or ambulance blue lights, even 4 miles from the centre where we parked on the following night.
Gangs of people roaming the streets with "Neil's 21st Birthday Hog" t shirts and gangs of girls attempting to be the loudest gang on the street and thinking it was funny asking every man they saw "Whaddya think of Eileen's tits?" as Eileen was suitably grossly large in that department.
We spent the Sunday at Formby beach instead but didn't see any red squirrels :(
So thanks for the help and hope my feedback helps, but I won't be going again in a hurry.
Regards
Fred

And in a way I think that's a pity, because the Camping & Caravan Club's

survey show an unacceptable level of quality problems in British-made
caravans and motorhomes, which compare very poorly with German models.
Some sort of wider campaign to draw attention to these poor standards is
probably well-justified, but the complaints need to be much better
formulated than yours.

That's my thoughts. Make of it what you will!

I only wish I'd been able to take the time and the trouble to set down my reactions as you have and I hope Mike takes them in the helpful spirit in which they are intended.

I feel desperately sorry for Mike as he's clearly been very upset at the way he feels he's been treated, but I think he is only going to end up more bitter and frustrated than he currently is if he continues on his course of action.

Derek


--
I am using the free version of SPAMfighter for Personal use.
SPAMfighter has removed 1675 of my spam emails to date.
Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len

The Trial and Professional version does not have this message in the email

On 13/10/08 06:51, "W3526602@aol.com" <W3526602@aol.com> wrote:

The on-line system seems to be that you tell them when you want to travel,
and they tell you how much it will cost.

I ignore them, 602. On-line booking is a bit like feeling your way thru a
swamp, but look for the sites that have <Earlier Sailing> and <Later
Sailing> buttons. Or, like Sea France, actually give prices against
sailings.

And then pets are seen as excuses to print money. On Speedferries, a pet
costs £22 extra on top the £29 fare for a car and 5 passengers. They used to
charge £7 e.w.

Channelpirates.com have dropped all their campaigning and are now working
FOR the ferry companies.
--
ErnB
Bristol

Hi,

Well, I now know how much I'm going to spend on diesel to get to/from any of
the ferry ports. Next move is to find out what each crossing will cost me.
Buts thats not so easy, as the ferry companies seem rather coy about revealing
their prices.

The on-line system seems to be that you tell them when you want to travel,
and they tell you how much it will cost. But I am aware that there are
different prices for different sailings. As it matters not when I travel, my interest
is in taking the cheapest option, but to find that, you have to make several
dummy bookings, and even then you don't know if you have missed a better
deal. Or maybe I am a techno-wimp? Probably!

The easy solution is to look at their paper brochure/timetable, but in this
part of the UK you walk into a travel agent (nearest is 10 miles away), ask
for a brochure......and the lady goes all po-faced and denies having such a
document. So, _www.yell.com_ (http://www.yell.com) for Brittany Ferries,
Transmanche, and Sea France, and phone (free), ask them to send me their brochures.

Another crazy feature is the time the journey takes. When traveling via
Portsmouth (nearest ferry) I leave home at least five hours before the departure
time, usually more. The crossing can take up to 8 hours. Plus travel at the
other end. But I have driven from Dinan to Calais, taken the tunnel, then
driven from Dover to Swansea in 12 hours, without exceeding the speed limit.

If you have a dog, do not book to return to UK on a Monday. Your vet will
charge extra for a weekend appointment.

602



**************

Electrophile, surely!

Certainly use 15amp breaker as already advised. Also, try to find a
"fast" breaker that allows a minimum of overload.
There are breakers and breakers. Some are designed to allow for the
overload current demanded by electric motors starting current. Clearly
you wouldn't want one of these.
Another option is to go for an even lower current such as 10 or 12 amps.

S.Whitehead
s.whitehead@iee.org

On 11 Oct 2008, at 15:19, "donald9605" <don.newton@btinternet.com>
wrote:

Here is one for Ernb or all other electrophobes.

When overwintering for a lengthy period of time I use a site supplying
16amps.

I would like to avoid having to get the site manager to reset the trip
(in a locked box) every time we inadvertantly

go over the 16 amps. This is a pain if it is late evening/early
morning
etc.

What simple, cost effective, piece of kit can I install in the main
supply cable to say trip the supply at

15 amps and then can be reset by me?

mike.motorhome wrote:

It's good to see that someone has his warranty. I fixed the elbows
myself with sawn-off biro tubes but Lunar doesn't know that.

Well, they probably do know. I'd be surprised if someone from Lunar
isn't keeping a quiet eye on all this.

Mike, I have read every page on your website, and I'm going to offer a
few comments on the whole. Please not that I have no conection with
Lunar or any part of the motorhome industry; I'm just someone thinking
of buying a campervan or motorhome, who stumbled on this mailing list a
few days ago, and then saw your posts about your website.

The first thing is that it's incredibly hard to figure from the website
what your problems are with Lunar, and what you want done about it all.
Your website has lots and lots of words, many of them waxing lyrical
about how you think their business should be better organised, other
words direly predicting what may befall Lunar if they don't help you ...
but nowhere in the midst of it all is there a simple summary in which
you set out what the problem is, and what you want done. Without that,
I found myself losing the will to live on my first two attempts to read
your website, and only persevered a third time out of a stubborn
fascination at the sheer verbosity and incoherence of what I was reading.

You will probably be quite offended by the previous paragraph, but I'm
sorry: your website IS verbose and incoherent. It circles around the
point without ever getting near to it.

Reading your correspondence with Lunar and with your dealer, I can see
that you do indeed appear to have had some genuine problems with them.
But it also seems to me that you have handled this in a way which made
it very difficult for them to help you:

* at nearly every point you were unclear about what you wanted
* you paid over money without having a clear written agreement of what
you were getting for it (that's a mistake for both you and Lunar, but
both sides should have foreseen the trouble that would cause)
* There appear to be big chunks missing from the published
correspondence, because at several points you refer to things which
aren't covered in any of he other letters.

I started by looking at the correspondence with a lot of sympathy for
you, because you appeared to be someone who had paid out a lot of money
for a motorhome and not received what they wanted. But by the time I
had finished reading it all, my sympathies had swung round quite
strongly to Lunar's side.

You say that Lunar has stopped replying to your letters, and that's why
you have been campaigning publicly. But I have to say that if I was
working for Lunar, I too would have stopped replying to your letters,
because there was no sign that any further correspondence with you could
have gotten anywhere; it would just have generated more words without
clarifying what you actually wanted.

If you were still dissatisfied, you should have gone to Trading
Standards and pressed your case; they would probably have reminded you
of the importance of clarifying what you wanted. But instead you tried
to generate a barrage of bad publicity for Lunar, which will only put
their backs up, and will generate results for you only if you can make a
really big storm.

However, I genuinely doubt that you will succeed in generating any sort
of a storm at all. The magazines you plan to approach would be very
ill-advised to take up the case of someone who has consistently been so
unclear about what they want, particularly since a quick glance at their
pages will show you that they depend heavily on advertising from the
manufacturers. They are gong to be slow to bite the hand that feeds
them, and are most unlikely to join in any crusade.

If you try to make a nuisance of yourself at Lunar's stand in the NEC I
expect that you will be politely escorted away by the security staff who
will have been warned to watch out for you. That may not feel fair, but
it's the way these things work.

Nor has your attempt to recruit other dissatisfied customers borne
fruit, so it looks like you'll be on your own in your storm-making. The
three emails published on your website consist of:

* "“untrustfuls” near Slough, who bought one motorhome they were
delighted with, and found that when they tried delaying their order, the
order was abandoned by the supplier. The supplier probably should have
been more communicative, but it doesn't seem to me to be unreasonable to
lose interest in completing an order if the client messes you around.
And it's all nothing to do with Lunar.

* "JananBill", who describes poor service from Halls Motorhomes. Sounds
bad, but again it's nothing to do with Lunar or with your dealer

* "Vigilant-vanners", who bought yet another brand of motorhome from yet
another dealer, and only got satisfaction after going to court.

And that's it. Three complaints from three different people, all
involving different companies. Were they just unlucky? It's hard to
tell, but three dissatisfied customers out of thousands can be found in
any industry. So far, you've got nothing to support your claim that
Lunar are terrible.

It sounds like you are determined to proceed to make as much noise as
you can, but I don't think it'll have much effect other than to give you
the satisfaction of making a little noise. Only a very little noise,
mind you: for all your big talk of a storm, the question has to be "you
and whose army?"

And in a way I think that's a pity, because the Camping & Caravan Club's
survey show an unacceptable level of quality problems in British-made
caravans and motorhomes, which compare very poorly with German models.
Some sort of wider campaign to draw attention to these poor standards is
probably well-justified, but the complaints need to be much better
formulated than yours.

That's my thoughts. Make of it what you will!

Best wishes, Pet Human

On 12/10/08 19:55, "Andy Clarke" <andy@bm-services.co.uk> wrote:

There's one on this page:

Thanks, Andy, A useful bit of kit. Being the cause of a power shut-down can
be quite embarrassing. My 600W kettle tripped the supply at Clères. It had
gone "leaky" and tripped the earth leakage relay.

Fortunately, the switch box could be opened easily and the switch reset. And
I "cured" my kettle by cutting the earth wire. I do not know why it had one,
really, as it was 100% double insulated. I could not imagine anyone dipping
a finger in boiling water just to test for an electric shock. And if they
had, guess what? The ELR would have tripped just the same.

Before anyone goes ape, it is now in a recycling box somewhere.

--
ErnB
Bristol